The Green Lantern is probably the best superhero to be named after a piece of camping equipment.

I jest, of course, but I think even the character's most die-hard fans would have to admit that the Green Lantern is a surreal concept. The character belongs to a corps of high-powered space police who said about the cosmos under the power of magical rings that glow with a green light. Green, it seems, is the physical manifestation of willpower, and the Green Lantern Corps are just suffused with it, allowing them to wield their rings as weapons. The rings allow them to manifest any object they can imagine, at least temporarily, constructed out of green light. There's more lore as well, but detailing every last bit of Green Lantern mythology would have us both punching our computer monitors in frustration.

Nevertheless, the Green Lantern, in all his iterations, has remained a...