Theory about Green Lanterns and the Green Lantern Corps

Id like to start off by saying that Green Lanterns are one of my personal favorites. I love them. in fact I still hope that one day an emerald ring will burst through my window and ask me if I accept. but I have a big problem with, not the green lanterns but rather with the way theyre written. now let me explain how I think they Green Lanterns should be written. First of all green lanterns have a weakness; their weakness is that their power is based off creativity and requires an especially creative writer and artist to really do them justice. green lanterns should be doing incredibly imaginative things with thse rings but rather you see them doing generic blasts and boxing gloves. Now should every lantern be able to transform with their rings? to turn into smoke or to create a black hole or creating breaking things apart at an atomic level or phasing through solid objects? not at all. but the top tier lanterns should be doing the things I listed and more. lanterns like hal, kyle, sinestro, kilowag etc. should be amazing us with feats of incredible power imo. another problem I have with lanterns and the way theyre written now is that there are no real definitions of the power difference between a hal Jordan and a random alien in the background other than the comics saying hal is better. hal should do things that other lanterns didn't even think was possible. another thing I think would be cool if added to the mythos would be that if a lantern had enough will power, like john stewart or hal or sinestro or kyle, they wouldn't have to charge the ring anymore. to me it makes sense that the ring is powered by will and if your will is strong enough you don't need to charge it. but these are just a few of my opinions. let me know what you guys think

anybody agree?

@sog7dc: yeah I've always thought this about the gl corps

Sinestro mostly does the things that aren't seen by other lanterns

Well, what makes Hal different than the rest of the lanterns is his will. I mean, that's pretty much the definition of the difference between him and some "random alien in the background."

@spidermanandsuperman: I feel like lanterns are written kind of boring in regards to their power

Yea for having a piece of tech that lets them do literately anything they can think of, a lot of the time they seem to just use them as glorified 3D printers

@sog7dc: Hal was able to kill a Guardian something thought impossible so there's that for you. Also Larfleeze is able to function without his battery

@dondave: That was a long time ago and thy should be doing incredible things on a regular basis. I could list dozens of things I'd do with one of those rings that have never been done (and I think only top tier guys should be able to do this stuff)

@jonny_anonymous: Exactly.

And I wouldn't mind reading about an alien GL in a place like 1313. I think there's alot of unused potential for the corps

i agree. Hal definitely needs better feats.

all of these are retcons though so most people dont take them seriously. several rings were broken before Geoff John's gl run and duplicating the ring /changing colors were common feats.

I just think lanterns need better writing

Re:Feats - I agree it'd be cool to see the feats you describe (using the power in a non-traditional way, since the GL ring is basically magic after all (tech that is not explainable at all, at the moment)), but I can see why they do simple things, because it's efficient & sometimes in the heat of the moment that's what you need. Like in New52 where Sinestro shows Hal that when he saves the people on the bridge he just creates a bunch of tendrils to snag them instead of making a giant hand. When Kyle creates some giant character to fight an enemy, it really isn't more efficient than just blasting them with energy (if anything it's much less realistic of a battle scenario) - it's just because being an artist is part of his character & it looks cool in a comic book.

re: power differences - I would argue all the times there's been huge battles & the no-name GL get killed in large numbers (like a normal war), that that-alone shows the main-characters are more powerful/experienced. That, and the fact that by their very nature we don't see the background characters featured often so there's not much to compare to.

re: not charging - This is where it gets tricky. I think it'd all depend on how you believe the rings work mechanically/scientifically. The ring is a storage device for energy & a semi-self-aware machine that translates thought into action/creation. This fact alone would lead me to believe that no normal lantern (ie: not an entity host) could will energy into their rings. Now there are pretty much 2 main ways of thinking about how the energy is gotten. Post-Johns, it seems that the batteries just draw energy from the corresponding emotional entities. For the GL corps, that would be Ion. Unless said-GL was the host for Ion, his high willpower is just making it easier for him to manipulate the will-energy, it's not actually drawing it into the ring. Pre-Johns (though I am not as familiar with this), the batteries (/the green battery, all there was) seemingly drew on the will-energy of the universe, possibly purifying the chaotic Starheart energy which Alan Scott draws upon (?) - like a merging of magic & science. I think this would more easily allow for what you're talking about, but I think the rings would mechanically have to be able to draw in the energy (& purify it or w/e).

White Lantern Kyle must be doing something like this, because he obviously isn't a host for Entity & isn't manually charging from each color power-battery. Although personally I think this is just shoddy writing (/totally disregarding the logic/science & "making it so" b/c it's "cool").