Green Lantern #2

[lordultimus]

Comments

[dcbanacek]

Wouldn't it have made more sense to have kept the Lanterns in those sectors but put them under the "United Planets Brigade" authority during emergencies?

The Lantern rings ARE (supposedly) the most powerful weapon/tool in the Universe. Only limited by the will and imagination of the wielder (and whatever weaknesses the writer wants that will add tension to a scene). Are the Redshirts of the UPB going to have the tech to equal that? Does anyone aside from Apokolips and New Genesis?

Kryptonians and Daxamites are problem the most powerful races out there, if not under a red sun, however even Superman would admit that the rings can do things he can't. (Unless its Silver Age Superman)

[beyondthefringe]

Made sense, sure.
But this is clearly a case of jurisdictional head-up-ass, kind of like folding all sorts of agencies into Homeland Security, where all of a sudden, they're butting heads and forced to play nice with former not-quite-rivals. And in this instance, it means scaling back the GLC even if it's a bad idea.

Not the first time that the Guardians have had treaties regarding certain regions. They used to have a non-interference agreement with the Vega system and with Apokalips.

One might even wonder why the GLC's area of coverage was ever limited at all. Why 3600 sectors instead of 5000? Why 3600/7200 Lanterns instead of 10000 or even more? Why are there unexplored territories even after all this time? Because the Guardians are only so powerful and the Lantern only has so much juice and the Corps can only support so much logistics. So maybe redistributing their focus is a good thing (or would be if the other events of this issue hadn't occurred.)

(And that's not even taking into account the sheer size of the universe when you really think about it--for all intents and purposes, the Guardians probably only oversee a handful of locally-clustered galaxies at best. (Seriously, how big is a sector? Just one galaxy alone contains BILLIONS of stars and planets, and sentient life is common enough in the DCU to support the creation of the United Planets... You could fit every single alien species ever depicted in the DCU into one tiny little corner like a "you are here" dot and still not even have to leave this arm of the galaxy.) (So are we talking the Milky Way? The Local Cluster? The Virgo Supercluster? Let's get ambitious--the Guardians of the "Universe" claim dominion over the whole Laniakea Supercluster--a whopping 100,000 galaxies... so each pair of Lanterns only has to look after 27 galaxies.)

Yeah, when you stop and consider it, comic book science never makes any sense in terms of scope of impact. And my head hurts.

[bruinsfan]

It seems odd to me that the GLC would have to step down such a big share of its oversight. Perhaps things have changed in one of the many, MANY reboots, but my understanding was that the Corps spanned the entire universe, and each Lantern's sector normally covered multiple galaxies. Most of the current worlds involved in the nascent United Planets are extremely local to Earth's solar system: Rann (Alpha Centauri), Thanagar (Polaris), Tamaran (Vega), etc.

[christianconnor]

At one stage in comics history, Oa was the centre of the universe and each sector was a triangular wedge coming out of Oa. Like the universe was divided up like a dart board.

So sectors weren't even based around galaxies, let alone clusters. A sector boundary could cut right through a densely populated galaxy. Presumably galaxies could move to different boundaries.

[leahandillyana]

Not portrayed: Jo finally being here!

[coldfury]

Wait, there's *another* Earth Lantern?

When he said 7, I balked a little, but I figured he was either counting Alan or Teen Lantern whose name I don't remember.

Oof. At least this tries to explain it, but it's such a hackney'd explanation I'd be surprised if it sticks long.

[thezmage]

I haven't been reading the comic but I don't think Jo is from Earth

[beyondthefringe]

Nope, she's a normal Earth human. An ex-cop from New York City, to be specific.

[beyondthefringe]

Well, it's no worse an explanation than any other which tries to justify why Earth, a tiny backwater world in an small arm of an obscure galaxy, is still at the epicenter of every major cosmic event ever. (Birthplace of the life entity, anyone?)

Remember the time when Earth was supposed to birth the next race of immortals, back in the Millennium event? Yeah.

Saying that Earth is one of several crux worlds, and will evolve the next race of New Gods eventually is as reasonable a thought process for this go-around of the cycle, until a reboot changes it again.

Mind you, I'm still convinced that everything happening in the DC Universe encompasses a tiny fragment of the -actual- full universe, and that if you were to pop a billion galaxies to the left you'd find something else equally epic and involved going on to some other world that developed superbeings. Crisis on Garfhulpe-1....

[bruinsfan]

Some stories Moore and Gaiman have written imply a bit of that.

[scorntx]

Heliocentrist. Blech.

Pretty surprised someone other than Gran Morrison references the whole "Fifth World" mcgubbins. Thought Grant was the only one who gave a rat's arse about that.
But apparently not.

[jlbarnett]

the comics already are, why not try to justify it?

[gnarll]

My sense of scale rebels at this. As far as I remember from Legion, the UP is a small group of planets and systems, maybe a couple of hundred with many of them descended from earth stock. Should fit easily in a small corner of our spiral arm.

The Guardians at Oa claim dominion of the universe entire. Spiral arms, galaxies, clusters, superclusters the whole lot. They also claim to be the first sentient life in the universe and a few other things.

According to their own billing, they are on a scale so much vaster than the UP that we really don't have the words or concepts to fully envision the gap.

This is not like the US navy making an alliance with a local ant colony in a small third-world wood and setting their battleships up to patrol like the ants want to. This is a much bigger difference than that.

I wish writers doing sci-fi stories had at least a minmial grasp of astronomy.

[beyondthefringe]

Comic books, y'all!
It helps if you just assume that for the purposes of "universe" what they really mean is "cosmic neighborhood." Because to even attempt the vaguest hint of realism is futile after a point... shit is just too damn big to even comprehend, much less handle in a story where giant people eat planets and rewrite history by punching time.

I mean, even when you start talking about galaxy-sized empires such as the Shi'ar or Kree, you quickly run into issues of size and logistics.

[jlbarnett]

have we ever actually seen them travel outside the galaxy?

[lizard_of_aus]

In the Green Lantern series, judging from holographic maps, it seemed like they only actually covered sectors of the milky way.

But then, they couldn't very well call themselves Guardians of the Galaxy.

[bruinsfan]

Sector 3600 was an entire sentient galaxy of its own.