I, for one, would like to hear more about "variant space-mapping," since the only enjoyment I derive from DC Comics these days is reading other people's eviscerations of them.

I'm not sure what you meant in paragraph two, but all vertebrates have at least two types of cones, and can thus perceive color (barring stroke victims who lose the ability and such). We primates come from a lineage that lost the third color receptor, then got a new type from a later mutation, so our color vision is different from vertebrates like the birds that kept all three of the original cone types.

Carl, I am under the impression that we had some reason to believe that cones didn't provide color perception in at least some cases.

Chris G: The short version is that if you can make up a list of properties which vary in a systematic way, like color, of which one or more exist in the fictional universe, then the tedious fannish instinct is that all of them exist. I.e., you're mapping the space of variants. A variant is interesting because of the contrast. "All possible variants" both forecloses future development by completing the set, and is just translating the urge to collect a complete run of a title into the fictional universe.

Also, almost all aliens in the DCU speak English.

The space-mapping micro-rant is interesting -- makes me think of the D&D 4e dictate that obligatory symmetries be avoided during the design process.

One of my chums had this comment:

Goluboya Lantern who only Russians can tell from Blue Lantern would be awesome. That could key to the central comic conundrum: someone arcane, say Colour-Out-Of-Space Lantern, has to go back in time to Communist Russia to fetch their national hero Red Lantern so the Corps can tell which is which. But before the other Lanterns can get to the problem site, Red Lantern is killed in an unrelated incident! The issue is called Raise the Red Lantern.

The sad thing about all this is, Geoff Johns probably really thinks he's improving the lantern mythology, making it more viable for the Ellises, Dorkins, Meltzers of the world.

Kynn: The aliens speak Interlac, which happens to have a remarkably effective real-time machine translation to English.

I had noticed that 4e D&D had some interesting quirks along those lines--there are a couple of feats for people who use cold powers, but not equivalents for other types of damage, for example. I like that. As I get more curmudgeonly, I think sparse matrices have more potential to be interesting.

Greg: sparse matrices have more potential to generate creatively bankrupt supplements that fill in the empty elements.

I wonder if you could make a viable Champions-like system that broke obligatory symmetries by requiring that when you create a power, you also create a similar non-power that prevents any power of that other sort from ever being created, like "I have a ranged cold attack and nobody can ever have a ranged fire attack". (That's a silly example and it's not a fully thought-out idea but anyhow that is all the thought I have to spare for it right now.)

No White Lanterns?

I'm waiting for the White Lanterns, whose rings can only be born by sentient plant-life.

Or in the current thinking, would a White Lantern ring be the one that rules them all?

Jim: What's Great Medphyll of J586 up to these days?

Johns did a GL story with aliens speaking German a few years back...

Anyhow, in the current story as I understand it, people (Guardians and some others) are actively going about filling the matrix, which strikes me as orders of magnitude better/less fannish than asserting that the other colored lanterns always existed (I.E. the 'lets make everyone we possibly can retroactively into an Elemental because Swamp Thing is Just So Cool' trend of the 90s. Or the Heinz 57 Varieties of Kryptonite, although I sort of like that better than 'Green Only', even with 'Red as Myx's creation' added.). And once we have people actively creating the new corps*, one can clearly see that they might prefer to use 'Indigo' when the alternatives would be Brown or Pink...

*being already plural, the word resists anything I might do to refer to more than one distinct corps. 'Corps' doesn't look right, but obviously 'corpses' is dead wrong...

Jeff: According to m-w.com, corps is singular and plural when written, but /cor/ in the singular and /corz/ in the plural when spoken.

That aside, Alan Moore could probably invent three interesting-sounding alien color terms before breakfast, all better than indigo.

Greg: Sure. But Ganthet is no Alan Moore, is he?

Good arguments -- and I totally understand your disdain over "mapping." :-) However, the various Lanterns have been referred to as representing an emotional spectrum, not necessarily a light or color spectrum. Given that, the various aliens associated with the Lanterns would interpret each spectrum in whatever way is necessary for each species. This also helps explain how a sightless species like Rot Lop Fan's can have Green Lanterns.

But that brings up an entirely different issue, that of emotions. Avarice, Hope, and Willpower are emotions? Really? ;-)

It could be worse: we could find out that Green Lanters are the result of cross-breeding between Yellow Lanterns and Blue Lanterns.

Or a White Lantern and Gold Lantern could have a kid and name him Thomas Covenant.

(In case it's not obvious, I have nothing constructive to add and am only interested in making snarky comments about the creators of DC Comics, who somehow broke into my house last night, cut a hole in one of my longboxes, and raped my Teen Titans back issues.)

Languages aren't as big a stretch in GL stories since it makes sense that the rings have babelfish capabilities (the rings' telepathic interfaces are used all the time - in fact, under-used given the applications of that power).

Multiple Kryptonites work because differently colored rocks are reasonable.

Polychromatic Lanterns are unreasonable as it's simultaneously an intensely human-centric idea forced onto a widely non-human story cast.

