Hero Profile: GL Mogo

It’s high time for another Theme Week. But, this time, I’m not going to make it easy for you. I leave it up to you, my viewers to figure out what the theme is. Don’t worry, it shouldn’t be that hard.

The next guy is a weird one. A really weird one. The focus of today is Mogo, of the Green Lantern Corps. Mogo is a living world. A planet that thinks, talks, and does a bunch of crazy stuff like controlling the weather on his surface or reshaping his landmasses. Imagine what life on Earth would be like if she worked like that? No one would have to protest to save the rainforest, the planet would just regrow the trees and cause earthquakes until the deforestation stopped. Life would be weird, but simple, wouldn’t it? Let’s get to it.

I feel like the Red Lantern's faith in this plan waned when the
planet with the GL symbol arrived.

Mogo is one of the oldest Green Lanterns, having existed for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. As stated before, Mogo is a sentient planet. Yes that is a thing. It’s not the weirdest thing I’ve come across, to be perfectly honest. Also, while technically genderless, most folks refer to Mogo as a “he” for simplicities sake. He’s not a very social Green Lantern, due to the fact that he’s a gigantic planet. If he ever tried to be as social as one of Earth’s GL’s like say Hal or John, you know saving kittens from trees, fighting costumed looneys or general peacekeeping duties, he’d end up destroying any planet that he got too closed to. A running joke involving Mogo for ages was "Mogo doesn’t socialize.”

For those who don’t know him all that well, Mogo either invites or lures said person to his surface and then creates a holographic projection of a smaller humanoid alien that claims to be “Mogo.” Because of this, his status as a sentient planet is actually a pretty well-kept secret. One of his first adversaries was an alien hunter known as Bolphunga the Unrelenting. Bol hunted the legendary Green Lantern Mogo to a far off world that he assumed Mogo lived on. He spent years exploring the world, checking every plant and animal he came across for a Green Lantern Power Ring. Growing frustrated, Bol set up a bunch of explosive charges and planned on bombing the planet to smoke Mogo out. Imagine his surprise when the planet extinguishes the explosives, and starts yelling at him. Bol then ran off in fear. Bolphunga finally relented. Guess he needs a name change. Not that I blame him. Heck, if I learned the creature I was hunting was an entire planet, you bet I’d be changing vocations. He also had a run in with the another alien bounty hunter, the main man Lobo, to get his… uhm, I’m going to go with foliage, on some alien dolphins. The creatures help keep Mogo’s surface clear of space debris. Lobo’s not the brightest bounty hunter in the universe, and I doubt he ever learned that the being he was dealing with was actually a planet.

Is he the smartest guy on his world, or
the smartest world in the galaxy?

Now, you may be wondering what Mogo’s major duty as a Lantern must be, given that he can’t do the direct “policing” of a typical GL. Mogo is actually the most important Lantern in the Corps. For you see, Mogo has immense telekinetic powers. Yes, the living planet has ESP too. Just roll with it. Mogo uses these telekinetic powers to help direct the various Power Rings in transit to and from Oa, helping the Rings find planets with worthy potential GL’s. The rings can travel on their own, but the sheer size of the universe makes their job all but impossible without Mogo guiding them to the right worlds. Simply put, without Mogo, the GL Corps could not function as they do. Thankfully, he doesn’t have all that much to do, so he can focus his attention on Ring transportation.

Mogo’s life got more complicated when Hal Jordan was possessed by the monster Parallax. Driven insane by the Fear Entity, Hal destroyed the Central Power Battery on Oa, and murdered most of the Guardians of the Universe. Without the Central Power Battery, Lanterns can’t recharge their rings and gradually lose their power. Sensing that his connection to the Central Power Battery was broken, Mogo sought out his old friend Ch’p, an alien squirrel, for help. Unfortunately, Ch’p had died years ago and no one had informed Mogo. While drifting through Ch’p’s old sector of 1014, the last of Mogo’s energy was depleted. Mogo draws a great deal of his power from his Lantern Ring and battery. It doesn’t just fuel his GL powers, it seems to be his primary energy source; it’s essentially his food and water. Without the power of the battery to sustain him, Mogo essentially slipped into a coma.

Mogo might have been doomed to float through space forever, had a group of alien’s not found his unconscious form. To add to Mogo’s misfortune, however, these aliens weren’t the “save the rainforest” type. They proceeded to strip mine Mogo for all of his natural resources. Thankfully, the last GL in the Universe, Kyle Rayner, eventually flew through the area, found Mogo, realized what Mogo was, and used his Power Ring to recharge Mogo’s. When fully awakened, Mogo addressed the settlers and offered to let them stay and provide for them. They said no and abandoned their settlement. Once they were gone, Mogo told Kyle that he was glad they left, and that he’d planned on giving them bad weather for an unspecified amount of time as payback for their pollution. Mogo’s a kind giant, but don’t mess with him. A short time later, the Green Lantern Corps was revived, and Mogo took over as the main trainer, and training ground, for new GL’s. Mogo finally starts to socialize.

Not a lot of variety in his design, is
there?

