I went back and re-read Green Lantern: Rebirth last night. (I couldn't find issue 1, though. But I remember the important stuff: Coast City reappears, Hal whines, John gets mad at Batman, Guy explodes, Kyle crashes.) While I'm still not a fan of the whole idea that it was a giant bug that infected Hal, that's not what I'm here to write about.
The Yellow Impurity is.
After Rebirth, yellow is the color of fear and green is the color of willpower. The Green Lantern's power is a mixture light and willpower collected from the universe.
Ever since Rebirth, I've read and heard that it's really cool that yellow is fear and that the color yellow is part of the color green because to get to willpower, people have to push through their fears. So, it makes sense to have that color scheme. But it doesn't.
White light, like pigments, is composed of three primary colors: Red, Green, and Blue. From these three primary colors of light, all other colors are derived. The primary pigment colors are made by mixing the primary light colors. Magenta comes from mixing Red and Blue. Cyan comes from Blue and Green. And Yellow, on the RGB scale, comes from Red and Green. (Feel free to learn more from the Wikipedia article.)
Anyone who has done enough editing in HTML to change the colors of a blog page and anyone who has used Photoshop to play with a picture should be familiar with this. They've all seen the hexadecimal scale that shows #000000 for black and #FFFFFF for white... I'm not going to get into the science of RBG color, although I'd like to.
I'll admit, the fear being part of willpower theory is a nice one, but it doesn't hold up. Fans have known for years that the Green Lantern energy is light based. Light doesn't work like the pigments we learned when we were little. It's science, sorry.
And if Geoff Johns came up with the fear/willpower thing thinking it'd be cool for fans to discover, then maybe instead of taking a flight in an F16 he should have looked up some basic color theory.
11 comments:
Green Lantern, as long as YOU aren't 'yellow' there shall be no 'yellow-impurity.' Oh, yeah. That idea's swell...
I don't think the idea that fear was necessary for willpower was part of the concept.
Willpower is USED to push through fear, but it doesn't cease to exist without Fear. Actually, Fear dulls and dilutes your will. I seem to remember a line about "Green willpower" being the "purest kind of energy." Hence, Green as a primary color, because its one of the purer mental states.
Ragnell, the way most people have described it, as I remember since I don't have a link saved, is that to get to the willpower you have to accept, use, and push through any lingering fear you may have. That's how fear is a component of will. Which I think is fine. I just don't like it when fans start rationalizing the colors based on color theory they don't understand. But that's just me.
And Brother, does that mean if Alan Scott is no longer "wooden" he'll finally be able to use his power to cut down trees?
Sturdy as an oak, that Alan Scott ... I've never figured out why any of the GL's had weaknesses--be they yellow or wood--it mostly just keeps non-fans turned off and laughing. I think fear is a great weakness--makes you lose focus--but I think love would do the same and cannot for the life of me accept that there's a decent reason for a 'yellow impurity' (even with Parallax, fuck Rebirth. Fuck. IT. Parallax could have been one of the greatest villains in DC and now he's a mythical bug that lives inside someone.) except to give the writers an excuse for their character not to be too powerful.
Hmm... Alan Scott...
"[E]xcept to give the writers an excuse for their character not to be too powerful."
Bingo on the reason for the weaknesses. Think of who Hal Jordan was during the Silver Age and how easy superheroing would have been for him without the yellow problem.
Kyle worked without the inpurity because he was so full of flaws at the beginning that he was his greatest weakness.
As for the giant yellow bug, it's not really infecting anyone right now. Or it's only partially infecting all the GLs. It will escape, though, and I'm guessing that it'll infect Superboy Prime to get free. It's just to perfect, having Prime and the bug jailed by the Corps.
Yeah, sure--in the silver age Hal was so cocky (I believe I'm quoting a modern batman there) nothing could have stopped his will. I agree with you all the way.
Your last paragraph scares me. Bad story--BAD! My fingers are crossed--this is parallax, Hal's got it planned out. All of it.
(hey did you get Captain Atom: Armageddom &/or Battle for Bludhaven?)
The Prime/Parallax thing scares me, too, but it just makes too much sense for it to not happen. Still, I hope it doesn't.
I have the first four (I think) issue of CA:A, but not Blüdhaven. I do know about the return of the true king, though. Was there something else about those two books you wanted to say?
Nah, just remembered and went '!'
Maybe, 'long live the King!'
See, I took it as to get past the WEAKNESS you needed to acept, understand, and push through fear USING your willpower.
We can ask on the Comic-Bloc board. Link this post. That's the most likely way to get a response from the writer himself.
I like your reasoning better than the stuff that I remember, Ragnell. It may not help with what I see as a color problem, but it works well for the no more yellow impurity.
I don't really do places like Comic-Bloc. I like to read some of the discussions, but I hate the way things can turn into name calling to avoid a good point made by someone out there. Yeah, I'll occasionally throw out an Erik Larsen boob joke when he's mentioned at Newsarama or a snark at the 5.2 thing, but it's pretty rare. I think I've only posted like a hundred times since I joined three years ago.
Feel free to ask and link if you'd like, though.
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