Warning: Spoilers for Green Lantern #6 ahead!
DC Comics recently offered a way to clear up the confusion of having multiple heroes named "Green Lantern." While there are a handful of heroes who stick out as the “definitive” Green Lantern, the name is technically just a title given to any member of the Green Lantern Corps. If the Green Lantern books aren’t focused on one or two protagonists, it can get a little hard to distinguish one Green Lantern from the others, especially for newer readers.
The Green Lantern Corps is currently in shambles. Following a bombing of Oa that left the Central Power Battery destroyed, almost all the Green Lanterns were left without working Power Rings. The only Lanterns with working power rings are Jo Mullein, Hal Jordan, and Keli Quintela, (or, in Keli's case, a power gauntlet). Meanwhile, Lanterns such as Simon Baz and John Stewart keep fighting without their rings, some like Kyle Rayner and Guy Gardner are missing in action, and Jessica Cruz is looking for a new way to protect the universe by joining Sinestro's Yellow Lantern Corps.
In the midst of this particularly chaotic period, Green Lantern #6, written by Geoffrey Thorne and pencilled by Tom Raney and Marco Santucci, uses unique codenames to mitigate the Emerald Knights' naming confusions. Keli, the newest Green Lantern, is already often called Teen Lantern, but in this issue, Simon and Jo get some new names as well. At the beginning, Jo is in conversation with the United Order, who refers to Simon as “Broken Lantern,” since the Oa attack left his ring destroyed and his right arm injured. Jo is also later referred to by Sinestro as “Last Lantern,” in reference to how her self-charging power ring makes her one of the only Lanterns able to serve the way they usually do.
The names roll well off the tongue and give the reader a good sense of what the Lanterns’ places in the Corps are right now. Simon personally takes offense to his, but it is evocative of his current situation and the mechanical devices he now uses to stay in action. Jo’s is especially good, in how it reflects her determination to lead the Green Lantern Corps.
The issue, however, is that these aren’t really “codenames”– they’re simple descriptors and nicknames mentioned in an off-hand fashion. And there’s no telling whether or not they’ll become permanent. Jo may not be the “Last Lantern” very long, and isn’t the only Emerald Knight with a power ring right now anyway. And if Simon's arm recovers and/or he gets a new power ring, it wouldn’t necessarily make sense to call him “Broken Lantern.”
Still, it is a nice thought to create ways to differentiate the Green Lanterns aside from their legal names. These new nicknames could be great for making characters more recognizable within team books like the current Green Lantern series, but also for titling solo books. A book titled The Last Lantern would probably be more memorable than something like Jo Mullein: Green Lantern, and this could give each Green Lantern more staying power. If the codenames become popular, perhaps in time similar names will be assigned to the rest of the Green Lantern Corps.