Warning! Spoilers ahead for Green Lantern #5
In the latest issue of DC Comics’ Green Lantern, the young Teen Lantern Keli Quintela is revealed to be an unstable nuclear bomb of willpower, showing herself to be incredibly volatile as she heads to attack Sinestro on her own. Believing the leader of the Yellow Lanterns is responsible for the recent and devastating attack on the Green Lanterns’ world of Oa, Keli flew as fast as she could to New Korugar before anyone could stop her. Now her unique powers appear to be more unstable than anyone ever realized, including the Teen Lantern herself.
In previous issues of Green Lantern, Oa was attacked shortly after the United Planets summit, a colation of like-minded worlds seeking to come together for greater galactic peace and prosperity. However, one of the Guardians was assassinated, and the Green Lanterns’ Central Power Battery was subsequently destroyed, depleting nearly every Green Lantern’s ring of power while also potentially killing the rest of the Guardians, putting them into a state of quantum paralysis. When the evidence points to Sinestro and his Yellow Lanterns being the ones responsible (they were present as a delegation amongst the United Planets), Keli rushed off the confront one of the Green Lanterns’ greatest foes despite a lack of concrete evidence.
This leads to Green Lantern #5 from writer Geoffrey Thorne and artists Tom Raney, Marco Santucci, and Andy MacDonald seeing Keli calling out Sinestro, being way too confident in her abilities as just a Lantern in training. However, her power output from her unique gauntlet is rather impressive, allowing her to create large constructs of Green Lanterns she’s met during her brief time with the Green Lantern Corps. But as a result, a massive explosion of willpower suddenly bursts forth from Keil during her battle as a one-teen army, culminating in several Yellow Lanterns being knocked out (along with Keli herself).
Thankfully, a mysteriously hooded Yellow Lantern arrives to shut down Keli’s brain before she hurts herself or anyone else, recognizing the intense and swirling emotions she’s been feeling. She’s experienced quite a bit of change and trauma since joining the Green Lantern Corps in a short time. This is seemingly what’s made her power gauntlet so unstable that it could unleash such an epic blast, and the Yellow Lantern chastises Simon Baz for losing Keli when he comes to rescue her in his new Green Lantern version of Iron Man’s armor, which acts as a substitute for his uncharged ring.
It’s clear that Keli was in way over her head, though it seems as though her unique power guantlet had a hand in her rashness, reacting and amplfying her high emotions as a teenager experiencing so many crazy things and quite a bit of pain and loss in recent issues. She had just joined the Green Lanterns when the Corps was all but destroyed after all. Here’s hoping the Lanterns that are still standing can help the young Green Lantern better harness her emotions and powers in future issues.
