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From somewhere in Sector 666, the Black Lantern Rings will descend upon the worlds and claim the loved ones who have been lost. They will forever hunger for those who still feel. And when the Blackest Night begins, the Black Lantern Rings find their bearers, and when the [[Black Lantern Corp

Quote1 And with this power, I will finally extinguish the light. Quote2
Black Handsrc

Black Lantern Rings are tools used by Nekron to reanimate the dead for his Black Lantern Corps.

History

From somewhere in Sector 666, the Black Lantern Rings will descend upon the worlds and claim the loved ones who have been lost. They will forever hunger for those who still feel. And when the Blackest Night begins, the Black Lantern Rings find their bearers, and when the Black Lantern Corps is ready... the dead will rise.

The ring has the same porous structure that is seen in bones, or dark matter. It is strung with microscopic holes that are channeling some kind of energy to somewhere, possibly the Black Lantern itself. It grows roots into its host like plants or parasites.[1]

Abilities

Black Energy Conduit: The Black Lantern Rings are capable of wielding the black energy outside of the Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum.

  • Black Energy Constructs: Black Lantern Rings can create constructs, but they are seldom created, except when the Black Lantern used to wield such abilities or certain weapons. Arnold Wesker created a construct of Scarface upon his receiving a ring, and the Black Lanterns created from former Lanterns of other colors also can use them in this fashion.[2]
  • Flight: Black Lantern Rings can allow their users to fly.
  • Reanimation: Upon latching onto a corpse, the Black Lantern ring will reanimate the body. The ring animating the person within downloads all the memories and superhuman abilities (if they had any) of their previous life, but not their souls. Instead, they are malevolent beings who seek to murder even those they considered friends.[3]
  • Mind Control: Those who died and/or are killed and then resuscitated as Black Lanterns fall under the sway of their controller. Making them every bit as dementedly warped in persona and character as a typically revivified corpse under the sway of the blackest night.[4]
  • Infection: In stereotypical Zombie fashion, entities animated by a Black Ring's power can spread their taint to the nearest living person whose not parasitically controlled via said accessory through bites & scratches.[5] Steadily driving the afflicted further and further down into the Black Light of the Emotional Spectrum until eventually victims of the effect become fully corrupted.
  • Resurrection: As demonstrated by Batman, a Black Lantern ring is also capable of resurrecting people other than the wielder.[6]
  • Regeneration: Black Lantern Rings will restore destroyed bodily tissue to complete the appearance of their animated corpse.[7] It is possible for the rings to fully recreate the host to the point that they appear alive, but the rings usually settle for a decayed appearance to terrify the target.[8]
Black Lantern emotion vision

A reading of the emotions of four separate beings, namely Carol Ferris, Hal Jordan, Sinestro and Indigo.

  • Emotional Reading: The Black Lantern rings are capable of scanning a being's current emotional state and where it falls onto the Emotional Spectrum. They can then manipulate the emotions of their targets until they peak and allow the Black Lanterns to harvest their hearts for power. When facing beings with warped mental states, or otherwise addled minds (such as Bizarro), the correlation between the emotion detected and the actual color that the Black Lanterns see is inverted.
  • Heart Absorption: Once a victim's emotional state is peaked, the Black Lanterns infuse their hands with Black Light energy, allowing them to rip the heart right out of their target's chest killing them instantly. The heart is then converted to Black Light energy while the deceased victim is reanimated into a new Black Lantern. A single heart equals 0.01% of the power needed to fully charge the Black Lantern battery, and this is apparently shared throughout the rings of the entire Black Lantern Corps.[9]
  • Nekron Summoning: When the power levels of the Black Lantern Corps finally reached 100.00%, it enabled the Black Central Battery to teleport to Coast City and allow Nekron to move from his dimension into this plane of existence.[10]
  • Life Extinguishing: The Black Lantern rings are capable of taking hold of a person who had been killed and resurrected, putting them under their control, effectively killing them again. This was shown when a group of resurrected heroes, including Superman, Superboy, Ice and Kid Flash, were possessed by the rings when they latched on and were commanded to "Die".[11] One of those affected, Superboy-Prime, is an interesting case - while he has never technically died, Prime was still affected by it, though he was still in control.
  • Emotional Spectrum Mimicry: Somehow, the Black Lantern rings can mimic the Emotional Spectrum of the other rings. This was shown when, upon taking a Black Lantern ring, Superboy-Prime attacked other Black Lanterns, lashing out with most of the spectrum, save Hope, which was used by Prime's girlfriend.[12]
  • Darkness Manipulation: Black rings can generate a light devouring field of depleted photons causing a massive black out effect which negates or greatly weakens the power of the Emotional Spectrum.[13]
  • Spectrum Nullification: A black Lantern Ring can extinguish the light of the Emotional spectrum cutting off a ring wielders power rings connection to their specific empathic energy field.[13]
  • Empathic Absorption: Black Lantern Rings can also be used to leech off the raw emotion spectrum energy of another ring, as was the case with Aquaman when he siphoned off Jessica's Will Power energy from her ring.[14] The siphoning effects works on all energy forms, not just the ones affiliated with the Emotional Spectrum, such as Superman's Heat Vision.[15]

Weaknesses

  • White light of creation: As expressions of darkness, the Black Lantern rings are vulnerable to the white light that represents life. Eons ago, the darkness splintered the white light into the seven lights of the Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum. Individually, the seven lights are unable to harm the Black Lanterns, but the green light of willpower, representing all sentient life, working with one or more of the other six, can render the Black Lantern rings inert and leave the Black Lanterns vulnerable to conventional attacks. The black rings can also have their connections severed by the white power contained within Dawn Granger. Black Lantern Holly Granger was visibly hurt when she attempted to rip out her heart, and the ensuing blast of light severed the connections of an attacking group of Black Lanterns.
  • Emotion: As beings whose entire power is concentrated around the idea of lacking all emotions, they are extremely vulnerable to potent artifacts intended to force emotions upon the victim, such as the Medusa Mask. It is also possible that living beings, or at least ones filled with virtually every emotion can take control of the Black Lantern ring, as Superboy-Prime was still in control of himself when he lashed out at other Black Lanterns.
  • Time Travel: Oddly, Black Lantern Rings, though shown to follow even the Flash, cannot follow anyone fast enough to travel through time, as Barry Allen demonstrated, shifting himself and Hal Jordan a few seconds ahead into the future and causing the ring to lose them.

The black rings could not raise Don Hall, or get near his body. Whenever they tried to they would say "Don Hall of Earth, Ri--" before saying "Don Hall of Earth, at peace." It is unknown whether this is because of the same white light Dawn Granger possessed, or if the rings cannot resurrect someone who died a truly peaceful death.

Notes

  • In the case of Black Hand, the ring seems to only resurrect and maintain his body. It does not provide Black Hand with power as he already carries the fundamental power of the black within himself. Unlike other black lanterns, Black Hand's power ring is not in control of him and he retains his mind and personality.


See Also

Links and References

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