Abin Sur



Origin
Abin Sur was born on the planet Ungara where he was one of two siblings with the other being his sister Arin Sur in the years prior to the 19th Century. As a child, he grew up with his best friend Ruch Ehr and later, by association, his girlfriend Munni Jah. Though Sur was secretly in love with Munni, he never spoke about this matter overtly and instead left his feelings unspoken. During his time on his home-world, he became a history professor and quite skilled as being a teacher as well as a philosopher. In the mid 1860s, his home-world of Ungara came under the threat from a powerful tyrant known as Devos Ungol who went by the name of Traitor. This warlord gathered a large armada which he intended to conquer the stars with Sur's home-world being one of the many planets within its path. However, the Green Lantern Starkaðr of Space Sector 2814 battled the villain which turned the course of the tyrants conquest but was mortally wounded as a result. His Green Lantern Power Ring managed to take his shattered body to the planet Ungara where he intended to choose his successor when he died. This event led to him meeting with Abin Sur and Starkaor's final act before perishing was choosing him as his replacement by providing him with his own Power Ring who deemed Sur as a worthy wielder of the weapon. With the final act done, the former Green Lantern of Space Sector 2814 died and Sur took over his duties by becoming a new member of the Green Lantern Corps who were charged as intergalactic protectors of the cosmos. After becoming a Green Lantern, Abin Sur vowed to seek out the tyrant Traitor and bring the supervillain to justice.

Service as Green Lantern
As a member of the Green Lantern Corps, Sur met and made friends with many of his fellow Corpsmen. Among his friends was the Xudarian Tomar-Re who he considered a good ally. In addition, as part of his service, Abin was assigned with the task of training Thaal Sinestro of Korugar in Space Sector 1417 with the two also forming a close friendship. This was to the point that he even introduced Sinestro to his sister Arin Sur. After several years of tracking down his predecessors killer, Abin Sur learnt that Traitor had stationed himself on the planet Earth during the late 1800s. During that time, Ungol had formed an alliance with a local Human criminal called Bloody Joe Tuscano which he used as a means to gather time in order to replenish his powers. Sur eventually arrived on Earth but by this point, Devos had unleashed what he believed was the ultimate weapon to use against Green Lanterns; gold-tipped bullets. Due to the Yellow Impurity, Power Rings were unable to work against them a Green Lantern which injured the Ungaran. Despite this advantage, Sur had formed his own alliance with a local Human Marshall who went by the name of Henry Lee Jordan. Jordan managed to get Sur to a town where the bullets were removed from his body thus allowing his Power Ring to heal himself. The two later worked together to fight both Bloody Joe and Traitor where Sur destroyed Tuscano's weapons with Traitor distracted to the point that it allowed Abin to entrap the tyrant within a pocket dimension located within his Power Ring.

Another one was the mass murderer known as Tybalt Bak'sar who was responsible for the annihilation of the planet Zapher along with its eight billion inhabitants. Abin Sur was responsible for apprehending the villain and taking him for judgement before the Guardians on Oa where Bak'sar was charged with the terminations of the Zaphers but his own race who were slaves on the planet. Held guilty for his crimes, he was sentenced to a prison world but was sprung loose by an emissary of the Weaponers of Qward who gifted him with weapons for him to get his revenge. Bak'sar escaped with vengeance in his heart and tracked down Abin Sur who was forced to flee to Earth in the 20th Century. During his battle against Bak'sar, the villain attempted to kill Sur but the Martian Manhunter intervened who seemingly disarmed his foe. Surprised that a Ma'ale'candran was still alive, he attempted to get J'Onn J'Onnz assistance though the Martian attacked the Green Lantern as well as he believed Sur had violated the ancient pact between his people and the Guardians which left the Sol system to the defense of the Green Martian race. However, Tybalt Bak'sar attacked the two of them and nearly killed the pair until they worked together. After apprehending Bak'sar, Abin Sur and J'Onn J'Onnz parted on good terms though it was the first as well as the last time they would meet.

