Black Lantern Corps

Within the Blackest Night narrative, the Black Lantern Corps is powered by a primordial darkness that existed before creation; in that story it is said this darkness was banished at the dawn of time by the white light of creation. That primordial darkness fights back in the present by animating black power rings that reanimate the dead as Black Lanterns. The initial human agent and avatar associated with the Corps is Black Hand; a Guardian (Scar) is involved in the creation/deployment of the first black ring and the Black Central Power Battery functions as the Corps' power source. The Corps' plan culminates in filling a visible black power meter that enables the summoning of the death-force Nekron.

Members present as corporeal revenants—reanimated dead resembling intelligent zombies (the source describes them as resembling 'intelligent zombies or jiangshi'). They bear black power rings and are connected to a Black Central Power Battery; individual Black Lanterns are physically present and can be mutilated (a narrative example shows Black Hand exhuming Bruce Wayne's corpse and removing his skull). The comics depict black, lantern-shaped iconography tied to their power mechanics.

Black rings descend across the universe to reanimate deceased individuals as Black Lanterns; selection of targets is determined by the rings' preference for reviving those whose return will have strong emotional impact on the living ('the black rings aren't about who's dead; the black rings are about who's alive'). Reanimated Black Lanterns retain personalities calibrated to maximize emotional torment for the living and actively seek out those who will be most affected. A mechanical/depicted power feedback exists in which each time a Black Lantern removes a victim's heart a black, lantern-shaped indicator shows an increasing power percentage (increments of 0.1 percent), feeding a global power reserve that can be used to summon Nekron. Ultimately, the Corps functions as an agent of the pre-creation darkness, seeking to extinguish life and the white light of creation; narrative countermeasures involve restoring the white light by combining all seven lights of the emotional spectrum or via Hal Jordan merging with the Life Entity to create White Lantern power that frees reanimated heroes from Nekron's control.