Jade (real name Jennifer-Lynn Hayden) is a fictional character, a superheroine in the DC Comics Universe who first appeared in All-Star Squadron #25 (Sept. 1983). Known affectionately as "Jennie" or "Jen," she is the daughter of Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern. Her mother is Rose Canton, the Golden Age villain known as Thorn. Jennie-Lynn has a twin brother, Todd James Rice, who is the superhero Obsidian.
Along with Obsidian, Jade was a founding member of Infinity, Inc. She has worked with both the Justice League and Justice Society of America, as well as most recently being a member and eventual leader of the Outsiders. She was also a member of the resurrected Green Lantern Corps after being given a spare power ring. She has been romantically linked with Hank King (Brainwave) and with Green Lantern Kyle Rayner. She was the first female Green Lantern from Earth and was ranked 34th in Comics Buyer's Guide's "100 Sexiest Women in Comics" list.
Fictional character biography
Origins
Jade's mother, Rose, was briefly married to Alan Scott, but fled upon conceiving their children, fearing she would harm them. She gave them up for adoption and they were separated. Jennie-Lynn was adopted by a couple in the Milwaukee suburbs. Jennie did not learn she had a twin brother until she was in her late teens. Shortly after she and Todd met, surmising they were the children of Alan Scott, they attempted to join the Justice Society. They were rejected, but joined with other children and protégés of JSA to form Infinity, Inc.
Due to her father's exposure to magical energies, she and her brother were born with metahuman powers, although Jade's only manifested themselves when she was defending herself from being sexually assaulted as a child. Jade's powers greatly resemble her father's: she is able to generate green energy and shape it into constructs according to her will. Jade left her modeling career in California to pursue the field of photography in New York City. She became Kyle Rayner's roommate and the two eventually developed a romantic relationship. She once lost those powers when she fought the Starheart, the source of her powers. Following this, Kyle Rayner gave Jade a spare power ring and battery where she became Earth's first female Green Lantern and a member of the Green Lantern Corps, both objects powered by the green of the emotional spectrum of willpower. Her powers were eventually restored by Rayner during his first, short tenure as the god-like Ion. Her ring eventually passed to John Stewart. She later discovered that she had her mother's plant manipulation powers, when she caused roses to attack a mugger. While on a date with Kyle on an alien world, she told him that her skin actually contains chlorophyll (the source of its green hue) and she can photosynthesize sunlight like a plant.
Her internalized powers function much like those of her father. She can create 'solid-light' constructs out of green energy emitted from the star-mark on her palm, and can fly. She shares his weakness to wood and cellulose, but has no need to periodically recharge her powers. When wearing her power ring, it gives her a similar capability to her internal powers, but requires recharging from her power battery every twenty-four hours. Her ring also has a weakness to the yellow impurity, the color of fear.
When Kyle Rayner left Earth after the violent beating of his friend Terry Berg, Jade opted to come along with him; however, after several missions, Jade decided that she wanted to go back to Earth. Once back she became involved with another man and ended her relationship with Kyle (in that order). She recently served as a member, and eventual leader, of the new Outsiders. Around this time, Jade helped Donna Troy and a collection of Titans alumni in battle against the Titans of Myth.
In Green Lantern: Rebirth, Jade and her father assisted the Guardians of the Universe and the Green Lantern Corps in defeating and imprisoning the parasitic fear entity Parallax.
In Infinite Crisis, Donna Troy led a group of Earth's heroes, including Jade, into space, where they tried to deal with a growing rift in space. The Green Lantern Corps, represented by Kyle Rayner and Kilowog, also responded to this threat.
In the Rann-Thanagar War Infinite Crisis Special, Jen died trying to stop Alexander Luthor, Jr., from tearing the universe into a Multiverse. Her consciousness lingered within her power until her Starheart powers merged with Kyle. This merge awakened the slumbering Ion entity that Kyle unknowingly had within him, and subsequently made him much more powerful.
One Year Later
One year after the Infinite Crisis, Alan Scott lies in a coma after an attack by the Gentleman Ghost. The original Jade appears to him to say goodbye. She grants her father another portion of her green energy, which replaces his lost eye. It had been lost during a Zeta Beam malfunction during the Infinite Crisis.
As part of the "Origins and Omens" backup event, which hints at future events in several DC titles, an image of Jade is shown.
