Appa Ali Apsa

Kudos to Ryan DeMare, who recognized in the last scenes of the Legends of Tomorrow chapter of Crisis on Infinite Earths archive footage from the 2011 Green Lantern movie, that it’s supposed to act as a teaser for the announced Green Lantern Corps tv series. There are far too many Green Lanterns to identify in the shot, but on the other hand we know the formation of the Guardians of the Universe in the movie, and therefore the identity of the ones portrayed in the episode. Four of them you can already find here (just click on the Green Lantern (2011) category to find them), and we’ll discover together the remaining four starting with the maddest and meanest of them all: Appa Ali Apsa, the rogue Guardian who’d give Pennywise a run for his money in terms of hairstyle and attitude. Let’s take a look.

Appa Ali Apsa was a timeless, immortal being born on Malthus, an ageless planet at the center of the universe. Along with his brothers (and later sisters), he formed the Guardians of the Universe to guard over peace and justice in the newborn universe, ashamed by the existential threat put in motion by one of their own, Krona, whose hubris had risked to doom existence as a whole. Over the millennia, Appa and his brethren formed intergalactic police forces to protect and serve the billions of inhabited planets born after the Big Bang, first the cybernetic Manhunters, and then the Green Lanterns, empowered by Ion, the cosmic entity incarnating willpower, the green light of the emotional spectrum. The Guardians believed they were doing everything right, until a human from planet Earth, a hero who had renamed himself Green Arrow, accused them of having grown too distant and detached from the mortals they had sworn to protect, failing to comprehend life in its true meaning. Appa Ali Apsa was particularly impressed by such words, and with permission of his brethren he assumed human form, choosing to accompany Green Arrow and his friend Green Lantern in a road trip through the United States of America, so that he would have been able to “learn” about life. Nicknamed Old Timer by his fellow travelers, who found his real name too difficult to remember, Appa moved from city to city with Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan, and not only he learnt a lot about their short and finite existences, but he also became attached to them, befriending them. When he used his cosmic powers to save Jordan’s life, though, the other Guardians intervened, condemning him for being “tainted” by emotion, and stripping him of his immortality and powers… not that he regretted this much: not a Guardian anymore, he could now travel the universe to keep learning about mortals, extending his road trip beyond any possible border.

When Krona’s actions finally brought forth their consequences, and the Anti-Monitor nearly destroyed the Multiverse, Appa Ali Apsa was reintegrated in the Guardians of the Universe to do his part. He fought and won, but despite this the Central Power Battery on Oa was destroyed. The other Guardians mated with their old companions, the Zamarons, and left the universe, but Appa decided to remain behind, the solitary guardian of Oa, custodian of what used to be the central planet of the Green Lantern Corps. Solitude, though, slowly eroded his mind, and Appa eventually went mad; a Green Lantern, Priest, tried to help him, but when he refused to merge with Appa to quell his solitude, the ex Guardian killed him in cold blood. Not wanting to be alone anymore, Appa Ali Apsa used his powers to teleport from all the places he had visited in the galaxies the cities he had liked the most, merging them into one huge megalopolis on Oa, transforming the planet into what he called Mosaic World. Cities and peoples from all corners of the universe were forcefully teleported on Oa, where they were subjected to the volatile mood of the one who was by now known as the Mad Guardian. Of course, among the cities transported to Mosaic World Appa couldn’t neglect the ones he had started his travel with, so he summoned also an American city… and along with it, the three Green Lanterns who were now protecting planet Earth: John Stewart, Guy Gardner, and his friend Hal Jordan. The three Lanterns tried to reason with him, but the Guardian’s psyche was impossible to reach, and he reacted violently. The trio joined forces to subdue him, and for an instant they believed they could do it, but Appa was on a whole different level from them, and he subdued them. Then, the impossible happened: the Guardians of the Universe came back to New Earth, entering the new-formed reality as a vengeful army: now, in front of the deranged Appa, stood the entire might of old Oa… not that this was a reason enough for him to stop fighting.

Appa Ali Apsa is quite unique among the Guardians of the Universe, emotionally attached to mortals and happy to learn about their uses, their lives and their feelings, believing absolute wisdom can be obtained only by embracing all possible experiences. As a Guardian of the Universe, his powers defy reality itself: he’s an immortal conduit to an infinite amount of energy, that he uses as he pleases, with telepathy, telekinesis, flight, teleportation, and even reality-bending psionic powers. Driven mad by solitude, