Blackest Night Profiles: John Stewart

If you're a fan of Green Lantern, you have probably chosen your favorite emerald warrior. John Stewart happens to be mine.

If anything, he has been created as one of the most multi-dimensional character in decades. However, due to confusion and writers who have no idea who to properly utilize a minority character, they have often failed characterization with this individual.

Brash, head-strong, an architect by trade, and a lover of Barbra Streisand (seriously, can't make this up), he will kick your ass three was till tomorrow.

While everyone thinks Hal is the greatest of the Green Lanterns, he has never been made a guardian.

John Stewart was chosen as a replacement GL in case there was an accident to the original. At various times, when Hal acted as a wimp and decided to forfeit his duties as his protector of his space sector John stepped up.

He also accidently led to the destruction of the planet Xanshi, which led to him going a little crazy, and becoming the ultimate urban planner on the planet Oa. If you haven't read, Mosaic, go to the dollar bins and pick up the back issues and read them. It is an amazing series in which Gerard Jones and Cully Hamner develop John Stewart to his fullest potential.

While Hal Jordan basically deals with being a douche most of the time when he isn't cowboying around. John Stewart deals with the numerous aspects of being a minority in America. The panel below perhaps best illustrates this. Hal of course thinks John is crazy, but here we see probably the best representation of the multifaceted representation of multi-cultural identity in comics. The balance of stereotype and tokenist representation versus cultural interpretation.

John Stewart has been called the angry Green Lantern,  but a "Chip on His Shoulder," a phrase the fictional  character uses to  describes himself in a recent issue of the comic, is perhaps the most appropriate.

So here we are, left with a man who possesses one of the most powerful weapons in the universe. We are left with a soldier who loves Babs and who mourns for his fault in the destruction of over a billion lives.