Nekron

Oh fuck, L@@K! It's NEKRON, and he's forcing his way into the DC Universe through some kind of huge inter-dimensional space vag...

"Nekron? Who dat?" I hear the imaginary audience in my head cry.

"Ha!" I reply "Why, he's the latest D list villain to be dredged up by that cheeky Geoff Johns chap."

It's true chums. Mr Johns has recently revealed that this obscure DC character is the big bad boss behind the whole Blackest Night palaver. Yup, hard on the heels of The Black Hand, Johns is hitting us up with yet another awemungus reimagining of a not-so-classic bad guy.

Nekron's made a few appearances down the years, but his big moment (and first appearance) came in the pages of Tales of The Green Lantern Corps #1 - #3 back in 1981. This curious three-parter takes us back some ten billion years to a time when the DCU had just formed and all was peaceful. On the planet Oa, the immortal race that will eventually become the guardians spend their working days doing worthy science stuff...

and their weekends playing catch with giant crystal D&D dice style beach balls...

It's a nice life which goes on for yonks, until one rotten apple spoils everything...

All very Old Testament. Indeed, the moral of this tale is that looking for answers to life's big questions is a really bad idea. Hmmm.

Anyway, to cut a long story short the fella in the panel above is called Krona, and by prying into the origin of the universe, he unwittingly unleashes evil upon the cosmos. People start killing each other Cain and Abel style, leaving the Oans with little choice but to drop their beach balls and figure out how to restore peace to the Universe. To this end, they fire Krona off into space and form the Green Lantern Corps. Yay!

Years later Krona reemerges, gets beat down by the guardians and fired into eternity again, which is where Nekron comes in...

anyway, blah-de-blah, Nekron wants to take over the living universe and turns Krona into a super-powered space zombie complete with an army of alien undead. They bust on the Green Lanterns and the guardians. Nekron is all set to take over everything, when Hal Jordan breaks into his dimension and resurrects all the dead Green Lanterns to fuck Nekron up...

Krona and his space zombies are forced back into the huge minge in the sky...

allowing the Guardians to glue it shut with their green laser goo...

Thus imprisoning Nekron and his undead army forever. Or so they think...

So there you have it, a brief Nekron lesson. If you want to read more about the chap behind The Black Lantern Corps, the entirety of his origin story is reprinted in the trade paperback collection Tales of The Green Lantern Corps.

Story originally printed in Tales of The Green Lantern Corps #1 - #3, May-July 1981.