During his career, Abin Sur was known to had battled a number of other villains. One of whom that the Guardians of the Universe sent him to combat was Myrwhydden who dominated a world by the use of his magic. Whilst fighting this foe, Sur learnt that the villainous sorcerer needed to utter the words in rhyme in order to cast a spell. Thus, he used his Power Ring to gag his foe and imprisoned him within the Ring itself thus ending his reign of tyranny. In 1928, the Guardians felt that the evil of the Human mobster Al Magone could infect neighboring worlds and thus gave Abin Sur the task of apprehending the villain whereupon he was told to leave the criminal on the timeless Prison Planet. During World War Two, he briefly encountered Starman and Bulletman when the three battled an alien being under the control of Mr. Mind. Another alien villain that he was forced to contend with was the gestalt entity known as Legion that sought vengeance against the Guardians of the Universe for the destruction of his race. At some point during his life, he fathered a son who became known as Amon Sur and a daughter, and also discovered the Indigo light on the planet, Nok during a mission where he and an inhabitant named Natromo forged it into a battery.

Legacy and Successor
In the final days of his life as a Green Lantern, he learned of a passenger ship that crashed on the prison world of Ysmault. Though an Oan edict normally prevented Green Lanterns from venturing to that world, Sur disregarded the order and instead went to its surface to rescue the innocent survivors. Unable to initially locate the crash survivors, he encountered the demonic Qull of the Five Inversions. The demon offered to answer three questions about the future as he was privy to the details of prophecy. Abin Sur was curious and the first question was where the crashed survivors were to which Qull answered which proved correct. After rescuing them, the second question was his own fate to which Qull told him that he would die when his Power Ring would fail him. This unsettled Sur and he asked the fate of the Green Lantern Corps to which Qull told him of the Blackest Night Prophecy despite his comrade Atrocitus telling him not to tell the Ungaran anything. Worried about these portents of doom, Abin Sur became obsessed with learning the source of The Black and even confided what he knew to Sinestro who was worried for his friend. And, again at some point, after learning the secrets of the "Blackest Night", Abin would return to Nok with a mysterious being named Iroque, who also at some point, was allegedly known as his greatest enemy and was responsible for the death of his daughter. Sur would make her become the first member of the Indigo Tribe, where all subsequent members of the Tribe would be selected of the worst psychopaths of their worlds. Abin did it as he had foresaw the danger the Guardians of the Universe would pose once the "Blackest Night" had passed, and sought to find a way to stop the Guardians by changing them due to the impossibility of killing them. Soon, Sur in his fear began to make use of a star-ship rather than his Power Ring and even took Atrocitus on board his ship in order to find the source of The Blackest Night. Once over the planet Earth, his Lantern Energy Constructs that held Atrocitus in place weakened due to Sur suffering from the Parallax Fear Anomaly leading to the demon escaping which caused the ship to crash.

The crash mortally wounded Abin Sur and just as his predecessor had done so, he now sought a replacement from a native of the planet to take over his duties. He also encoded a secret message inside his Power Ring for Sinestro to hear when the time was right. The emerald light began searching for a worthy candidate to wield its power which settled on reporter Clark Kent. However, Kent was actually the last Kryptonian Kal-El and as Sur desired a native of the planet - the Power Ring wiped his memory of the event. Afterwards, it narrowed its choices between two Human candidates - Hal Jordan who was a descendant of Henry Lee Jordan and Guy Gardner. However, Sur was nearing death by this point and thus the Power Ring selected the nearest candidate namely Jordan who worked at Ferris Aircraft. Passing the Power Ring to the Human, he gave the Human the important duty of continuing his mission as the new Green Lantern of Space Sector 2814.

In the aftermath, the vessel that Abin Sur had piloted was abducted by the United States government who intended to study the alien technology. Among those sent to oversee the project was Hector Hammond who was exposed to the vessels power source and developed remarkable mental abilities. Years afterwards, the ship itself would be partially reverse engineered in order to create a next generation fighter jet for use by the United States. Meanwhile, Abin Sur's body was buried on Earth by Hal Jordan in memory of him. Meanwhile, his friend Sinestro became responsible for training Abin's successor and the two battled the demon Atrocitus as well as succeeded in returning him to his prison on Ysmault. However, in time, Sinestro began to impose his own type of order through tyranny on his home-world of Korugar leading to him being labelled as a renegade whereupon he was exiled into the Anti-Matter Universe. Sinestro eventually became a constant nemesis to the Green Lantern Corps as well as to his former pupil; Hal Jordan.

