Green Lantern - Powers and Abilities

Powers and Abilities

Each Green Lantern wields a power ring that can generate a variety of effects, sustained purely by the ring wearer's imagination and strength of will. The greater the user's willpower, the more effective the ring. The upper limits of the power ring's abilities remain undefined, and it has been referred to as "the most powerful weapon in the universe" on more than one occasion. The Weaponers of Qward say that every weapon has a weakness and the weakness of a Green Lantern power ring is its wearer, although some argue that the wearer is its strength. Over the years, the rings have been shown capable of accomplishing almost anything within the imagination of the ring bearer. The 2005-2006 miniseries Green Lantern Corps: Recharge clarified the ring's long-established ineffectiveness on yellow objects, stating that the ring-wielder need only to understand and overcome their fear, in order to affect yellow objects, which means that even experienced Lanterns can at times succumb to this weakness.

Power rings as used by various wielders have exhibited (but are not limited to) the following effects:

• Constructs of green 'solid-energy,' which can vary from microscopic to tremendous in size and/or complexity and are limited by the imagination of the ring's wielder. This can be used to attack, defend, or to grab targets (Pre-Crisis, the rings generated telekinetic skills without constructs, if needed).
  • Force field generation, a somewhat protective aura (limited by user's willpower) used to shield the wearer from the rigors of the vacuum of space. This provides a breathable atmosphere for the user as well. Contrary to older canon, a Green Lantern ring currently does not automatically protect its wearer from harm but must be willed to do so (previously, an unconscious wielder generated a protective force field automatically).
  • Generation of mental "earplugs" to block out telepathic communication and manipulation.
  • Rendering targets invisible.
  • Lights and beams of various intensity and colors, such as destructive plasma and harmless multicolored lights.
• Movement capabilities:
  • Flight, including flight at speeds beyond that of light, although this creates an enormous expenditure of energy.
  • Relatively instantaneous transport across the galaxy and other distances through generated wormholes
  • Teleportation (an ability that has not been used in quite some time and is outside the ability of modern Green Lanterns. In modern stories, only the Indigo Rings allow instantaneous teleportation)
  • Pre-Crisis, the rings allowed for travel faster than the speed of light.
  • Time travel, though several power rings are needed to complete this.
• The rings can act as semi-sentient computers and access information through their connection with the Book of Oa; the rings have problem-solving skills but they cannot make decisions or take actions on their own, and must be given directives by the wearer:
  • Translation of nearly all languages (originally, this was accomplished by using willpower, but this has changed in the modern era to be a function of the rings themselves).
  • Communication between ringwielders, regardless of distance apart
  • Diagnostic capabilities, allowing the user to see in X-Ray, diagnose illnesses, and identify materials.
• Mental powers of various stages:
  • Telepathy
  • Hypnosis, including projecting the target's thoughts onto constructed maps
  • Creation and emission of certain types of radiation, including simulated wavelengths, such as kryptonite
  • Placing humans into a state of suspended animation and pulling them out of it
• Changing the state of targeted matter and the wearer:
  • Allowing targets and the wearer to phase through solid objects
  • Rendering the wearer and targets invisible
  • Accelerated healing of wounds, protection and treatment from viruses and biological attacks and certain surgical procedures including reattachment of severed limbs and digits. More advanced medical procedures may be performed manually and are limited by the wearer's knowledge of medicine. Lanterns can still do this via constructs of objects with that capability, although Pre-Crisis, a wearer could instantaneously reinvigorate limbs that had not been used in years, so someone bedridden for years could walk as though their muscles had not atrophied.
  • Virtual shape-shifting by generating a hard-light holographic disguise around the ring bearer.
  • "Digitizing" the wearer to absorb them into the ring where they can live in a wearer-generated "world" of their own nearly indefinitely.
  • Pre-Crisis, a ring could alter a target or wearer's molecular size (including shrinking to an atomic level or growing to galactic sizes), evolutionary stage (such as turning a target human into an ape), or distort specific areas or the entirety of the body (such as slowing the Flash down by making his upper torso too large for him to run, or causing Arisia to age when she wanted to be older subconsciously).
  • Pre-Crisis, a wearer could animate non-living matter and make the target do whatever he willed.
  • Pre-Crisis, the rings could create a construct of a ring that a "non-Lantern" could use for 4 hours at a time (as opposed to 24) without a great effort of will. In the modern era, Guardians can simply create duplicate rings at will.
  • Pre-Crisis, a ring could create multiple copies of its wearer if certain conditions were met; each copy had the capabilities of the original wearer.
  • Pre-Crisis, rings could extract information from corpses. An example of this is shown in Green Lantern: First Flight Sinestro was able to "reconnect synapses" in the brain of a dead criminal in order to extract information via a kind of guided discussion.