Stel
23 years ago - Stel is designed and built on Korugar to serve Sinestro’s regime.
19 years ago - 4-year-old Stel is reprogrammed by the Korugar resistance.
17 years ago - 6-year-old Stel is selected as the new Green Lantern of Sinestro’s sector when Katma Tui rejects it.
13 years ago - 10-year-old Stel returns to Korugar for the first time with Hal Jordan to save the planet from the Spider Guild.
11 years ago - 12-year-old Stel is killed by Sinestro.
The extended membership of the Green Lantern Corp comes from a few different sources, but interestingly, those same sources all seem to happen in cycles. There are characters introduced more or less as background characters who have a line here and there but who gain popularity because of some quirk of their design, there are characters introduced in their own standalone stories whose role may or may not expand over time but who remain popular because that original story was so clever, and there are characters that are actually introduced with the intention of playing a role in the main continuity Green Lantern story. These different character sources repeat through the various eras of Green Lantern Corp mythology, resulting in a pretty deep roster of potential characters for us to go over.
Stel is one of the oldest Green Lantern characters, but has mostly served as a face in the crowd. We're going to mix up his story a little.
Stel is one of the oldest Green Lantern characters, but has mostly served as a face in the crowd. We're going to mix up his story a little.
Stel's StoryStel first showed up in Green Lantern issue #11 in 1962, the issue that gave us our first look at a group of alien Lanterns. He's introduced as the Green Lantern from the planet Grenda, a planet populated entirely by Robots, which is a very sixties sci-fi idea, although to a modern sci-fi fan that raises a LOT of questions. Over the years he would be recognizable in group shots, occasionally stepping up and delivering his line before stepping back into the crowd. He was depicted as a veteran Lantern in later series, primarily by virtue of the sheer amount of time he'd been around. His biggest role was during Geoff Johns run when he became one of the 'Alpha Lanterns'.
We're doing something new with Stel... rather than making him part of a whole race of robots, he's actually for Korugar, where he was built to serve Sinestro's regime before being reprogrammed by the resistance. When Katma Tui first declines the ring, he's selected as Sinestro's replacement, and it's only after his death that Katma becomes the new Lantern. This gives Katma Tui some space after the fall of Sinestro before she decides to join the Lanterns, who the people of Korugar believe are fascist. It's a small change, since Stel is really a minor Lantern character, but it really does a great job of shaping the timeline for us. |