Life After Death
Following his demise, the wizard Myrwhydden finally managed to discover a means to free himself from Sur's Power Ring and used a facsimile of Abin Sur to attack Hal Jordan but he was eventually defeated by the Human. Furthermore, though dead, word of his demise had not reach Ungara and the inhabitants believed Jordan to had been the murderer of their champion. When he visited Sur's home-world, he was attacked by the Ungarans who were unaware that a comet was going to collide with their world. Only when Jordan revealed the truth did they apologize and he worked to save the planet. Upon learning of Sur's death, the Ungarans fragmented as a society with civil war erupting between the various states until one side developed a plasma satellite for use against their rival nation. Another faction attempted to defuse the weapon but instead it detonated thus sending Ungara off its axis by less than one hundredth of a degree with over a hundred million Ungarans dying in the wake of the resulted earth quakes whilst others drowned by tidal waves that impacted three of the planetary continents. It eventually settled in its new orbit but was now too far from its sun leading to even greater problems for the native inhabitants who sent a military ship to get the aid of Green Lantern. He, unaware of the Ungaran plight, did not meet with them until the Guardians gave him the command to do so. However, alone, even he was unable to move the planet alone but the arrival of Green Lantern Arisia of Graxos IV solved the problem as the two crystallized Ungara's moon thus allowing the light from the sun to be refracted from its surface onto Ungara itself which left the planet in a constant state of pleasant spring. The ramifications of Sur's death on his home-world thus finally ended by the aid of Hal Jordan.

However, a new threat emerged to the Green Lantern Corps namely from Nekron the Lord of the Unliving who was aided by the renegade Maltusian Krona. Together, they intended to create a rift between the un-dead dimension and the living world by slaying the immortal Oans. The battle turned against the Green Lantern Corps with the Guardians dying in the struggle until Hal Jordan journeyed into the Realm of the Dead in order to instigate its inhabitants to turn against Nekron. Among those that joined the battle was the soul of Abin Sur who helped send Jordan through the rift before it could close. Afterwards, Hal Jordan's home city of Coast City was destroyed leading to him going insane with grief and being possessed by the Parallax Entity who destroyed the Corps as well as the Oans. His actions led to the events of Zero Hour as Jordan attempted to alter history that had ramifications on the time-stream. This led to first the dead Darkstar Vardan Radz being sent into the future who was quickly followed by Abin Sur as well. The two were sent falling from the time-stream into the present during a time when Krona as the cosmic being Entropy began attacking Alaxos. Joining forces with Radz and the Darkstars Donna Troy, Carla White and Mo Douglas. Though Entropy was too powerful for them, Radz and Sur decided to try to create a black hole in order to destroy the effects of the being leading to the three disappearing from this point in the time-stream.

In the afterlife, Abin Sur assisted Swamp Thing (Alec Holland) in rescuing his daughter Tefé from Hell. It was later revealed that part of his very own soul was being tortured in Hell while his spirit acting as a companion to Hal Jordan during his brief stint as the Spectre. Eventually, he freed himself from Hell and assisted Jordan on several spiritual adventures and metaphysical dilemmas. Eventually, Abin Sur engaged in the Karamm-Jeev Descent, an Ungaran form of reincarnation, and was reborn as Lagzia, the daughter of Sur's old friends Ruch Ehr and Munni Jah.

Spaceship
In the Silver Age comics, as the abilities of Hal Jordan's power ring began to show it was capable of practical long range space travel, that raised the question of why Abin Sur needed a ship. However, Hal Jordan himself later adopted a spaceship.

Pre-Crisis Explanation
In the story "Earth's First Green Lantern," Jordan revealed that he wondered that himself and asked his ring to explain. The ring told the story of how Abin Sur discovered a parasitic energy being species that fed on sapient beings' "I-factor," a substance that enabled inventiveness, attacking civilizations and stalling their development. Sur captured them to stop their destruction, but one of their number had escaped and vowed to free his brethren. To do so, he tracked down Sur's planet and created a disaster to force him to appear to stop it. Since Sur did not mask himself, the being recognized him immediately and followed him to his home. As Sur neglected to charge his ring before going to sleep, he was unable to stop the being from taking control of him.

