The White Lantern: Maxwell Lord and Magog

This post grew out of a section for the annotations of Justice League: Generation Lost #7 which became too long. I’ll post it here as it’ll be of more general interest – the rest of the annotations will appear shortly.

The White Lantern

The White Lantern comes from deep into Geoff Johns’ post-Parallax Green Lantern mythology. The basic premise if that there is an emotional energy rainbow and that each of its seven colours has its own totem entity, power battery, and users/followers/practitioners. The centre of the emotional spectrum is the colour green. Its totem entity is Ion, the Central Power Battery is on OA, and its followers are the Guardians of the Universe and their servants the Green Lantern Corps. Other Corps include the Red Lanterns who embody hate and the yellow Sinestro Corps who embody fear. The over arching plot in Green Lantern since Hal Jordan’s return has been the slow reveal of these other Lanterns and the eventual war between them.

Fair warning, the following contains spoilers for the end of Blackest Night, and so far for Brightest Day and Generation Lost…

The “War of Light” between the Corps ended with a truce during the Blackest Night crossover when an evil eighth Corps was revealed. This was the Black Lanterns and their creator/entity Nekron – a being who symbolised death as the absence of life. He was defeated when it was revealed that he was trying to destroy a mysterious ninth coloured corps/entity. The totem for his final power is the “Entity” which appears to be the literal embodiment of all life in the Universe. Nekron tried to kill the entity, but was stopped by the other chromatic Lanterns. At the end of Blackest Night the Entity retreated into a single White Lantern Battery (like the personal power batteries of the Green Lanterns) and vanished. However, its power restored to life twelve heroes and villains without explaining why it had picked that twelve.

We know that Maxwell Lord was one of those returned to life, but neither he nor the readers knew why until Brightest Day #7. Boston Brand, the former ghost called Deadman, was one of those who had been brought back to life. The difference between him and the rest was that the Entity had been speaking to him through a White Ring. Boston had been jumping around the Multiverse as an observer of the other returned heroes/villains until he hooked up with Hawk and Dove. Together they happened upon the real White Lantern and Boston demanded to know what it wanted with him. Apparently while Nekron’s attack wasn’t  instantly fatal it did mortally injure the Entity…

Each of the resurrected twelve has a very specific mission/task set to them by the White Lantern. It spoke to them all in Brightest Day causing a White Lantern costume to briefly appear on them and giving them a glimpse of their mission. In Brightest Day #7 the Lantern was shown directly speaking to J’onn J’onzz, Firestorm, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, Boston Brand, Hawk, and Aquaman. There was then a montage showing it speaking to Captain Boomerang, Jade, Amon Tomaz, Maxwell Lord, and Professor Zoom.

Maxwell Lord in Generation Lost #7

On page 1-4 of Justice League: Generation Lost #7 we see Maxwell Lord sat in Checkmate Castle talking to a subordinate on a scrambled telephone. Suddenly Max’s black clothing is replaced by that of a White Lantern and he has a vision of himself killing Magog with Magog’s own spear. What we have just witnessed is a message from the White Lantern telling Max why he has been resurrected.

Max’s panel from Brightest Day #7 showed him killing Magog…

The wording is interesting “Magog will plunge this world into war. Stop the war before it starts.”It’s slightly different that in this issue of Generation Lost as the phrase “Magog will plunge this world into war” is omitted. What is also odd is that we’re not sure of this is a command or a warning. Does Max killing Magog start the start the war or stop it?

In issue #6 of Generation Lost we learnt about Captain Atom’s brief journey to a future where he witnessed the aftermath of a global war that had knocked humanity back to pre-the industrial revolution. From a very old Power Girl he learnt that Maxwell Lord was involved in the war and she warned that he had to be stopped. But, she herself said her memory was poor so Max’s connection with the war isn’t entirely clear. The JLI believe that they’re working to stop Max starting that War, but the White Lantern’s commands seem to suggest that this is also Max’s task.

Magog, who Max kills in the vision, briefly appear in issue #2 where he was shown fighting Captain Atom when Atom tried to convince the military that Max really existed. However, Magog and Captain Atom already have a publishing history. In the last set of annotations I showed this picture from Kingdom Come of a future where the Parasite rupturing Captain Atom…

Up until that point Captain Atom had been part of a group of heroes led by Magog. He had led them in pursuit of the Parasite, so everything that follows after that point – Captain Atom’s death, the destruction of Kansas, the metahuman prison, and the war is Magog’s responsibility. That was all done by the Magog of Earth-22 (the Kingdom Come Earth), but it now appears that the Magog of Earth-0 (the normal DC Universe) is on a similar course and that Max has been charged with stopping him.

Judd Winick recently told Newsarama that,

Nrama: With this task Max Lord needs to complete, as he’s supposed to stop Magog, will that spill into the Magog comic?

Winick: No. All will be made clear around Issue #13. It will definitely affect the Magog comic. It won’t be taking place there, but it will affect it.

And finally, remember that Brightest Day publicity image that DC Comics put out for SDCC. Well in the bottom-right corner of that is Magog’s broken power staff – the same staff Max is using to kill him in this vision.