Thank you for the explanation of variant space-mapping Greg. It's actually a more literate explanation of what's been bothering me about the rise of all the various corps *AT THE SAME TIME*, and I'm glad someone was able to put their finger on it. (That said, I can't complain about it too much with indulging in hypocrisy, since it's the type of fannish thing I used to wallow in back before I got old and curmudgeonly).

The issue of the perception of colour was both interesting and relevent, especially since the GL corps have had members who don't posses visual sight at all or may not even be physical. That said, four-colour superhero comics have tended towards sloppy science in the name of writing stories (Rule of Cool, I suppose), and the colour perception problem falls within my willing suspension of disbelief.

Annnddd... my gut reaction is that the full spectrum of the variant corps aren't likely to be last in the long haul. Or at least, the concept isn't likely to keep the audience's attention and become "fully integrated" as part of the conceptual core of the Green Lantern mythos. At the moment they're a powerful story generating plot engine, but I suspect that eventually they'll be relegated to being just another piece of minutae of corps foes. (In-story I expect a number of them will break up or be disbanded as the more selfishly inclined organisers of those groups find that they aren't as effective a tool at achieving their ends as they first thought. As Jeff R has noted, the slots representing unused colours are being deliberately filled out rather than having "always existed, off panel", and I expect some will be allowed to lapse once their immediate usefullness is over or otherwise proven to be illusory.)

Partly that gut reaction is based on the interpretation of how comic book mythos tend to revert back to their core concepts. High concept changes are made that "change everything forever" but within half a decade have been retconned or rebooted away. The most concrete explanation I can give involves the way Ganthet has gone off to found the Blue corps, and my gut reaction is that Ganthet has accumulated a repuation as the only Guardian who isn't a complete dimwit. I expect that in the fullness of time, when the current fanboy-pleasing and sales-generating inter corps war story arc is over and swept under the carpet of history (in much the same way previous high concept phases like Kyle-as-last-GL and Hal-as-Specter have been) that Ganthet will be brought back into the GL Gaurdian fold. What then of the Hope corps? To put it bluntly, as a story telling device the current situation looks unstable to me.

I have no particular interest in the Rainbow Lantern Corps. On the other hand, the issues with mapping specifically to human color perceptions and conventions have existed since Hal Jordan's debut. The yellow weakness was if anything worse, and the 24-hour charge was about as bad.

Grandfathered bad decisions (particularly ones that have been modified or deemphasized) don't justify new ones, and I agree about the problems of filling in all the blanks like that. (Though it seems inevitable in anything with a fannish component-- if those D&D cold feats don't get replicated for other types of attacks within five years, I'll be quite surprised.) But it's at least arguable that removing the human-centric elements from the DCU would require a rebuild from the ground up, such that it's easier to work within that framework.

Possibly lampshading it with "Earth and/or humans are special" (look what a cosmic nexus it is). Or, conversely, "Earth and/or humans are typical", and therefore things which seem to be contingent products of our evolution are remarkably common. It's true in the DCU for our morphology, as witness the difficulty of visually distinguishing Terrans, Rannites, Thanagarians, Kryptonians, etc. So why not for our color perception? (With the occasional alien who sees arbitrary colors, or F-Sharp Bell, being somewhat handicapped, just as Ch'p would be trying to operate a spacecraft designed for humanoids.)

I like the idea of a more straightforwardly science fictional universe, and would prefer that if starting from scratch. But it's hard to retrofit that onto a DCU full of aliens who look less out of place in Des Moines than the typical Kalahari native, who can speak with the protagonists even if neither side is advanced enough to have an automatic universal translator, and for whom color perception has been consistent enough that only one GL was ever confused by the yellow weakness. It's hard to go too far in that direction as long as it comes down to Superman, an alien with vastly divergent abilities and perception powers who nonetheless appears human and defaults to our understanding of color. (Though I suppose issues with that might explain the purple suits Clark used to sport. :-) )

#17: Saxon, if by some bout of bad luck or mischief I start writing the GLC, it's going to turn out that Ganthet is the only Guardian who is a complete dimwit. Nyah-ha-ha!

All the others I'll portray as legitimate supergeniuses like the Arisians they derive from.

#18: Michael, I get to repeat something I said at dinner last night--the 24 hour limit is something the Guardians set for Hal's convenience. Presumably they've got a range of recharge times they can set the ring to, and for each GL, it's set to a time that GL will find relevant.

It does present the problem that if two or three GLs go on a mission together that their recharge times will not be or stay synchronized, but we can avoid that issue fairly readily.

Yellow, however, is just unsalvageable; it has to be accepted as mythology.

Human-Centricism actually isn't that big a barrier in the DCU: the Malthusians _are_ the elder race of the Universe, and they look 100% identical to earth-born humans. It wouldn't be a stretch to say their eyes work the same way, too. (And that the Guardians', with some improvements, work similarly.)

