How Green Lantern inspired me to overcome my fears

Man in the forest, arm up with green power coming from, birds of energy flying into the forest from surrounding energy from the figure — Photo by Shutterstock by Tithi Luadthong

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When I was a kid, I loved old cartoons. Looney Tunes, Wacky Races, Quickdraw McGraw, Yogi Bear--if it aired before I was born, I was into it. I also loved superheroes, so I was always excited to catch something like the Fleischer Superman cartoons or Super Friends.

I watched a lot of Super Friends for a ‘90s kid. My favorite episodes came from the Challenge of the Super Friends years when the roster of characters was a bit bigger. I loved these episodes because they featured one of my all-time favorite DC characters: Green Lantern.

To my childhood self, who had no frame of reference for the comics, Green Lantern had the coolest superpower of all time: his ring could do anything. I don’t mean the flying or the space travel; lots of superheroes could do that. It was the constructs that fascinated me. All Green Lantern had to do was think about something and his ring would make it real. That concept was intoxicating.

“Anything I see in my mind, I can create. I’ve just got to focus.”

- Green Lantern, Hal Jordan

As I got older, I fell in love with writing. I’ve always thought of myself as a creative person, and writing was a way to express that--to get my thoughts out onto paper, to make them real. I couldn’t turn my ideas into constructs of emerald light, but I could turn them into stories or tabletop games or what have you. It was the closest I was going to get to being a Green Lantern.

“Writing was the closest I was going to get to being a Green Lantern.”

Around 2016 or 2017, I was working as a newspaper editor and was invited to speak at the monthly meeting of a local club. While I was at the meeting, one of the other speakers had everyone in attendance do an exercise where we wrote down, “I am a…” and completed the sentence with a one-word descriptor. I chose to say, “I am a writer.”

At the time, I wasn’t really writing professionally--I worked at a newspaper, yes, and I was in the editorial department, but we were a small town and this paper had long-standing freelancers who covered just about every important story that needed writing about. I edited stories and put the paper together, but I didn’t do a lot of writing. In my gut, though, “writer” was the only word that felt right. That was a revelation to me; I’d never realized before that moment how intrinsic to my identity the act of writing felt.

Writing was my outlet. It was what allowed me to be creative and to express myself, in the same way that Green Lantern did--and I truly believe, just as I did when I was a child watching Super Friends, that self-expression is a superpower.

When it comes to Green Lantern’s power, though, creativity is only half the story.

Fast forward a year or two from that meeting, and I had a revelation that was a bit less pleasant than the one about writing. In 2019, I finally accepted a truth that had been staring me in the face for a long time: I needed help managing my mental health.

I’ve always had social anxiety; I find it difficult to meet new people or speak in public. That problem had been slowly getting worse over the years, and when I started seeing a therapist, it became clear that anxiety had been ruling my life in other ways, too.

“No matter how bad things get, something good is out there, just over the horizon.”

- Green Lantern, Hal Jordan

What I’ve learned through therapy is that I have an anxiety disorder. I worry about things… all the time. I have for as long as I can remember. I worry about whether or not I’ll have enough money to pay my bills; I worry that a minor health problem is really just a symptom of some terminal disease; heck, when my wife runs to the store, I worry that she’ll get into a fatal car crash on her way home. In one way or another, I am always afraid.

As a child, I thought Green Lantern’s ring was powered by creativity. As an adult, with enough money to actually collect and read comics about the character, I learned that this isn’t the case. Green Lantern constructs require creativity from their user, but creativity itself isn’t the fuel; the ring runs on willpower and courage.

When a new Green Lantern is chosen, they’re inducted into the Corps with a specific phrase: “You have the ability to overcome great fear.”

The two most iconic Green Lanterns bear that out in obvious ways: Hal Jordan is a daredevil ace pilot, while John Stewart is a former Marine. These are men who have faced down situations scarier than anything I’ve ever dreamed of. I get scared when the traffic is busier than I’d like--how could I ever see myself as a Green Lantern?

The answer lies in a character named Jessica Cruz.

Jessica Cruz was introduced in 2014 in the pages of Geoff Johns’s Justice League (though she had made a brief cameo sometime before that in Green Lantern). She is a woman who, after a traumatic experience, has become an agoraphobe. As of her first appearance, she hasn’t left her apartment in three years.

