Explained: How the Green Lantern turned Pink

DC Comics, which had recently started from scratch, going back to issue 1 across 52 titles in September 2011, announced that it would reveal one major iconic character to be a homosexual in June. Turns out it was none other than the Green Lantern. Here’s everything you need to know about the development.

Who is the Green Lantern and what powers does he have?
The right question would be ‘who are the Green Lanterns?’ as the term is used by the many beings that have been inducted into the extraterrestrial police.

A Green Lantern’s superpower stems from his own will, while the ring on his person enables its wearer to develop the physical construct he fancies while also defending him and allowing flight.

The rings -- fashioned by the all-powerful guardians of the universe -- are worn by every species comprising the diverse 72,000-member strong Green Lantern Corps whose job it is to patrol each of the 3,600 sectors of the universe.

Hal Jordan, who first appeared in print in 1959, was the most popular of the bunch. A second generation test pilot, he came across the crash-landed craft of dying alien Abin Sur who bequeathed him his ring.

Jordan’s ring later landed in the hands of Guy Gardner (introduced in Green Lantern #59), a man deemed equally fit by Abin Sur but lost out because Jordan was physically closer to the dying creature. When the Gardner was incapacitated by serious injuries, DC’s first African American superhero John Stewart (introduced in Green Lantern Vol 2, #87) took up his mantle in the comics 1970s (or the Bronze Age of comics) run.

1994 saw Kyle Raynor, an artist, becoming a Green Lantern at the behest of Guardian of the Universe Ganthet in the Emerald Twilight story arc when Jordan -- grief struck at the decimation of his home city -- went on a murderous rampage, killing fellow Lanterns and Guardians alike.

But who the heck is Alan Scott, the gay Green Lantern?
Until his identity was reintroduced to the comic book world as Hal Jordan in 1959 by editor Julius Schwartz, the Green Lantern was synonymous to those who remembered him as Alan Scott in the Golden Age of Comic Book history (From the 1930s to the late 1940s). The character was the brainchild of artist Martin Nodell who as art director in Leo Burnett came up with the Pilsbury Doughboy in 1963.

With a mystical origin (involving ancient Chinese magic) Scott, who made his appearance on July in All American Comics #16 in 1940, was a railroad engineer who survived a railway bridge collapse to chance upon a magic lantern, crafting a ring from it.

Wait…I’m confused. Why does the earliest, least-known prototype of a popular character have to be rebooted as a homosexual?
The entire DC Universe, with some titles having an uninterrupted run since the 1930s, was rebooted in 2011 with the cancellation of all current titles at the time in a revamp called ‘The New 52’

So?
Technically, Scott -- a Golden Age creation -- always existed in DC’s Universe albeit in a different Earth, one inhabited solely by characters from DC’s golden age. Also,the New 52 wasn’t the first time DC rebooted its Universe. It was due to the renowned crossover maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985 that DC Comics on its 50th anniversary made peace with conflicting storylines and plotholes of its myriad characters over the eras by crossing over heroes from the Silver and Golden Ages in a complex plot. As it turned out, the former belonged to Earth-1 while the latter, whose origins occurred in the 30s, were residing in Earth -2. Therefore, the first superhero team in comic-book history The Justice Society of America (first appearance 1940) was not the forerunners of more popular The Justice League of America (First appearance 1960) but an alternate version the group in a parallel world.

The Crisis on Infinite Earths acknowledged that Scott was the first Green Lantern and expanded his story in such a cogent (as far as comic books go, anyway) manner to merge its mysticism with the Silver Age mythos of the character.

While the New 52 version of the Green Lantern line in which the series returned to issue #1, developers indicated that the series would take off from its last storyline The War of the Green Lanterns.

On June 1, 2012, when DC announced that the Green Lantern would be reintroduced as a young dynamic homosexual head of a media house in the series Earth 2, it was a parallel universe’s Green Lantern who has was outed in the spanking new ongoing series which will also see the formation of an all-new Justice Society.

Is this the first time homosexuality had been depicted in a comic book?
Right from the Golden Age it had been alleged that there were homosexual undertones to superheroes as popular and iconic as Batman and Wonder Woman. Moral panic was stirred up by Dr Frederic Wertham who, in his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent, blamed comics for spurring homosexuality among the youth. This led to the formation of the Comic Code Authority, which till 1989 prohibited depictions of homosexuality in the medium. One of the first gay superheroes -- and the claim is disputed -- is Marvel’s Northstar, a member of Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight.

But why has DC made an ‘alternate’ Green Lantern gay?
One wonders why of all the superheroes in DC Comics overstocked, tights-wearing pantheon, the sexuality of the Green Lantern in Earth -2 was reconfigured. Prolific comic book writer Grant Morrison in an interview with Playboy suggested, in April 2012, that Batman -- described by Wertham as ‘psychologically homosexual’ decades ago -- was indeed ‘very, very gay.’ Yet, hopes that the caped crusader would finally be outed proved futile.

Earth -2 writer James Robinson’s explanation, however, balances notions that the financially safe move was nothing more than a gimmick to garner attention to the new series by stating that in the original character’s continuity, he did have a homosexual son who would have to be written off on account of Alan Scott’s newfound youth. Robinson, therefore, made Scott himself gay, describing his creation as ‘fearless and he’s honest to the point where he realised he was gay and he said, “I am gay.”’