Scott Snyder, Jim Cheung and Jorge Jimenez's Justice League promises to explore the secret of the universe in the aftermath of Dark Nights: Metal. With the Source Wall broken, new mysteries and threats will be revealed, and it looks like DC's July solicitations are teasing the first great discovery: there is an Ultraviolet Lantern among the Green Lantern's Emotional Spectrum.

Created over a decade ago by Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver, the Emotional Spectrum is the manifestation of emotional energy of sentient life in the universe. By the time Johns left Green Lantern, there were nine established Lantern Corps, each influenced by a different emotion and color, with their own rings, power batteries, oaths, entities and guardians.

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Now, a new emotion threatens to break that all up, so let's look back at the Emotional Spectrum for a refresher course on each Lantern Corps out there in the DC Universe.

Red Light of Rage

Red Lanterns

The Red Lantern Corps thrives on rage, and due to their placement on the Emotional Spectrum, its members are extremely volatile. Upon joining, a ringbearer’s blood is purged from their body and replaced with Red Lantern energy. Red Lanterns also have the unique ability to spew pure rage energy from their mouths. They can also survive without their hearts, because their rage is the only thing that sustains them anymore.

The Red Lanterns absolutely hate the Green Lanterns. Their leader is Atrocitus, who was an ordinary citizen of Sector 666 before the Manhunters went on the fritz and killed everyone. After that, Atrocitus used his rage to form the first Red Lantern rings, creating his own Corps with the single purpose of taking out the Guardians of the Universe as revenge. Perhaps their most popular member is Dex-Starr, an ordinary house cat who became filled with rage over the death of his owner. Green Lantern Guy Gardner has also been a member of the Red Lanterns, though he "recovered" and has since relinquished his red ring.

Orange Light of Avarice

Larfleeze

The Orange Lantern Ring is powered by unparalleled selfishness, turning anyone who wears one of these rings into a greed-obsessed monster. The power of Avarice was locked away a long time ago by the Guardians of the Universe, but when the thief Larfleeze took the power, they allowed him to keep it, so long as he never left his cave. Unlike the other members of the Emotional Spectrum, there is no Orange Lantern Corps because Larfleeze won't share the orange lantern's power.

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Thousands of orange rings do exist, but the head of this Corps has kept the power to himself. Instead of recruiting new members and expanding the reach of his army, Larfleeze simply wants to be left along with all his things. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have minions of his own, though. The Orange Lantern Ring has the unique power to literally steal a victim’s identity. When the ring kills someone, it creates a hard light construct duplicate, which essentially transforms the deceased party into an agent of Larfleeze.

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Yellow Light of Fear

The Green Lanterns have a long history with the Yellow Ring of Fear, as it has been Sinestro’s weapon of choice since the Silver Age of Comics. Johns and Van Sciver revealed that Sinestro’s ring actually fed on the fear of his opponents, and that only those capable of instilling great fear throughout the universe could become members. This resulted in the ranks of the Sinestro Corps being filled with some of the most vile and dangerous criminals in existence.

SInestro Corps War DC Comics

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The Sinestro Corps’ dominion over fear is also famous for the existence of Parallax and the Yellow Impurity. Back in the ‘90s Hal Jordan went evil, but as it turns out, he was infected by the fear entity known as Parallax, who has worked with the Sinestro Corps as the group’s resident entity of power. Furthermore, its imprisonment inside the Green Lantern Power Battery is what created the Yellow Impurity to begin with, thus causing the GLC's rings unable to affect the color yellow for a long time.

Green Light of Will

Though not a conventional emotion as we consider it, the Green Lanterns are fueled by willpower, which could be interpreted as determination to overcome any obstacle. They are the most numerous Lantern Corps out in the universe, and there is a reason for that. When the Guardians of the Universe decided to use sentient agents to patrol the universe, they decided to use the Green Light of Will because it was the most stable color on the Emotional Spectrum.

Some of the greatest heroes in the universe have worn a Green Lantern Ring, including Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner and many others. For years, the GLC was station on Oa, but following the planet’s destruction, they have relocated to the sentient planet known as Mogo, itself a member of the Green Lantern Corps. They hold dominion over the entire known universe, separating it into 3,600 different sectors and assigning Green Lanterns to patrol it.

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Blue Light of Hope

The Blue Lanterns use the power of hope to become a force for good in the universe. They were created by the former Guardians Ganthet and Sayd to create an alternative to the Green Lantern Corps. In this way, the two group have always been aligned, and in many cases the Blue Lanterns have served more as support to the Green Lanterns than as offensive threats on their own. When a Blue Lantern is near a Green Lantern, they overcharge their ally’s ring and booster their abilities beyond anything thought possible.

Blue Lantern

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Despite this abilities, the Blue Lanterns are considered to be the weakest faction among the Emotional Spectrum. They are more peaceful than their counterparts and have never been motivated by power, focusing instead on spreading of peace throughout the universe. At their height, there were only a handful of Blue Lanterns, but the Central Power Battery was destroyed and all members were wiped out, leaving only their leader, Saint Walker, with a ring.

