Green Lantern Body Paint Cosplay Gives Jessica Cruz the Spotlight DC Won’t

Jessica Cruz gets the spotlight in an awesome new Green Lantern body paint cosplay, giving the Rebirth-era star some of the focus she’s been lacking in the comics. Cruz and her Green Lantern Corps partner Simon Baz headlined DC’s Green Lanterns: Rebirth, but as DC has refocused on classic Lantern Hal Jordan and awesome newcomer Sojourner “Jo” Mullein in the Infinite Frontier comic era, Cruz has appeared far less, relegated to a slow-burn storyline that has seen her join the villainous Sinestro Corps as a fear-inspiring yellow lantern.

Cruz was introduced in 2014’s Justice League #30, originally becoming a knock-off version of Green Lantern when the alt-reality villain Power Ring was killed and the evil entity within his ring chose her as its new host. Thankfully, she was able to overcome the entity’s influence, displaying a level of willpower that ironically made her eligible for a genuine Green Lantern power ring. Shockingly, Jessica was actually the first canonical human woman to become a Green Lantern, joining a list that already included a blue whale, a sentient mathematical equation, and Daffy Duck.

In a new body paint cosplay, artist Melissa Croft depicts Jessica Cruz, including a VFX video recreating the Green Lantern’s powers. An artist who often paints characters from TV, movies, games, and comics, Croft’s breadth of focus takes in characters as mainstream as Wonder Woman to those as obscure as Superman’s hypothetical daughter Lara Lane-Kent from the Injustice franchise. Croft recently shared her Jessica Cruz on Instagram, noting that it’s the third time she’s painted the character, with the first being seven years ago.

Jessica Cruz is beloved by fans for her tenacity and complexity. Targeted by the mob after witnessing criminal activity, Jessica’s friends were killed while she barely escaped, and she developed intense anxiety. Later, her lantern – the source of her Green Lantern powers – was fused with that of Simon Baz by Hal Jordan, who sought to force the two to work together effectively. Cruz and Baz developed a strong friendship, but the recent destruction of the Central Power Battery depowered them both, leaving much of the Corps scattered, many dead, and the galaxy unprotected. After being attacked by a team of Yellow Lanterns, Cruz was acknowledged for her ability to instill great fear in others, and opted to join the Sinestro Corps. But while the group is traditionally evil, Cruz did help Teen Lantern Keli Quintela escape the wrath of Sinestro, so it’s possible she’s either undercover or else utilizing their power to protect innocents only until the Green Lanterns are once again an option.

The Green Lantern Corps is a huge organisation, and so characters are always being shuffled in and out of focus. Currently, Blue & Gold and Human Target are giving fans their fill of Guy Gardner, while Green Lantern is focusing more on Mullein and Jordan, while granting Simon Baz new powers as a sort of Iron Man/Green Lantern hybrid. Hopefully, Cruz will soon move back into focus, as not only is she a fan-favorite character whose stories remain some of Green Lantern‘s most celebrated comics, but her time within the Sinestro Corps is a thrilling set-up that could justify a series all on its own. Until then, Melissa Croft’s Jessica Cruz cosplay is an awesome reminder of why this particular Green Lantern‘s glory days need to return soon.

Source: Melissa Croft (1, 2)

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Robert Wood
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Robert Wood is a comics editor for Screen Rant and the author of ‘The False Elephant (and 99 Other Unreasonably Short Stories).’ He received his Master’s in English Literature from Lancaster University, and now happily spends his days applying it to Daredevil and the Hulk.

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