5.2 Reasons To Love The Green Lantern Universe

The GREEN LANTERN ANNUAL #1 lit up comic book shelves yesterday, and can you believe... Wait, you have read it already right? If not, stop reading this article, go buy it from the comic shop or download it onto your mobile device, and read it immediately. It's okay. We'll wait.

Back? Awesome. So, crazy, right?! The First Lantern! Black Hand! The Third Army! Holy Moley. We've been fans of writer Geoff Johns' Green Lantern epic since he kicked things off with the GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH limited series, and since then, Johns has crafted a veritable space opera filled with amazing character development, epic action, and continuing twists and turns that leave us desperately wanting a ring to fly through our ceiling and recruit us into the Corps. (We don't know what the word "reality" means).

As such, this week, we're listing off the 5.2 Reasons to Love the Green Lantern Universe!

1. New Characters
The upcoming GREEN LANTERN #0 introduces readers to a brand new recruit: the mysterious Baz. Not much is known about him, but we're already pretty stoked to find out all we can. After all, this is part of a time-honored tradition with this title. Over the years, the Green Lantern comic has introduced quite a few new characters, and everyone has their favorite—Hal, Guy, John, Kyle, Kilowog, G'Nort for some of you out there, we're sure... probably. Needless to say, we can't wait to see Baz join the ranks of the Green Lantern greats.

2. Diversity
The Green Lantern Corps also boasts a very diverse cast of characters—from strong female heroes like Soranik Natu and Laira to one of comics' most prominent African-American characters, John Stewart, to whatever the heck Chaselon is—and with his Arab heritage, the newest Green Lantern adds to this mix. Of course, when making a point about diversity, it would be unthinkable to limit it merely to humans, and Green Lantern is proud to feature more Korugaran, Xudarian, Bellatrixian and Ungaran characters than any other comic book in history!

3. Epic Events
The introduction of the newest Green Lantern comes in conjunction with the latest chapter in the Lantern saga, "Rise of The Third Army," which in itself follows previous game-changing crossovers like the incredibly popular "Sinestro Corps War" and "War of the Green Lanterns." We still remember the chill we felt when Batman rose in "Blackest Night," and this moment in Sinestro Corps War is still one of our favorites ever for the character:

4. Seeing the Guardians Completely Lose It
We mentioned earlier the character growth present throughout all of Johns' GL run, but nothing stands out as both terrifyingly awesome and awesomely terrifying as the once-thought benevolent Guardians of the Universe ever so slowly going totally insane.

5. The Emotional Spectrum
If you’re new to the world of Green Lantern (welcome, by the way!), you may not realize that Lanterns in this world come in far more colors than just green. Johns introduced an entire emotional spectrum, each with its own Corps, color, and power. And like arguing whether you belong in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw (poor, poor Hufflepuff), fans have long since enjoyed discussing and theorizing about which Corps they'd belong in. Not to mention the replica lanterns, rings and shirts you can get to show off your Corps pride.

5.1 Ch'p and Dex-Starr Are Two Characters That Exist and It is Awesome

5.2 So. Many. Cosplay. Options.