Jessica is sought out by the Ring of Volthoom--a twisted version of the Green Lantern ring that uses its wielder’s fear to power itself. Jessica is chosen by the ring because she is afraid all the time, but over the course of Justice League, she manages to rein in her fear a bit and prevent the ring from overpowering her. Eventually, the ring is destroyed and Jessica receives an actual Green Lantern ring, becoming a member of the Green Lantern Corps.

“I used to be scared all the time. I hid away, too frightened to do anything. Be around anyone. Too afraid of the whole world.”

- Green Lantern, Jessica Cruz

Here’s the interesting thing, though: throughout all of this--and throughout her tenure as a Green Lantern--Jessica suffers from an anxiety disorder, much like the one I myself have.

The ring doesn’t ‘fix it.’ She doesn’t learn a valuable lesson about bravery and leave behind her anxiety to become a fearless superhero. She still struggles with anxiety; it continues to be a part of her narrative, even after she’s able to go outside and meet new people without having a panic attack.

One of my favorite Jessica-centric issues is Green Lanterns #15. In it, Jessica--who has been a Lantern for quite some time by now--has a panic attack during a superhero mission. Afterward, her partner--the Green Lantern Simon Baz--says that he thought she was “over this.” That she’d “gotten better.”

“I don’t ‘get better’ from this! I fight anxiety every day. It’s the biggest battle I have,” a frustrated Cruz explains. It’s a line that resonated with me when the book came out and still feels powerful to me today. It’s a situation I think a lot of people with anxiety can relate to: friends and family not understanding that just because you’ve had a few good days doesn’t mean your struggle is over.

Jessica Cruz reframed a lot of the Green Lantern narrative for me. Like me, Jessica Cruz is afraid a lot. She’s not afraid of the same kinds of things Hal Jordan and John Stewart have faced down; those are things I can’t relate to, and neither can Jess. She’s afraid of getting up in the morning and going outside. She’s afraid of applying for new jobs and meeting new people.

“I fight anxiety every day. It’s the biggest battle I have,”

- Green Lantern, Jessica Cruz

But she fights through that fear. She sees a therapist; she lets her friends support her when times are tough; she tries to give herself grace and understanding.

She also has a wonderful, transformative moment of self-expression through her ring that touches me. Throughout the first arc of the Green Lanterns title that she starred in, she’s unable to make a construct with her ring. She keeps trying to make something simple: a boxing glove, for instance. The kind of thing that Green Lantern would make on Super Friends.

When she’s finally able to make a construct at the climax of the arc, it’s not a boxing glove; it’s a unique, flowing, organic form, completely unlike anything we’ve seen a Lantern make before. Her response isn’t excitement that she’s just saved the day; it’s awe at the fact that she has created something, and that thing is beautiful.

“When I put on this ring, I wasn't planning on keeping it. I was afraid to even use it. I was so scared of the damage I might cause with this kind of power... I couldn't imagine how much good I could do.”

- Green Lantern, Jessica Cruz

She doesn’t succeed by aping what we’ve seen other Lanterns do in the past. She succeeds by finding something deep inside herself and letting it out--by making something that only she could make. That’s something I strive for, too.

Earlier, I mentioned that phrase that Green Lantern rings always use for new recruits: “You have the ability to overcome great fear.” When I first started picking up the comics, that felt oddly disheartening to me. I felt like I didn’t have ‘great’ fears, and I certainly wasn’t good at overcoming them.

Jessica Cruz showed me that I was wrong. Any fear can be a great fear if you let it control you--but we’re all capable of overcoming them. The path looks different for everyone; for me, therapy was the first step toward overcoming my fear. Like Jessica, I still struggle every day… but these days, I usually win.

Next time you’re feeling anxious or afraid, remember the message of the ring. It isn’t some unattainable ideal, it’s an affirmation that we all need to hear sometimes:

You have the ability to overcome great fear.

Author:

Ethan McIntyre is a writer and podcaster with a deep love of comic books, horror movies, and giant robots. You can find him on his blog, Roll With It, or on Twitter @RollWithItBlog, where he discusses nerdy topics like tabletop games and the weird skull bear from the film Annihilation.