The Green Lantern Corps is one of the coolest and most unique groups in the DC Universe. Their status as an intergalactic police force makes Green Lantern more of a title or job than an identity, which frees them up way more than other heroes to have multiple Green Lanterns operating at the same time. Even in the massive DC Universe, Earth has more than its fair share of Lanterns selected right now. There are currently seven Green Lanterns of Earth, eight if we include Teen Lantern, and they all have their own story and place in the universe lined up. All of them except one, that is.
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Sadly, Jessica Cruz is the only Green Lantern who is currently being wasted as she is. Hal and Kyle are the protectors of Earth, while John, Guy, Simon, and Keli are the leads in the Corps’ spacebound adventures. While Jo isn’t taking the spotlight in the main comics right now, an alternate version of her is the Absolute Green Lantern, so her fans are eating well. Meanwhile, fans of Jessica have watched her do nothing of note for years, and that is one of DC’s biggest missed opportunities right now, because she is the most unique Lantern they have.
Jessica Cruz Has a Niche Like No Other
Every Green Lantern has their own niche: Hal is the old-school bastion of will, John is the architect, Guy is the bruiser, Jo is the explorer, and so on. What makes Jessica special is that she is the Green Lantern who is terrified. Back in the day, Kyle was called the Green Lantern who knew fear, but since then, he has evolved to be the one who can feel every emotion in equal parts, the White Lantern, and even then, he felt normal amounts of fear for being put in stressful situations, while Jessica is defined by her fear. She suffers from extreme anxiety and post-traumatic stress, developed after she and her friends stumbled upon mobsters burying a body, with her being the only one to escape with her life.
Jessica locked herself in her room for four years, forcibly dragged out when she was chosen as the host of Earth 3’s Ring of Volthoom, which feeds on its wielder’s fears to keep them subservient. Jessica struggled to learn how to control the ring, and eventually mastered it to the point where she overcame its control to try and sacrifice herself to save Barry Allen. This act of bravery showed she could overcome great fear, and she was chosen as a Green Lantern.
While every other Lantern showed they were all but fearless, we watched Jessica claw her way to this position. She still struggles with her overwhelming anxiety, a trait no other Lantern has, and this is the perfect base to tell stories from. Green Lanterns are all about overcoming fear, but while for the others that’s practically a given, for Jessica, it’s a fight, and that struggle can make her an inspiration.
Bottom Line: Heroes Are Meant to Inspire
A core aspect of superheroes is that they are meant to be our idealized selves. We are supposed to be able to look at them and see some part of ourselves taken to an extreme and being used to make the world a better place despite all kinds of adversity, inspiring us to be better in our own lives. With Jessica, we can see our own fears and anxieties that we all feel in our own lives, and watch how they overwhelm her like they are a tide of water. Not everyone has anxiety on Jessica’s level, but we’ve all felt like our fears were too much for us at some point. Knowing how scared she is and how much she wants to run away, we also see Jessica fight.
Green Lanterns were always bastions of unflinching courage, bravely charging forward against all odds. Meanwhile, Jessica flinches all the time, and sometimes it’s over little, trifling things that she knows she should be able to handle. And yet she keeps going, she eventually overcomes all of her fears and saves the day, being lauded as just as much of a hero as the other Green Lanterns. It’s a beautiful message that everyone can be brave, and that there is a strong will to overcome our adversities in each of us, no matter how afraid we feel. Jessica is easily the best Lantern at embodying overcoming great fear, and that makes her so important to both the mythos of the Green Lanterns and DC at large. She can inspire in a relatable way that a lot of heroes don’t have to this level, and DC should be capitalizing on this amazing aspect of her.
How would you make the best use of Jessica Cruz’s character? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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Image courtesy of Paramount+