Indigo Light of Compassion

Indigo Tribe using their power staffs.

The group of ring users that wield the power of compassion are perhaps the most unique of the Emotional Spectrum. Instead of being a Corps, they identify as the Indigo Tribe and are more shaman-like than their counterparts. Members of the Indigo Tribe may wear rings, but they use a staff to expel emotional energy, much in the same way Green Lanterns use their rings to create constructs. Indigo Lanterns also possess the abilities to teleport great distances and can heal the wounded with the use of compassion.

The most terrifying element of this group, though, is the fact that they are all criminals who have been mind controlled by their rings and are forced to feel only compassion. As it turns out, Abin Sur discovered the Indigo light and used it to brainwash and “reform” criminals he came across, including the group’s leader Iroque. Though unethical, it may be a good thing they are unable to give into their natural urges, as Indigo Lanterns can also harness the power of the other colors from the Emotional Spectrum, perhaps making them the most powerful ring users of all.

Violet Light of Love

Star Sapphires

Another classic Green Lantern villain, Star Sapphire was discovered to be an extension of the Emotional Spectrum. The Zamarons, an evolutionary offshoot of the Guardians of the Universe, harnessed the power of Love from the Emotional Spectrum in order to oppose their counterparts. As it turned out, the power was so unstable, they needed to forge rings in order to allow the Star Sapphires to control it. Longtime Green Lantern supporting character Carol Ferris has become the leader of the Violet Lanterns in recent years.

The Star Sapphires have several useful abilities that other ringwielders cannot accomplish. One who wears a Violet Ring of Love can track a person thousands of miles away in space. They also have the ability to bring a person back to life if they can use the love of another as a tether to bring them back. Perhaps the most effective ability they have it the conversion of other lanterns to the Star Sapphires. They can encase their target in crystals that will purge any other emotion from their system and convert them into love lanterns.

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Black Lantern Corps

The Black Lanterns aren’t so much a color as they are the absence of emotion, and therefore they are the representatives of death in the universe. Created by Black Hand through the influence of the entity known as Nekron, the Black Lantern Rings were created to raise the dead from the grave and bring out an emotional reaction from their loved ones. Once the Black Lanterns get an emotional reading from their victims they consume their heart and induct them into their ranks.

Black Lantern Corps Horde

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This group was introduced as part of the Blackest Night event series from 2009, which is the coming of a great prophecy that foretells the doom of all life. Given the fact that the Black Lanterns are made from the dead, it is nearly impossible to permanently immobilize one of them without a combination of emotional light. This led the different Corps to work together in order to put the conflict to an end. The Black Lanterns have not emerged since, but they continue to be a looming presence within the DC Universe.

White Light of Life

White Lanterns from Brightest Day

The opposite of the Black Lanterns, the White Lantern Corps came into existence after the other Lantern groups combined their energies to produce the White Light of Life. As a White Lantern, the wielder is powered by life itself, able to bring others back to life and encourage life and growth in the Earth itself. The ring has also been known to protect and heal its wielder from attacks that would have killed a normal person. Just like the Black Lantern Ring enslaves wearers to Nekron, those who put on a White Lantern Ring serve the Life Entity.

In the short amount of time this ring has been seen, Sinestro and Deadman have become full fledged White Lanterns. Other superheroes who have been touched by death were recruited into the White Lantern Corps for a limited amount of time in order to defeat Nekron. Other than that, Kyle Rayner was able to successfully master all the colors of the Emotional Spectrum to convert his Green Lantern Power Ring into a White Lantern Ring.

What is the Ultraviolet Spectrum?

john-stewart-ultraviolet-lantern-header

If you're wondering how there can be more to the Emotional Spectrum than we already thought, it's time to look back at middle school science class. The Emotional Spectrum was built to be compatible with spectrum of visible light, but it's important to remember that they are not the same thing. This allows creators to come in and alter the concept without having to keep hard science in mind.

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Ultraviolet light is not on the spectrum of visible light, but it is related to it. On one side of the spectrum are longer wavelengths like radio waves and microwaves, and on the other are ultraviolet waves, X-rays and gamma rays. This new aspect of the Emotional Spectrum seems to come from UV radiation, leading us to wonder, if non-visible light is now on the table, could an X-Ray Lantern and Gamma Lantern be that far behind? (Maybe we have the next great Marvel-DC crossover in the making.)

This revelation fits right in with Scott Snyder's previous work to introduce previously unseen forces into the DC Universe as though they've always existed, just beyond what we and DC's heroes and villains have been able to see. Ultraviolet is an unseen component of the light spectrum, just as dark matter is an unseen component of matter in the universe, which served as the launching point for the Dark Multiverse and Dark Nights: Metal.

We have no idea how the Ultraviolet Ring will affect John Stewart, but the synopsis of Justice League #3 claims that he will "engage in some ultraviolence against his teammates." Could this new ring, coming from beyond the Source Wall, turn its wearers to violence or make them evil? It would be just the kind of weapon that the Dark Multiverse would produce. At this point, all we can say is, wearer beware.