The first being to wield a power ring — and the reason the Guardians fear their own history.

Volthoom, the First Lantern

In the beginning, there was Volthoom. A scientist of Earth-15 in the 31st century, Volthoom and his mother discovered the emotional electromagnetic spectrum — the invisible light of feeling that suffuses the universe — and built the Travel Lantern, a device that could cross time and dimensions. Volthoom journeyed ten billion years into the past, to the Maltus of the young Guardians, and together they forged the very first power ring. Then Volthoom claimed it for himself, and the power broke his mind.

What followed is the original sin of the Green Lantern mythos. The maddened First Lantern slaughtered thousands of Guardians before the first seven Green Lanterns — wielding rings shattered from his own Travel Lantern — tore the ring from him and sealed him in the Chamber of Shadows (the full story). For ten billion years the Guardians told no one he existed. They built an entire Corps on the grave of what they’d done to him.

Volthoom returned in the Wrath of the First Lantern (2013), freed by the Guardians’ own desperation, and took his revenge the slow way: he destroyed Korugar, unmade Sinestro’s life piece by piece, and fed on the Corps’ fear. It took Sinestro — wielding green and yellow together — to finally kill him. Volthoom’s tragedy is that he was right about one thing: the Guardians’ power was built on his suffering, and they buried the evidence for ten billion years.

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