A Surprising Green Lantern You Thought You Knew Is Now a Cosmic Monster

Absolute Green Lantern has taken the Green Lantern mythos in very interesting directions. The Absolute DC Universe has been all about taking what we knew about the DC Multiverse and tweaking it in interesting directions, changing much about the characters and their worlds. Absolute Green Lantern took the idea of the Green Lantern Corps, the Electromagnetic Emotional Spectrum, and the various Lanterns of the planet Earth, and threw them into new places. Absolute Green Lantern has told the story of an alien attack on the town of Evergreen, California, as an alien named Abin Sur comes to the town to judge the whole. Jo Mullein, Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner are all taken by Sur, with Mullein and Jordan given powers — Mullein gaining control of green energy that she channels through a ring and Jordan being given the power of the Black Hand. Absolute Green Lantern #6 gives readers the answers they’ve been looking for since the beginning of the book, yet it also reveals something frightening — Mogo exists in this universe, but he’s not a Green Lantern, he’s a servant of the Blackstars.

The Green Lantern Corps has many amazing Lanterns, coming from races across the galaxy. However, Mogo was always unique among the Green Lanterns. He first appeared in a back up story of Green Lantern (Vol. 2) #188 titled “Mogo Doesn’t Socialize”, from the Watchmen team of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Mogo became an integral part of the Green Lantern Corps, and is a favorite of fans. Relating him to the Blackstars, a group of villains introduced in Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp’s The Green Lantern series, one of DC’s most underrated stories, is an interesting change and could prove to doom the nascent group of Absolute Lanterns.

Mogo Kept the Green Lantern Going but Is Now Home to the Blackstars

Mogo and the Blackstars are two of the most interesting concepts in Green Lantern history. Mogo is a sentient planet, and usually communicates with the Green Lantern Corps via holograms. “Mogo Doesn’t Socialize” tells the story of a bounty hunter going after Mogo, landing on the planet where everyone thinks Mogo could be and realizing that Mogo didn’t live on the planet, Mogo was the planet. Mogo became a character in the background of multiple Green Lantern stories, usually just appearing but not doing very much.

Around the time of “The Sinestro Corps War”, it was revealed why Mogo was so important to the Green Lantern Corps (beyond the fact that it was a whole planet and conceivably extremely powerful) — that it helped the Green Lantern rings find their next recipient. The Corps ended up defending Mogo against an attack by the Sinestro Corps; if the Sinestro Corps was able to destroy Mogo, the Green Lantern Corps was dead in the water, with no way to replenish itself. The Corps won, and Mogo would stay alive for a few years longer, but it would eventually be destroyed. Mogo would eventually return, recreated from the debris field, but hasn’t played as large a role as it had before, since the Corps was able to figure out how to survive without it.

The Blackstars were based on the Darkstars, an intergalactic police force that rose up after the destruction of the Green Lantern Corps by Parallax. They were the big bad of Morrison and Sharp’s first 12-issue series of The Green Lantern, with their story ending in The Green Lantern: Blackstars. They were created by Controller Mu (the Controllers were a different evolution of the Oans), and Hal Jordan was sent to infiltrate them.

Jordan was able to help them get their hands on a weapon that would allow them to change the universe, controlling the minds of basically everyone. Jordan was able to break free from the control of the Blackstars, and undid their control, defeating them. However, they weren’t in any way related to the Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum, which is what makes their inclusion in Absolute Green Lantern so interesting. They’re seemingly related to the black energy of death in the Absolute Universe, and somehow have taken control of Mogo, since there was no Green Lantern Corps to join.

Everything We Know About the Green Lantern Mythos is Wrong

Taking the ideas of Mogo and the Blackstars and putting them together, along with the black energy of death, is a pretty interesting idea, something we’ve come to expect from Absolute Green Lantern. The book isn’t the best Absolute DC book — they’re all so amazing that even the worst of them is better than 95% of anything on the stands — but it’s changed the most of the Green Lantern mythos, with Absolute Green Lantern #6 revealing just how different things are. Blackstar Mogo, armed with the power of death that Hal Jordan had once held, is one of the biggest changes of them all.

The Green Lantern mythos has gotten a little bloated. For years, the Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum became a huge part of the Green Lantern books, and it often felt like it was repeating itself. Absolute Green Lantern took all of that, melded it with some cosmic horror, and then completely changed everything. Blackstar Mogo is a perfect example of this, as it has become a harbinger of doom for the world. Mogo is coming, and he’s bringing death.

Absolute Green Lantern #6 is on sale now.

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