50 Greatest Super Heroes In Comic Book History

9. Green Lantern

(Write-up by Nick Tylwalk, Bam Smack Pow Editor)

If you’re looking for a super hero prone to introspection or even something as simple as looking before he leaps into danger, you’ll have to seek him elsewhere. When you give one of the most powerful weapons in the universe to a test pilot, you end up with Hal Jordan, destined to become the greatest Green Lantern thanks to his uncanny ability to look fear in the face and shrug it off.

It’s easy to see why some people think the idea of Green Lantern is silly, but there’s something powerful in its core concept. It’s the idea that you can conquer anything that might scare you through sheer determination that is applicable to real life. The message was something I latched onto as a kid as a very dow-to-earth lesson, even though Hal’s enemies and adventures were anything but.

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The great thing about the Green Lantern mythos, other than the way Geoff Johns expanded upon it to include the other colors of the emotional spectrum, is that there’s inherently room in it for different kinds of characters. Don’t like the guy who trusts his gut to get him through dangerous situations? You’ve got John Stewart if you prefer a cooler, more calculated approach, Kyle Rayner if you want a more creative hero who thinks with his heart, and Guy Gardner to add a little of his own brand of spice. There’s strength in numbers with the Green Lantern Corps, both figuratively and literally.

Yes, Warner and DC bombed when they tried bringing all of these ideas to the big screen (I told my friends I’d cry if the Ryan Reynolds movie sucked, then managed to avoid a spectacle by just refusing to see it with them), but Green Lantern still ended up in our top 10. If that doesn’t speak to the triumph of willpower, I don’t know what does.

Next: No. 8: The best there is at what he does