Thursday, March 19, 2009

Bluest Knight

Still working on a couple of those Watchmen review posts. I hope to have the movie review done tomorrow or so. In the meantime, here's something I've been thinking about during the ramp-up to Blackest Night.

I'm not one of the people who has a problem with the rainbow spectrum of lanterns. I figured out the symbolism of the color yellow a little before Johns made it explicit, and while it's a little cheesy, I actually really like the idea. That other concepts would have associated colors is a natural progression. There's some thematic resonance here with The Green and The Red, and the other color-coordinated Elemental domains, and even a bit of connection to the Endless. Someday, Johns or his spiritual successor is going to tie all those things together the way that the Chaos/Order thing came together, weaving the tapestry of the DCU a little tighter.

Anyway, the Blue Lanterns have been hanging around the GL books recently, and I'm wondering a bit when (or if) the other shoe's going to fall with them. In the recent past, we've seen Batman near-drafted into the Sinestro Corps for his ability to create great fear, and I seem to recall him donning a green ring briefly as well. When you have a universe-spanning story like that, it's nice to throw a bone to the characters whose defining characteristics would make them a natural fit.

My point in all this being: When are the Blue Lanterns going to draft Superman?

There is no greater symbol of hope in the DCU than Superman. Heck, he's already got "Big Blue" as a nickname; plus, the story writes itself: "Superman Blue." One of the few innovations of "Birthright" that I've come to like was retconning the S-Shield to be a Kryptonian pictograph for "hope;" this was confirmed in "52" (along with the point that its inversion means "resurrection"--which would seem to have some bearing on the Black Lanterns as well). Given that Johns was part of the "52" team, and that he's working on both Superman and Green Lantern titles right now, it seems likely to the point of inevitable that Superman will be wearing a blue ring in the near future. If they don't do this, it'll look (to me, anyway) like seriously dropping the ball.

So when's Superman gonna put a ring on it?

1 comment:

Richard said...

And of course there was this. It seems almost too on the nose, doesn't it?