Blackest Night
During the Blackest Night crossover, Jade's remains are reanimated as a member of the Black Lantern Corps after an arrival of a black ring powered by death. Now a soulless undead, Jade attempts to use Kyle's affection for her against him, claiming that his undying love for Jade brought her back. However, Kyle, earlier witnessing the onslaught of the undead Black Lantern Corps on Oa, is painfully aware that the woman present is not truly Jade, but her reanimated corpse. In a rage, he tried to destroy the Black Lantern, as he sees it as an abomination and a disgrace to the memory and remains of a woman he loved. However, Jade recovers and, after capturing him, begins to torment him with the black energy constructs of Alexandra DeWitt, Donna Troy, his mother Moira Rayner, and herself, to remind Kyle of his past failure to save the women who were important to him. Jade and Kyle's battle is interrupted by the arrival of Soranik Natu. Jade and Soranik fight (physically and verbally), with Jade making several rude comments. Eventually, Soranik just punches Jade in the mouth and activates her ring. At that moment, the Black Lantern's rings registered that their power levels had reached one hundred percent. As such, the Black Lanterns were given a new directive: to devour Oa's Central Power Battery. Completely disregarding her opponents, Jade flew off to her objective, with Soranik's hand still in her mouth. All Black Lanterns however meet their ultimate doom with the arrival of Mogo which increases its gravity to such a degree that all of the Black Lanterns, Jade included, are pulled down to its surface and absorbed into its core. The superhot magma within continually burns up the Black Lantern's bodies, keeping them from regenerating their forms. Mogo describes this as, "They will burn, for all eternity."
Return
During the finale of Blackest Night a handful of Black Lanterns are permanently resurrected and restored to their true forms. Jade is among this select group and is shown joyfully embracing and kissing Kyle in Coast City. Writer James Robinson stated that Jade will be a member of his new Justice League roster as part of DC's Brightest Day event.
During the Brightest Day, as Jade is trying to adjust to being among the living once more, she gives her blessing to Kyle and Soranik Natu. She is also shown to have an unknown connection with Deadman, a former ghost who is now a newly appointed White Lantern, who was also resurrected during the Blackest Night event.
Sometime later, Jade is found unconscious inside of a green crystal meteor that crashes in Germany and is found by the Justice League. The green crystal is revealed to be actually the Starheart, the legendary crystal that gave Alan Scott his powers, and by extension, gave Jade her abilities as well. After waking up, Jade reveals that while staying on Oa, the Starheart kidnapped her and brought her to earth in order to find her father. She later uses her abilities to defeat Power Girl after the Starheart drives Power Girl insane, and then decides to help the JLA stop her father after learning that the Starheart has taken control of his body.
Jade joins forces with the JLA and JSA in order to take down the various metahumans under the control of the Starheart while Mr. Terrific searches for a way to weaken its power. After defeating Klarion the Witch Boy, Jade visits her stepmother Molly Mayne, and takes up Alan's old lantern, using it to form a brief connection with Alan; it reveals that he is hiding out on the moon. When Jade charges up her father's lantern, the insignia of the Black Lantern Corps is briefly shown floating behind her. After Starman is captured while breaking into Alan's lunar fortress, Miss Martian is able to get a mental description of his prison, explaining that Alan has incorporated Fourth World technology into his defenses. After Mister Miracle guides the heroes through the defenses, Kyle arrives and meets with the heroes. Jade asks Kyle if he is there to help her father, but he simply scoffs at the notion and states that he has come to kill Alan at the behest of the Guardians of the Universe.
Jade is told by the Entity to help her brother, Obsidian to "balance the darkness" and save their friends from an unidentified threat which was speculated to be Eclipso, as the Entity reveals to Jade her labor, a grinning vision of Eclipso appears behind Jade. Afterward, as Jade tried to rescue her brother from the Starheart's control, both siblings ended fused together, forming an entity with the powers of Jade and Obsidian, all the while in Starheart control. Both siblings attacked the Justice League and the Justice Society until Jade is contacted by the White Light Entity, who reveals Jade's true labor. Jade resisted the Starheart control, trying to balance the darkness inside the both of them. Jade and Obsidian were eventually separated by the Entity so Jade could complete her task; however, Obsidian became paranoid and tried to force Jade to fuse with him once again. Jade managed to prevent the fusion, but at the cost of Obsidian, who was restrained by Kyle in a green bubble and taken far away from Jade. Jade then used her powers to restore her father's Starheart, which was revealed to be the unidentified threat. In the end, Jade is reunited with her father, who returns to normal. As a result of her fusion with Obsidian, Jade is also no longer able to be in close proximity to her brother without risking further threat from the Starheart. Afterwards, Jade remained with the Justice League until the team's dissolution.
Following DC's "The New 52" company-wide reboot in 2011, Alan Scott and family no longer appear in stories featured in DC's main continuity. Instead, Alan Scott is himself reinvented a gay man in the company's Earth-2 comic book series, one of fifty-two divergent realities that branched from the core New Earth reality, which puts Jade existence and her entire history with Kyle Rayner in question.