(Now, the inherent silliness of that, including their naming their planet after a human philospoher who wouldn't be born for several billion years later, is another matter, but you go to war with the shared-universe setting you've got, not the one you wish you had...)

As I recall, the planet is Maltus, not Malthus. Clearly inspired by, but not identical. I could be wrong.

Michael, I get to repeat something I said at dinner last night--the 24 hour limit is something the Guardians set for Hal's convenience. Presumably they've got a range of recharge times they can set the ring to, and for each GL, it's set to a time that GL will find relevant.

I'd be willing to not squint too hard at that if it had been put in the books. But it strikes me that it's a lot more inconvenient for the ring to run out of power at exactly T+24 than for Hal to have to remember an irregular interval. (Certainly Hal would have been happy to find out he had an extra half hour or three hours or whatever on many, many occasions.) He could always be told "the battery will last an Oan day: 27 hours and forty-three minutes", with Hal deciding that a 24 hour charge cycle is easier to remember. (Especially since IIRC, he tended to recharge the ring any old time, as opportunity and mission timing permitted, rather than every day at 8 or something.)

Another option (prior to decades in which it was a fixed 24 hours interval, anyway) might have been "a charge will last at least an Earth day-- after that it gets tricky and variable, so you'll want to charge it at least that often". That preserves the overtime tension of going too long without a charge, and lets the writer decide just when it's going to run out (which they pretty much did anyway, since there was no way of tracking time other than indications in the script).

In general, I don't like the longstanding trend of the GLs' limitations being retconned into the Guardians' design, rather than technical limits. (Once upon a time, the yellow weakness was a necessary impurity without which the rings just wouldn't work. That may be arbitrary, but it at least means the GLs are being given the best equipment available.) It's one thing if the Guardians can't make a ring that lasts longer than a day or can work against yellow. (Or can't economically, if economics is a factor with them-- a yellow-immune ring takes a thousand years of Guardian-labor to make or something.) It's another if they can, but deliberately send their agents out with built-in Achilles heels. If you don't trust an agent, don't enroll him, or keep an eye on him, or establish an organizational culture that will limit the damage he can do. (Or don't declare the entire universe your jurisdiction in the first place.) It's something else again to intentionally make them unnecessarily vulnerable to the very thugs and natural dangers you're sending them out to fight, as some sort of memento mori.

Ever since Denny O'Neil, the Guardians have teetered between a flawed but basically positive force and outright jerks that no sane person would work for or ally with. Being able to mess with the ring parameters, and doing it to the detriment of their elite agents, tends to push them into the second category.

Re the Oans homeworld: IIRC, it was originally "Malthus", then the name became "Maltus", presumably to make it a little less on the nose. (Or maybe it was just a Mxyztplk->Mxyzptlk error-turned-canonical. ISTR the 30th century metal fluctuating between "inertron" and "inerton" for a while as well.) FWIW, in Superman: Last Son of Krypton, Maggin had it as "Malthus".

Michael, you won't get any argument from me that the Guardians have been ill-served in many ways.

As I recall, the rings did have an emergency charge when the 24-hour limit was reached; it was restricted to protecting the GL from death.

It is, of course, not inconceivable that an Oan day is coincidentally within a few seconds of an Earth day, and that's what the rings are set at, and the Korguarians and J586ers are just stuck with a very strange (to them) time. Mars's day is 24 h 39 m, after all: A full 25% of known planets have a rotational period within 3% of 24 h.

(Well, OK, I don't know if we've measured the rotational period of extrasolar planets. But still.)

It is, of course, not inconceivable that an Oan day is coincidentally within a few seconds of an Earth day, and that's what the rings are set at, and the Korguarians and J586ers are just stuck with a very strange (to them) time. Mars's day is 24 h 39 m, after all: A full 25% of known planets have a rotational period within 3% of 24 h.

Would you believe I deleted a digression to pretty much the same effect, including the example of Mars? :-)

My recollection of Green Lantern / Green Arrow #81 is that the planet was spelled "Maltus", with no h.

The 24-hour time is not nearly as a disbelief-stretching as the fact that GL's had such trouble with the concept of an alarm clock. How hard would it be to have the ring remind him to charge it after 12 hours, every hour after that, and remind very strongly after 23 hours?

As I recall, the level of sapience of the ring varied a lot to serve the instant needs of the story.

So carry around one of the interval-timers people use to remind them when they need to take medicine (note, a real-life version of "you need to do this task every x hours, or you're likely to suffer"), or put money in a parking meter. Or just an alarm clock. It could make for a pretty funny ceremony: "Here is your ring, the most powerful weapon in the universe - and here is an alarm clock you should use to remind you to charge it in time".

If I were a Silver Age GL, I certainly would have an alarm clock. Also, I'd carry a blaster ray (one not powered by the ring) and travel through space in a spaceship instead of just flying by ring-power. This is called "not putting all your eggs in one basket."

#31: Abin Sur did one of the three things you proposed and now he's dead.

Abin Sur was totally mobbed up. Maxie Zeus had him whacked.