A few years later, the Blackest Night event occurred. In it, the zombie Black Lantern Corps was formed and the undead Lantern’s waged war against the living. The undead horde proved to be a most formidable foe, given their regenerative abilities coupled with their Black Lantern Rings. It was during this crisis that Mogo became the GL’s MVP, well, more so then he already was. He became the storage yard for any Lantern-less Power Rings, to ensure that no rookie Green Lantern was killed in the fight with the Black Lanterns, and then he became the medical center, protecting the injured GLs and their allies. After a few weeks of this, Mogo had enough. He travelled to Oa during a Black Lantern attack. Mogo flew into the swarm of attacking Black Lanterns and increased his gravity. The zombies were pulled down onto Mogo’s surface. Mogo made the surface where they struck like quicksand and sucked them downward into his very core. The Zombies were trapped in Mogo’s core by gravity, their undead bodies being destroyed faster than they could regenerate. Mogo simply states “They will burn, for all eternity,” when asked what is going to happen to them. To reiterate, to not mess with Mogo. After this event, Mogo returned to his duties of training recruits. I’m willing to bet he prefers socializing with the new recruits than being the big war hero.

Mogo has the standard Green Lantern abilities; energy shield projection, hard-light projections, and universal language translation. He doesn’t utilize the “flight” ability of the ring, obviously. Hard to fly around your planet when you are your own planet. But he does use the rings powers to travel through space faster than the speed of light. Mogo is as aware of what happens on his surface as you are to what happens to your face. He can manipulate his surface, changing the weather, his oceans or his landmasses however he sees fit. If he ever get's bored of his scenery, he can knock down a few mountains, raise a few more, lower his sea level and so on. He can communicate with anyone on or near his surface. I’m unsure if this is pure telepathy or not, being that the versions of Mogo I’ve seen, his voice is like an Earthquake. Deep, gravelly, and literally shaking the ground beneath the feet of whoever he’s talking to. When he’s showing his Corps Pride, he reorganizes his foliage around his equator to form the standard GL symbol. Mogo draws most of the energy he needs from his Ring and GL Power Battery. He’s more depended on it that most Lanterns. If Hal’s ring ever cuts out, he loses his superpowers. If Mogo’s ring power cuts out, he passes out. Kind of inconvenient.

Mogo has appeared only a handful of times in DC Media. It’s kind of understandable that they use him sparingly. People are willing to put up with a lot of weirdness in Comic Book stories, but I could see a living planet putting a lot of people off. That and it’s hard to show a lot of characterization for a planet.

Not sure where Mogo keeps his ring. Does it
just orbit around his core?

There was an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, “The Eyes of Despero,” where Mogo appeared. In it, the powerful alien tyrant Despero attacks the Green Lantern Corps and brainwashes most of the GL’s. Hal Jordan seemingly destroys himself and the Lanterns to protect the universe from Despero’s slave army. His ring travels to Earth, collects Batman and brings him to Oa. Once he freed the three Lanterns in the brig, Guy Gardner, Sinestro, and G’Nort, they chase after Despero. The alien fights them off, and makes a cryptic remark about getting the last GL. The group then has the disturbing revelation that he’s going after Mogo. Once on Mogo, Despero uses his powers to take control, reshaping the planet’s surface into his own horrid likeness. Batman battles Despero, while Guy fights the traitorous Sinestro, and the idiot G’Nort goes into to drain Mogo’s battery. After several idiotic renditions of the Oath, G’Nort gets it right, drains Mogo’s battery, which resets Mogo’s mind. Mogo knocks Despero into deep space and thanks his rescuers.

He was a recurring character on Green Lantern: The Animated Series. His first episode was “Lost Planet.” Hal and his crew come across a planet seemingly doomed by an impending asteroid impact. They detect life signs, and more importantly the ring signature of a fallen comrade. They go down to investigate, and they find several aliens stranded on the rock. Through the course of the episode, we learn that they are all criminals, ranging from implied murderers, tech thieves, and even one former dictator. In the final moments of the episode, Hal realizes that the reason the GL Ring won’t go back to Oa is because it found its new host. The ring makes it pretty easy when it attempts to burrow into Mogo’s surface. Hal quickly drills to the planet’s core and tosses the ring inside. Mogo is instantly energized and blows the Asteroid into ash. He thanks Hal and co and swears to be as great a Lantern as he can be. In a later episode he helps a friendly alien named Saint Walker discover a new source of power, the Blue Lantern. In the mid-season finale, Mogo and Saint Walker arrive to help the GL Kilowag fight off the Red Lantern invasion. Three guys verse an army, odds are against you. Three guys verse an army and one of the guys is a planet, odds are very much in your favor.

Mogo’s run in with Bolphunga the Unrelenting is retold in the direct-to-video movie Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. The movie has several short stories featuring one or more GLs. These include Mogo, Kilowag, and Abin Sur. The story follows my earlier description of the encounter with Bol almost perfectly.

Mogo is one of the most unique characters I’ve come across. Living worlds aren’t anything new in the world of Comics, but Mogo is, to my knowledge, one of the originals and one of the best spins on the idea. He’s immensely powerful, but his early stories do seem to highlight that Mogo is a very lonely being. It must be hard when the smartest creature anywhere near you is yourself. While he can’t do a lot of the same tasks as your typical Lantern, he is still perhaps the most important Lantern. Being the guy that is essentially in charge of recruitment does that. He is the colossal Green Lantern, the strangely powerful, and incredibly lonely, Green Lantern Mogo. Next time, Hate’s Avatar, Atrocitus of the Red Lantern. 

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