The White Lantern Corps is a fictional organization appearing in comics published by DC Comics, related to the emotional spectrum.

Publication history

The White Lantern Corps first appeared in Blackest Night #7 and was created by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis.

Fictional team history

Sinestro becomes the first White Lantern after bonding with the Life Entity. However, Nekron separates the two and Hal Jordan uses the Entity's power to stop Nekron and restore Superman, Superboy, Wonder Woman, Donna Troy, Ice, Animal Man, Kid Flash, and Green Arrow, who had been transformed into Black Lanterns. After being resurrected, Black Hand generates twelve white rings that revive Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Deadman, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Jade, Firestorm (Ronnie Raymond), Osiris, Hawk, Maxwell Lord, Captain Boomerang, and Professor Zoom. The Entity tells the resurrected that they must complete certain tasks to be fully restored, and instructs Deadman to find a new guardian for it. The heroes battle Swamp Thing, who has become a Black Lantern, and Deadman sacrifices himself to restore him to normal. Meanwhile, Firestorm discovers that the Anti-Monitor seeks to harvest the White Lanterns' energy to empower himself. Deathstorm kills Martin Stein, prompting Ronnie and Jason to work together to defeat him.

The New 52

In The New 52 continuity reboot, Kyle Rayner becomes a White Lantern after gaining the powers of all of the Lantern Corps. However, he realizes that his power is too much to bear, splits his ring into seven rings, and returns to being a Green Lantern.

Powers and abilities

Each White Lantern possesses a power ring that lets the user create white energy constructs powered by life itself. The original wielder of the Entity, Sinestro, displays the ability to eradicate swarms of Black Lanterns effortlessly and is described as "godlike". He also appears to survive a seemingly fatal wound from which he recovers within minutes. When Hal Jordan wields the power, he demonstrates the ability to create additional rings and restore heroes claimed by Nekron to life. When Deadman possesses a white ring, he demonstrates the ability to resurrect a dead bird. He is also able to transform the area of land devastated by Prometheus into a lush forest. However, this seems to be the work of the Entity, as Deadman had been unable to access the ring's powers himself. Similar to black rings, white rings initially have no charge. As the wearer embraces life, the ring rises in power level. What happens when a white ring reaches 100% charge remains unknown. A green ring can be altered to function like a white ring if the user can master the emotional spectrum. This version of the ring is similar to a much more powerful version of the standard green ring, and ignores the Third Army's resistance to Lantern constructs, but displays no other special properties thus far. This white ring was unable to perform the resurrection of a planet's worth of beings that had died all at once, but it has not yet been tested on an individual basis to determine if this is a limitation of function or simply scope; Kyle claimed that he can only heal rather than raise the dead, but this may be an assumption rather than a fact. He was later able to help Hal Jordan return to life after he was 'overloaded' trying to confront the Sinestro Corps with his new power ring, but it is unclear if Hal was explicitly dead at that point or just on the verge of death. Using the white ring, Kyle can use the abilities of all corps except black. As the sole White Lantern, Kyle Rayner briefly had the Life Equation within his ring and could use the power of the entire spectrum. Eventually, he had to split the Life Equation into seven parts and placed into Kyle's and six newly created permanent White Power rings and sent the rings out to choose their new bearers. These seven rings can be brought together to restore the Life Equation if needed but until that time the White Lantern Corps will guard the equation. When Kyle built the rings he felt they should come with an "instruction manual". Each wearer of these new rings will innately understand how to use the ring. The ring will not instruct the bearer on what to do but it will tell the bearer on how to do it.

Members

Former members

Entity

The White Lantern entity is the embodiment of life. It is the parent of the other emotional entities, resembles a winged humanoid, and resides within the Earth.

The Labors of the Twelve

The Entity also allowed itself to be corrupted by Deathstorm, the Black Lantern version of Firestorm, and brought back the Black Lantern versions of the twelve resurrected heroes and villains. It was later moved to Qward in the antimatter universe, only to take some kind of information from the Anti-Monitor. The White Power Battery has since been returned to Earth and after locating the Chosen One, the Entity and the White Power Battery leave for parts unknown.

Other versions

In other media