Francis's Mauve Power: DC Announces Full Details on Green Lantern's New Color and Lobo-Killing Ability

Francis’s unusual Lantern origin

In Lobo #8, by Skottie Young, Jorge Corona, Sarah Stern and Nate Piekos, Francis’s history as a Mauve Lantern comes into focus. He started as a naive Green Lantern, but his capacity for joy changed his ring from green to mauve. His powers let him create constructs based on whatever made him happy.

After a young Lobo stole his ring and caused chaos, the Guardians of the Universe gave Francis another chance. He became an effective galactic hero, but Lobo later carried out a genocide on Francis’s home planet. The Guardians then took away his ring and powers.

Why no others followed

The Green Lanterns considered Francis’s failure so severe that they blocked the creation of additional Mauve Lanterns. That explains why Mauve Lanterns were absent when Geoff Johns introduced the Emotional Spectrum in 2005: Francis was the only one.

The Spectrum has no established category centered on happiness or joy. Happy the Axolotl, introduced more recently, gained Lantern powers while the Spectrum was fractured, allowing people with intense emotions to access new abilities.

Francis’s weapons and Lobo

Francis’s anger at Lobo severed his link to the Mauve Light of Glee. He then devoted himself to finding a way to kill Lobo permanently. With help from the “Witch of the Wistless Coven” and cyborg implants, Francis developed powerful energy weapons that seemingly draw on the Light by force.

The weapons prove strong enough to kill Lobo, despite his peerless healing factor. At the comic’s end, the story moves forward a year and shows that Lobo remains dead through the combination of Francis’s weaponry and magic.

Questions about Francis’s fate

Lobo #8 does not call Francis a “Blood Garnet Lantern.” That label appears in the summary for Lobo #9, while Francis says he kept his former name because he did not want Lobo to take it from him. The next issue’s summary suggests Francis may have died while taking down Lobo, but leaves his fate uncertain. Happy’s pink light also raises questions about how joy-related powers fit alongside mauve, while the article distinguishes Pink or Mauve Lanterns from the Star Sapphires, who use the Violet Light of Love.