Absolute Green Lantern: Hal and the meaning of chaotic action

Absolute Green Lantern: Hal and the meaning of chaotic action There is a reason I wouldn't treat the first color explanation as the final word on everything Absolute Green Lantern is doing. Issue twelve goes back to “chaotic action” and asks what we actually mean by that. Until this point, Hal's connection to the black power has been frightening and destructive. It's easy to hear Qard, hear chaotic action, and decide the definition begins and ends with violence. But Hal starts separating the idea from the way it's been twisted. He talks about action without thought. That could become violence, hate, cruelty, or blind obedience. It could also be something else. Something like love. What matters to me is what he does with that realization. He recognizes that somebody is trapped inside Obsidian. Jo is focused on fighting the thing attacking them, while Hal is trying to reach the person forced into it. His power manifests in magenta as he frees Todd Rice. I'm being specific about the color because I don't want to invent a new chart the comic hasn't given us. The magenta manifestation is there. The connection to love is stated. That doesn't automatically give us permission to announce a formally named fifth Oan level or import every rule from another continuity's emotional spectrum. What we do have is Hal finding another way to express something that had previously been treated as inherently destructive. He stops approaching the situation as something he has to defeat and reaches for the person who needs help. After everything the Black Hand has done around him, that is a pretty substantial change. And it complicates the hierarchy in a useful way. Knowing the name of a level doesn't mean we've exhausted what it can mean, especially when the people teaching those meanings have their own assumptions about power, restraint, and understanding.