5 Reasons The Emotional Spectrum Ruined Green Lantern Comics

Practically every Green Lantern comic for the past decade has had some element of the Emotional Spectrum. Everything that happens seems to be the result of some ancient prophecy or conspiracy of the Guardians. It’s like a snake eating its own tail. There was a time when Hal could go out into deep space, deal with some new and interesting alien menace, perhaps with the help of another corps member or two, and then come back home after it was all wrapped up. Now, everything is another step toward another crossover event that’s about some new wrinkle to the mythos. While modern comics are currently obsessed with long, epic narratives that take place over dozens of issues, Green Lantern is practically the only superhero still dealing with plot elements from 2007. (Is it a coincidence that Johns spent years as Chief Creative Officer of DC Entertainment AND his stories are still around? More on that later…)

This is like if the X-Men were still dealing with the fallout of M-Day or if Ultimate Spider-Man was still dealing with his clone saga (Ultimate Peter’s not even alive anymore - the Ultimate Universe isn’t even a thing anymore!). The reason Green Lantern comics have yet to move on is because the Emotional Spectrum is deceptively restricting. It feels like it should open up a whole universe of possibilities, but it actually ends up making things seem small and cramped. Now we’re locked in the house and all we have to eat is what we can find in the pantry. Sure it’s a mansion, but we can never leave. Years ago, Johns said that he would eventually address the aspects of the electromagnetic spectrum that human eyes can’t see, i.e. an Ultraviolet corps and an Infrared corps, which I’m sure he’s long since forgotten now that he’s consumed with making sure the Justice League movie isn’t a total piece of garbage. Johns probably had a lot of big ideas for the Emotional Spectrum, but maybe he became distracted with all of the other responsibilities he has and never got around to them. Maybe he was satisfied just maintaining the story until he left the book, dangling plot threads be damned.

And though this isn’t strictly comic related, the Green Lantern movie was weighed down by the spectrum before it could even properly address it. The movie was so busy laying the groundwork for Johns’ ideas that it dropped the ball on being good in its own right. Did Deadpool spend half the movie trying to get us excited for Cable? Nope. But the Green Lantern movie tries to get your excited about eventually seeing the Sinestro corps when you barely give a crap about the GL corps. Even the Green Lantern animated series had to deal with Red and Blue Lanterns. Is it really a shock that it was canceled before the other corps could be properly dealt with? The Emotional Spectrum concept is so limiting that it actually limits stories told in other media!