The New Gold Lantern Finally Becomes DC's Most Important Mystery
Warning: contains spoilers for Justice League Annual #1!
DC Comic's Justice League Annual #1 written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Sanford Greene, is building a strange mystery around the futuristic Legion of Super-Heroes’ Gold Lantern. The Gold Lantern was already a source of intrigue as it was recently implied that he might not even be part of the Lantern Corps. In Legion of Super-Heroes #12, Brainiac-5 reveals that the Gold Lantern Ring isn’t a Lantern Ring at all, which led to several more questions, none of which have been answered as of yet. The Gold Lantern Ring is taking center stage yet again, now looking to be an item of utmost importance in a multi-dimensional, time-traveling conundrum.
DC's Gold Lantern goes by the name Kala Lour and hasn’t been around for very long. In fact, the hero only debuted in Legion of Super-Heroes #6 and has remained a point of intrigue ever since. Justice League Annual #1 looks to bring the mystery of the Gold Lantern back into the limelight with the introduction of Epoch, the Lord of Time. Epoch is a time traveler from the year 3786 who, through some error of his own, has become stuck in multiple points in time at varying ages. Epoch claims that there are only a few items left that can restore his split psyche, and one of them is the infamous Gold Lantern, an item that Epoch declares was the center of one of the greatest moments in the galaxy.
Despite this information, Epoch makes one final request to the Justice League before he disappears. He asks them to destroy the Gold Lantern. Not only is the Gold Lantern now supposedly an item instrumental to one of the greatest moments in the galaxy’s history, but with Epoch’s hasty warning about its necessary destruction, it may just be one of the most dangerous objects in DC history. It can be inferred that the Gold Lantern could be the cause of Epoch’s temporal instability, but Epoch also mentions that he has caused many “mistakes” in the timestream due to his temporal psyche split, and the Gold Lantern might also be key to just one of these incidents.
With his ominous warning, every Epoch disappears from the battlefield, presumably still searching for the Gold Lantern. There are so few details known about the Gold Lantern as of yet, and each new piece of information seems like it creates a whole new mystery. While Batman and the Flash discuss the ramifications of Epoch’s time-traveling escapades, the issue finishes on one last panel of the Gold Lantern Ring within a cracked rock in the middle of a swamp. Happily, it promises that this mystery will continue over in Justice League vs the Legion of Super-Heroes, offering fans hope that this mystery will actually have an answer sometime soon.
The Gold Lantern is quickly becoming one of DC’s strangest mysteries. It has already been revealed that the Gold Lantern’s ring is not a real Power Ring, which implies there's some reason for a powerful artifact to mimic membership in the Lantern Corps of the Emotional Spectrum. Furthermore, in Legion of Super-Heroes #6, it’s teased that the Gold Lantern has some kind of “amazing backstory” which hasn't been touched since. Finally, with the introduction of Epoch and his desperate search for the Gold Lantern Ring, it seems the Gold Lantern's power or origin will be relevant in relation to the entire timeline of the DC Universe, coveted by someone who can functionally go anywhere and do anything. DC has been continually playing up the mystery surrounding the powers and origin of the Gold Lantern and there is no doubt he will have a massive part to play in the future of several storylines.
Source: Screenrant
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