The renegade Guardian whose curiosity shattered the universe into a multiverse.

Krona

Krona was a Guardian who asked the forbidden question. On ancient Maltus, Oan science held one absolute taboo: never look back at the beginning of the universe. Krona built a machine to do exactly that — and when he pierced the veil of creation, the feedback shattered the single universe into the infinite multiverse and unleashed evil itself into reality. His fellow Oans punished him by dissolving his body into pure energy, condemned to drift the cosmos forever. The legend of his crime is what drove the Oans to become the Guardians of the Universe in the first place.

Krona returned again and again — restored through Alan Scott’s mystical ring, allied with Nekron, manifesting as Entropy itself — but his masterpiece came in Brightest Day (2010–11). Capturing the emotional entities, Krona possessed the six remaining Guardians and turned the Corps’ own masters against it, igniting the War of the Green Lanterns (2011). For one terrible arc, the villains weren’t invading Oa — they were Oa.

His end is one of Hal Jordan’s defining moments. In Green Lantern (vol. 4) #67 (2011), Hal turned his ring on Krona and killed him — something Guardian fail-safes were supposed to make impossible. Hal’s will simply overrode them. Atrocitus claimed the body. Krona’s story is the Guardians’ story in miniature: curiosity curdled into catastrophe, and a bill that came due ten billion years late.

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Krona possessing Simon Baz in Green Lantern Corps (2025) #8. Pencils by Fernando Pasarin, inks by Oclair Albert, colors by Arif Prianto. Artwork source & details.