5 Reasons The Emotional Spectrum Ruined Green Lantern Comics

5. The Concept Is Loaded With Flaws

Green Lantern’s ring runs on willpower. The user has to imagine what he wants to create and then concentrate or “will” it into existence. It’s like trying to quit smoking times a million. We as readers can easily comprehend how such a weapon would work. We’ve all had to impose our will on the world in some form or another, even if it’s just resisting a late night cupcake, but do you understand how to weaponize love? Or greed?

The emotions of the spectrum are supposedly what power their respective rings, but the more you think about this, the less sense it makes. First of all, can willpower even be defined as an emotion? If a loved one dies, I will become sad, automatically; there’s no effort - it just happens. Emotions are out of our control, for the most part (see: the entire antidepressant industry), but willpower is essentially just extremely focused concentration. It hardly counts. And yes, the text tells us that Green, being in the center of the ROYGBIV spectrum, is the most stable emotion, unlike Red anger and Violet love, but that just seems to make the case that willpower is not an emotional at all. You can be consumed with rage or lust, but how often do you find yourself suddenly consumed with will? You might as well say boredom is an emotion, or apathy (these were often featured in parodies of the concept).

To reiterate, it’s simple to understand that Green Lantern wants to make a giant boxing glove, so he pictures it in his mind, concentrates, and creates a construct. But other rings can make constructs as well; is willpower not involved for those? How does the fear ring work, precisely? Does the wielder have to be afraid of her creation? Some of the rings sidestep this problem by changing the functionality. Red rings turn the wielder into a mindless, acid spitting goon. Blue rings of hope can only work if they’re close to a green ring, because “hope is nothing without the willpower to enact it.” But, both rings are capable of giving the user the power of flight and a protective aura which makes no sense. Green Lantern wills his ring to make him fly, to provide the aura. How does a Red Lantern, who is blind with rage, make his ring fly? By yelling at it? Does a Blue Lantern just really, really hope that his ring will let him fly to another planet and that his aura won’t vanish and expose him to the vacuum of space? But we were just told hope can’t do anything without willpower!

Also, the Emotional Spectrum has managed to cheapen the very concept of emotions, in general. Have you been wronged in a significant way? Well now your entire life is dominated by anger and revenge; you’ll seemingly never feel another emotion again. Wonder Woman was chosen by a violet ring to become a Star Sapphire because she is just so filled with love. I’m sure she felt a lot of love for Maxwell Lord as she snapped his neck leading up to Infinite Crisis. No wait, that didn’t happen anymore - or did it? Dammit, DC! Anyway, people are capable of complex emotions. You can, perhaps, be very angry with someone you love very deeply. You can be really hopeful that your enemy dies in a fire. The Emotional Spectrum promotes one-dimensional characters and that’s never good.