Tales of the Philosophy Corps

I bought GREEN LANTERN AND PHILOSOPHY on May 21st. I know this because I kept the receipt as a bookmark. I started reading it that evening, and kept it around as light reading material for the remainder of the year. “Light reading” indeed; as the title suggests, this one’s got some heavy thinking in mind. Part of the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series edited by William Irwin, it was probably one of the more notable releases this year, timed to coincide with the movie that was supposed to explode the Green Lantern mythos into the mainstream consciousness.

That didn’t actually happen, and I can only imagine what anyone who didn’t realize that was supposed to happen must have thought if they happened upon this book. Maybe much the same as any of the others in the series, which mostly cover TV shows and superheroes with a prominent movie. For me, it was an awesome publishing event. Years ago I picked up a role-playing guide that taught me most of what I came to know about Green Lantern lore; this is like an updated version of that. Of course, it’s also about Green Lantern and philosophy.

A team of eighteen academics write a total of twenty articles (from “The Blackest Night for Aristotle’s Account of Emotions” to “Magic and Science in the Green Lantern Mythos: Clarke’s Law, the Starheart, and Emotional Energy”), comparing Green Lantern comics and how writers have presented emerald-colored heroics to historical thought about power from history’s greatest minds. Some of the articles delve pretty deeply into the comics; others use them as mere launching points for whatever they really wanted to talk about. The most astonishing thing is that there is fantastic amount of Green Lantern material covered, both famous and obscure, so that if you want to, you can read this book merely to gain greater insight into the franchise. I happen to not mind all the philosophizing, even if much of it isn’t very deep, and the quality of the essays can vary wildly, but I guess that’s to be expected from a group project.

Hal Jordan receives most of the attention, and his adventures from “Hard-Traveling Heroes” to JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRY FOR JUSTICE are covered, but a lot of the work Geoff Johns has been doing is also featured, making you appreciate all the more concepts like the emotional spectrum. None of this was authorized by DC Comics, but no one’s trying to redefine anything so much as think a little deeper. I got the feeling that Green Lantern was an ideal subject for this kind of project, considering the sheer breadth of the material, so it’s something of a shame that a movie had to be made for someone to authorize it.

Love that “No Evil Shall Escape This Book” is included as a kind of slogan.