Green Lantern - Green Lantern Oath

Green Lantern Oath

Green Lantern is famous for the oath he recites when he charges his ring. Originally, the oath was simple:

This oath is also used by Lanterns Tomar-Re of sector 2813, and Chief Administrator Salaak.

In the mid-1940s, this was revised into the form that became famous during the Hal Jordan era:

The oath in this form is thought to be the creation of Alfred Bester, who wrote many Green Lantern stories in the 1940s, although his version used "darkest" in the first line; the change to "blackest" came a few years later, probably by Henry Kuttner.

Each Green Lantern has his own oath, however some are more common than others. They are usually four lines long with a rhyme scheme of “AAAA” or “AABB.”

The Pre-Crisis version of Hal Jordan created the oath when he had three early adventures that inspired him on how he can defeat any attempt to elude him: he captured robbers who used a magnesium bomb to blind everyone in an area by using his ring as a radar to find them; he tracked criminals in a dark cave by using his ring to make them glow with phosphorescence; finally, Jordan tracked down safecrackers by detecting the faint shockwaves from the explosives used by the criminals and tracing it back.

It had been established in the past that many Green Lanterns have their own oath. For example, Medphyll, the Green Lantern of the planet J586 (seen in Swamp Thing #61, "All Flesh is Grass"), a planet where a sentient plant species lives, has the following oath:

In forest dark or glade beferned

No blade of grass shall go unturned

Let those who have the daylight spurned

Tread not where this green lamp has burned.

Other notable oaths include that of Jack T. Chance:

You who are wicked, evil and mean

I'm the nastiest creep you've ever seen!

Come one, come all, put up a fight

I'll pound your asses with Green Lantern's light!

Yowza.

and that of Rot Lop Fan, a Green Lantern whose species lacks sight, and thus has no concepts of brightness, darkness, day, night, color, or lanterns:

In loudest din or hush profound

My ears catch evil's slightest sound

Let those who toll out evil's knell

Beware my power, the F-Sharp Bell!

Since Green Lantern: Rebirth and the restart of the Green Lantern Corps, the only oath used has been the Brightest Day, Blackest Night version.

In Green Lantern (vol. 4) #27, the Alpha Lanterns are revealed to have their own oath:

In days of peace, in nights of war

Obey the Laws forever more

Misconduct must be answered for,

Swear us the chosen: The Alpha Corps!

In Legion of 3 Worlds, Sodam Yat in the 31st century - as the last of the Green Lanterns and the last of the Guardians - recited a new oath:

In brightest day, through Blackest Night,

No other Corps shall spread its light!

Let those who try to stop what's right,

Burn like my power, Green Lantern's Light!

In the animated TV series Duck Dodgers, Duck Dodgers temporarily becomes a Green Lantern after accidentally picking up Hal Jordan's laundry. In the first part of the episode, he forgets the real quote and makes up his own version:

In blackest day or brightest night

Watermelon, cantaloupe, yadda yadda

Erm... superstitious and cowardly lot

With liberty and justice for all!

In 2011, around the release of the Green Lantern movie, a trailer for The Muppets featured Kermit reciting a parody of the oath:

In brightest day, in darkest night

No evil shall escape my sight.

Let those who laugh at my lack of height

Beware my banjo...Green Froggy's light!

Also on the TV show, Mad, they had a movie parody called "RiOa" and "Green Care Bear", a fusion of Green Lantern, Rio, and Care Bears. In "RiOa", Blu from Rio is turned into a Green Lantern, and recruits Big Bird, the Road Runner, Mordecai from Regular Show, Mumble from Happy Feet, and one of the Angry Birds, and turns them into Green Lanterns. "Green Care Bear" is where Good Luck Bear crashes on Earth (Same story as the movie) and Hal encounters the Care Bear and has to dress up as the Green Care Bear and must defeat Funshine Bear.

In brightest day, in blackest night,

Despite our shape, our size, our height,

We're birds who walk, which isn't right,

But starting now, we will take flight!

The phrase "in the brightest day and in the darkest night" can also be found in the eloquent letter Sullivan Ballou wrote to his wife during the American Civil War, a week before he fought and was killed in the First Battle of Bull Run (1861). (See the Wikipedia article about Sullivan Ballou for the full text of the letter.)

It should also be noted that, with the exception of Alan Scott, all lantern oaths are formatted in four lines of Iambic tetrameter.