The Last Ring

The story

When Hal Jordan fell — when the grief of Coast City broke him and he tore through the Corps as Parallax — the Guardians spent their last breaths pouring everything they had left into one survivor: Ganthet. Then they died, and the Central Power Battery went dark, and three billion years of Green Lanterns ended in a single night.

Ganthet carried the last power ring to Earth. He found a struggling freelance artist in Los Angeles named Kyle Rayner — a young man with no training, no Corps, no idea what a Green Lantern even was — and offered him the ring with five words that defined an era: "You will have to do."

It was the strangest choosing in Corps history. Kyle wasn't fearless; he was afraid, and he knew it. But Ganthet had learned something the other Guardians never did: the ability to feel fear and overcome it made Kyle stronger, not weaker — and immune to the thing that had destroyed Hal. The last ring found the one bearer Parallax couldn't touch.

Kyle Rayner debuted in Green Lantern vol. 3 #48 (January 1994, Marz/Banks), at the climax of Emerald Twilight. He would carry the franchise alone for a decade — the Torchbearer, the last Green Lantern, the one who rebuilt everything from a single ring.

Key figures

Where to read

Green Lantern vol. 3 #48–50 (1994) — Emerald Twilight.

Green Lantern (1990) #50 — interior excerpt from “Emerald Twilight Part Three: The Future”. Darryl Banks (interior pencils); Romeo Tanghal (interior inks); Steve Mattsson (interior colors); Albert De Guzman (interior lettering). Artwork source & details.

← Back to in-universe history