FAQ: The Lantern Corps
|
This is it, folks. This is the hill we're going to die on. This is the moment when we really decided that what we wanted the story of DC comics to be and what the comics were actually doing were fundamentally two different things. This is when we, a bunch of older comic readers in our 40s and up, collectively stopped buying new comics and started focusing on collecting back issues... a move which ultimately lead to creating this whole project.
Lots of people like these stories. That's great, no one here is telling you not to like them, we just don't. Lots of people decide that they need to make comments explaining THAT you like them, or WHY you like them. I know this is completely futile, and that you're all going to keep doing it forever, but sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, let me say this one time; I fundamentally do not care what you have to say about this. |
|
I'm going to write my own opinion here, with the understanding that I literally JUST said i don't care about yours and I can't imagine why you would keep reading. Comics are modern mythology. The characters here should each be archetypes, they should be unique and interesting, and each have their own fun story and contribute to the mythology in cool, unique ways. If you're going to create a whole supporting cast of villains and other heroes around a single heroic character or concept, then every one of them needs to tell their own story.
There's this inherent swell of dopamine we all get when we recognize patterns in things. When ideas connect within a narrative, we get a swell of satisfaction as everything falls into an ordered system, like we're collecting all of a set of something. From that perspective, I understand why there's a gleeful square-peg-goes-in-square-hole excitement that comes from a large mythology feeling like everything is neat and interconnected and every tiny piece is just like every other tiny piece.... but this is the absolute death of a mythology.
I understand that the Green Lantern lore was never incredibly popular, and that Geoff Johns huge innovation was a massive reinterpretation of the concepts at play there that has defined most modern readers understanding of these characters. We just disagree. It was better when everything was messy and unique. At some point you have to actually understand that you're not building on a concept, you're rendering the whole thing pointless.
If you're still reading, then I hope you can understand that one thing we're trying our best to bring to bear here is restraint. So much of our fan experience is getting excited at the possibilities of things, of connecting anything that feels like it might be fun to connect. We are trying, in our interpretation of these stories, to recognize when a story simply doesn't need any more... and the Rainbow Lantern Corp is almost always our metric for when we know something has gone too far.
There's this inherent swell of dopamine we all get when we recognize patterns in things. When ideas connect within a narrative, we get a swell of satisfaction as everything falls into an ordered system, like we're collecting all of a set of something. From that perspective, I understand why there's a gleeful square-peg-goes-in-square-hole excitement that comes from a large mythology feeling like everything is neat and interconnected and every tiny piece is just like every other tiny piece.... but this is the absolute death of a mythology.
I understand that the Green Lantern lore was never incredibly popular, and that Geoff Johns huge innovation was a massive reinterpretation of the concepts at play there that has defined most modern readers understanding of these characters. We just disagree. It was better when everything was messy and unique. At some point you have to actually understand that you're not building on a concept, you're rendering the whole thing pointless.
If you're still reading, then I hope you can understand that one thing we're trying our best to bring to bear here is restraint. So much of our fan experience is getting excited at the possibilities of things, of connecting anything that feels like it might be fun to connect. We are trying, in our interpretation of these stories, to recognize when a story simply doesn't need any more... and the Rainbow Lantern Corp is almost always our metric for when we know something has gone too far.