Green Lantern: Beginner's Guide to the Power Ring

Green Lantern: Beginner's Guide to the Power Ring: "

Power rings don't come up with blood on them.

Once, while teaming up with the
Justice League for a story arc in JLA, Dream of Neil Gaiman’s SANDMAN described
Green Lantern’s signature weapon as a wishing ring. For all the cosmology and
lore that’s been written into it, that might actually be the most succinct way
to describe the power ring. Martin Nodell, the creator of the original Green
Lantern (Alan Scott) reportedly drew inspiration from the story of Aladdin and,
when you think about it, a wishing ring would fit just as well into 1,001 ARABIAN
NIGHTS as a magic lamp. And it's just as unusual a weapon for a hero to
wield in place of a sword, hammer or shield.
If you demonstrate a great
amount of willpower - - enough to overcome strong human emotions like fear — then slipping this piece of jewelry on will allow you to manifest anything you can
imagine. Picture a baseball bat in your mind’s eye and this thing will
instantly conjure a “construct” that looks like a hickory slugger (only it’s actually made
out of hard light, of course.) The only limit is your imagination, which might
actually be more limited than you’d think. If you’re a fighter pilot like Hal
Jordan, your constructs are going to be basic objects like baseball gloves and
giant fists whose details are positively rudimentary when compared to the complex,
creative constructs imagined by a professional artist like Kyle Rayner. Similarly,
if you’re a military man like John Stewart, your constructs will generally stick to the
tools you know — that is, assault rifles, rocket launchers, combat fatigues and the like.

Thing is, conjuring constructs and giving wearers the usual flight and super-strength combo is only
scraping the service of what a Green Lantern's power ring offers. This is why the wishing ring descriptor’s an apt one. See, this precious little thing can also…

• Probe and control minds
• Manipulate matter
• Heal wounds
• Enable intangibility
• Move objects telekinetically
• Regulate temperatures
• Open dimensional worm holes
• Alter people’s shapes, sizes and
  appearances
• Allow for communication over great
  distances
• Absorb many kinds of energy
• Create other, identical rings

Perhaps the more useful
question then is… what can’t a power ring do?

Well, you can’t use the thing if runs out of power. Thus, you have to recharge it pretty regularly with a power battery. Since that battery channels energy directly from the central core at Oa, you’re really out of luck if the core’s somehow disabled or if something interferes with that flow of energy. Make sure you don’t run into a Red Lantern, because they’ve got a nasty ability to drain the charge out of your ring. Conversely, try to find a Blue Lantern whenever you can, because they can give your charge a boost. Also, if something starts diminishing your willpower — if you succumb to fear, if you doubt yourself, if you abuse drugs, etc. — then you won’t be able to wield the power ring properly.
For a long time, a GL's power ring couldn’t work on anything colored yellow. Yes, if you put on a yellow rain coat, you’d have a better chance to kick a GL’s ass because his constructs couldn’t do anything to you. That was because the fear entity, Parallax, once lurked inside the central Oa battery and the “yellow impurity” of its presence spread throughout all the rings like a horrible sickness. Of course, Parallax was expunged from the battery a while back (long story) so nobody needs to worry about that.
There. If by some astronomical circumstance, an alien crash lands in your backyard and selects you as his replacement Green Lantern in this sector, you'll know enough about the power ring ahead of time that you won't even need to look at the manual.
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