Powers and abilities
Jade has the same Starheart energy manipulating powers as her father, Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern with the difference that her powers do not come from a ring or lantern, but are channeled through her body (specifically, the star shaped birthmark on her palm). As with all Green Lanterns, she can will green energy constructs to "life" and can use this energy in almost any way possible; the only limitation being her will, imagination and endurance. Of the many things she can do with her powers, the most common uses are shields from bodily harm, flight, flying unaided through space, great speed, and as said earlier, willing constructs to life of any shape and size. She is technically a mutant, having been born with her powers as well as green hued skin, dark green hair, green eyes and the aforementioned star shaped birthmark on her palm. Due to their shared mystical connection with the Starheart, with even the slightest focus, she can sense where either her twin brother or her father is anywhere on Earth at any time. For a time, Jade and her brother shared a telepathic connection, but it is not known at this time if they still do. One of the major distinctions between the Green Lanterns of Oa and herself (and her father) is that the emerald energy she wields is often manifested as green fire surrounding her. Secondly, while regular Green Lanterns have to charge their rings after a time, Jade has access to near unlimited stores of power and has no need to recharge. A third distinction between her and the Green Lantern's power is that while they have a weakness to the color yellow (which now can be overcome with effort), she has the same vulnerability to wood that her father has (In that her power has no effect on anything made of wood).
Jade has also begun to cultivate a recently discovered ability to affect plant life like her mother. She can cause super-accelerated growth and manipulate the movement of most, if not all, plant life. This ability manifested itself later in her life and she has just begun to learn how to properly use this new power.
As a member of the Green Lantern Corps, she previously wields a power ring of her own but its power source is not from Starheart but of an aspect of the emotional spectrum. It gives her a similar capability of her internal powers but requires twenty-four hours of recharge from her power battery. Her ring also has a weakness to the yellow impurity, the color of fear, which requires her to face her phobia first, then overcome it with her willpower.
The black power ring, however, is not like her green one. The ring is a program designed to animate the dead, therefore Jade was not truly in control when she was a Black Lantern.
Other versions
Kingdom Come
In Alex Ross' miniseries Kingdom Come, a now older Jade takes up the mantle of Green Lantern (identified as Green Lantern VI in the endnotes of collected editions) after Kyle Rayner. Jade's efforts, along with the assistance of others, saved herself and her father, among others, when the United Nations dropped a nuclear bomb on the climactic battle.
Tangent Comics
In Tangent Comics, the Earth-9 version of Jade is an Asian woman with the power to turn her tattoos into living dragons.
52
In the final issue of 52, a new Multiverse is revealed, originally consisting of 52 identical realities. Among the parallel realities shown is one designated "Earth-2". As a result of Mister Mind "eating" aspects of this reality, it takes on visual aspects similar to the pre-Crisis Earth-Two, including Jade among other apparent Justice Society of America characters. The names of the characters and the team are not mentioned in the panel in which they appear, but Jade is visually similar to the Jennie-Lynn Hayden incarnation of Jade.
In November 2008, it was disclosed that Earth-2's Jade is still alive, but fatherless - on her world, her father, Green Lantern (Alan Scott) is dead. Jade is a member of the Justice Society Infinity, caused by a merger between the Justice Society of America and Infinity, Inc.
Based on comments by Grant Morrison, this alternate universe is not the pre-Crisis Earth-Two.
Manhunter
In the final arc of Manhunter, which takes place in the future, a new Jade appears, the daughter of Obsidian. This version is an Asian teenager named after her aunt. She appears to have light-based powers and is an active super hero.
Ame-Comi Girls
In the Ame-Comi universe, Jennifer is reimagined as Jade Yifei, a teenager from Beijing, China who is the daughter of a National People's Congress official. Despite being blinded in an accident as a child, she went on become a well known mountain climber. During an attack upon her family, she is chosen by a Green Lantern ring, which greatly enhances her hearing, allowing her to "see" via a set of special headphones, as well as granting her the ability to create energy constructs and changing her skin color to green. Though she possesses the green skin of her original counterpart, the Ame-Comi version of Jade uses a power ring rather than an internal source of energy.
Nicki Jones
In 52 Week 29, a young woman named Nicki Jones is introduced as a member of the new Lex Luthor-owned Infinity, Inc. under the name Jade. A vegetarian graphic arts student from the San Francisco Art Institute, Jones possesses the ability to project glowing vines from her fingertips, the ability to fly, and green energy powers. She debuts at a Thanksgiving parade only to be attacked by Obsidian, who accuses her of trying to steal his sister's legacy.
In 52 Week 40, the members of Infinity, Inc., with the exception of Nicki, Natasha Irons, and the recently deceased Jacob Colby (Skyman), battle Steel and the Teen Titans and are then arrested. She then appears during Week 50 and World War III, alongside the remains of Infinity, Inc. However, the team is too scared to face Black Adam and runs off.
References
External links
- Unofficial Jade (Jennie-Lynn Hayden) profile
- Chronological List of Appearances
