The Green Lantern

The Green Lantern

The Green Lantern


Thousands of years ago a “green flame” fell upon Earth into ancient China. The voice of the flame prophesied that it would act three times: once to bring death, once to bring life, and once to bring power. A lamp maker fashioned the metal of the green meteor into a lamp, he was later killed by villagers out of fear and a punishment for what they thought was disrespect, only for them to be killed by a burst of the green flame. The lamp later came into the hands of a patient in a mental hospital. He fashioned the lamp into a modern lantern and the green flame returned him into sanity and gave him a new life. By 1940, the green lantern fell into the hands of a young railroad engineer, Alan Scott. He became the first Green Lantern. Following a railroad bridge collapse, the flame instructed Scott on how to reconstruct the lantern into a ring, giving him outstanding powers and therefore becoming the Green Lantern. Scott became a crime fighter and was one of the founding members of the Justice Society of America.

It was later explained that when Scott found the lantern it had no real recollection of its true origins. Due to its damaged link, the Guardians presumed the ring to be lost or damaged with whatever happened to its last owner. Thus Scott was never noticed by the Green Lantern Corps, forced to relinquish the ring, Join the Corps, or adapt its colors. His ring also had an artificial weakness to wood instead of the color yellow.

Hal Jordan, the second Green Lantern, was a second-generation test pilot, following in his father’s footsteps. He received the ring from a dying alien named Abin Sur, whose spaceship crashed on Earth. Abin used his ring to seek out a person who was "utterly honest and born without fear" to take his place as Green Lantern. Jordan became a founding member of the Justice League of America with one of the two...

Similar Essays