We Think Heroes In Crisis Killed Green Lantern Simon Baz

WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Heroes in Crisis #1 and Green Lanterns #54-56, on sale now.

Heroes in Crisis promised to bring a major death to the DC Universe, and in just one issue, lived up to this claim. Roy Harper, aka Arsenal, and Wally West, aka The Flash were among those who met their demise at the hands of a mysterious killer at Sanctuary, a secret rehabilitative center for capes.

As Superman scans the carnage, there's a single panel indicating a Green Lantern who was in therapy was among the murdered. All we could see, as Tom King and Clay Mann cleverly hid the Lantern's identity, was a glimpse of the person's logo and costume. After reading the latest issues of Green Lanterns, we believe the fallen space cop is none other than Earth's Simon Baz following recent events in his life.

In Green Lanterns #54-56, Cyborg Superman (Hank Henshaw) has returned and infected the Green Lanterns' Central Power Battery, taking control of all the Corps' rings as well, after the Phantom Ring was brought to him. The most tragic aspect of this is, his freedom is all due to Simon Baz. The neophyte GL was duped into breaking the villain out of the Fortress of Solitude, thinking he was Superman, thus allowing him to complete his hack of the Power Battery on Mogo. Simon also unknowingly brought him the Phantom Ring, and with all this power, Henshaw is using the cosmic villains, Eon and the Ravagers, to kill off Simon's colleagues.

Making things even worse, Henshaw is switching off the Green Lanterns' rings, and with each Lantern that dies, Baz believes the blood is on his hands. He's bearing the weight of each and every death that occurs, as he feels fully responsible for the villain's cosmic campaign of bloodshed. There's a really, really good chance that after the dust settles -- Hal is facing Henshaw in a rematch at Coast City, after all -- Simon will be checking into Sanctuary with all this guilt on his shoulders.

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While this could be enough to make anyone break, for Simon Baz, it's somewhat amplified due to the fact that he's relatively new to life as a soldier, and is still being properly introduced into the Corps by Hal. Following DC Rebirth, Hal began mentoring him and Jessica Cruz, Baz's fellow GLC rookie, but it wasn't too long ago Simon was a thief mistaken for a terrorist, trying to make ends meet in order to support his loved ones. He put his brother-in-law into a coma after an accident, became an outcast in his family, and resorted to crime; in short, his was a depressing life before the ring saved him.

He was then thrust into battle against the likes of Sinestro, the Third Army and Volthoom without proper training, and Hal recognized this. This is why he was trying to groom Simon, not just physically, but mentally. After all, Hal knows what it takes to be a soldier on the front lines, having suffered his own massive losses and major defeats.

But despite Hal's training, and the progress he and Jessica have made together, we can see Simon experiencing PTSD from everything he's faced so far, including all the prejudice thrown at him for being a Muslim in America. This isolated feeling reared its head again when Guy Gardner and other Lanterns grew vocally skeptical of Simon. He's reaching his breaking point because he's been a screw-up his entire life and the one thing that healed him, the Corps, he believes he damaged by inadvertently freeing Henshaw.

Interior art from *Heroes in Crisis* #1.

The likes of John Stewart and Hal Jordan, each a legendary Green Lantern in their own right, are backing him, but Simon is shaken by the distrust of the rest of his peers. They're just cynical of someone who still has to use a gun, especially a rookie who often ran afoul of the Corps' way of doing thing via his antics with Jessica. If there are more deaths in Coast City, a repeat of what drove Hal to become Parallax in the '90s, it'll more or less affirm why Simon needs to go for therapy, as he'll undoubtedly blame himself.

Right now, he's sad and depressed because he feels like he made a colossal mistake. It's one he's clearly not prepared to handle and he's already showing cracks in the line of duty, which Jessica has noticed. Once this Henshaw saga is over, the only place for Simon to get help is Sanctuary, which, sadly enough, is destined to be a death sentence.