With the being in control of his body and about to force him to go and free his fellows, Sur tricked the being into thinking that he would not be able to do so because the ring would be low on power after the trip there while in reality the ring's charge is purely time based. The being decided to have Sur take a ship to the destination, but before leaving, Sur managed to get a hold of his invisible power battery. On the ship, Sur piloted the ship and waited until he moved into a green colored planetary radiation belt which allowed Sur to charge his ring without the being noticing. Thus armed, Sur battled and captured the being. However during the fight, the ship wandered into Earth's radiation belt (which was apparently yellow colored in the Earth-One universe). With his ring useless, Sur lost control of the battered ship and crashed. Mortally wounded, Sur sought out his replacement and drew Jordan to him. According to Jordan, this account prompted him to keep a secret identity as a security precaution, to carefully navigate around Earth's radiation belts and presumably make a point of usually keeping his ring charged to prevent similar sneak attacks.

Post-Crisis Explanation
In Tales of The Green Lantern Corps Annual #2, writer Alan Moore pointed out an odd discrepancy in Hal Jordan's origin story: why would Abin Sur, capable of flying through space on his own, need a spaceship? He answered this question with a story of how the hero once vistited Ysmault, a prison planet for an ancient race of demons, the Empire of Tears, vanquished millennia ago by the Oans. While there, Abin Sur met a demon named Qull of the Five Inversions, a humanoid with a gaping mouth in his chest and a tongue-shaped head, crucified by three glowing spikes topped with the symbol of the Green Lantern Corps. This unholy messiah predicted the hero would die when his power ring ran out of energy at a critical moment, while he was fighting an opponent or unprotected in hard vacuum. Abin Sur, worried by this prophecy, began using a starship for interstellar voyages, as an additional safeguard. A decade later, fleeing his enemy, his spaceship collided with a girdle of yellow radiation around Earth that rendered his starship and his power-ring useless within moments. Had he relied on his ring alone, he realized, he might have tested the planet's magnetosphere before rashly entering it. Thus, while Legion may have wounded him, it could be argued that it was Qull that was actually responsible for Abin Sur's death, having sown the seeds of doubt in the Green Lantern's mind.

Secret Origins
In the Secret Origins story, Qull did indeed tell Abin Sur the prophecy of his death after his ring failed him. However, the circumstances for his going to earth were different. Along with Qull were the other 4 of the 5 Inversions, including its leader, Atrocitus. Atrocitus continuously warned Qull against telling the Lantern everything they knew. Qull eventually told Sur about the Blackkest Night Prophecy, and Sur took Atrocitus with him on a mission to locate the being that would prove instrumental in bringing about "The Black". Atrocitus directed him to Earth, imprisoned in the back of the ship Sur was driving, behind a wall of willpower energy. Atrocitus talked to Sur, taunting him and reminding him of Qull's prophecy about him. Qull turned out to be correct. The Lantern's doubt in his power ring weakened his barrier construct, allowing Atrocitus to break out and deal Sur a mortal wound. The ship crashed to Earth, where Atrocitus escaped to the planet's surface to find the source of "The Black", and Abin Sur ordered his ring to find a replacement.

The Blackest Night
A black ring reaches Ungara and bids him to rise. A flashback of Sur's past reveals that he once had a sister named Arin, whom Sinestro once had a romance before her death due to unknown circumstances. Indigo-1, leader of the Indigo Tribe claimed to have known Abin before his death. Abin and Arin then went to Korugar to confront Hal Jordan and Sinestro, but were defeated by the combined efforts of Jordan, Sinestro, Indigo-1, and Carol Ferris, who joined their lights together to destroy the black rings. Before dying, Abin stated that he recognized Indigo-1. Also, the Indigo Tribe oath is revealed, and includes a line which mentions a lantern and Abin Sur's name. Due to the Indigo Tribe oath being spoken in a unintelligible language, no further details are known at that time.

During Krona's takeover of the Green Lantern Corps, Sinestro and other ring-wielders are briefly trapped in the Book of the Black and experience visions of their pre-ring pasts, with Sinestro encountering a pre-Tribe Indigo-1, locked in a prison and trying to find out where Abin Sur has imprisoned her, but Sinestro departs to focus on his own escape rather than try to rescue her, leaving her history, back then, a continued mystery.

Powers

 * Indomitable Will

Abilities

 * Coming Soon

Former Equipment

 * Green Lantern Power Battery
 * Black Lantern Power Battery

Former Weapons

 * Green Lantern Power Ring
 * Black Lantern Power Ring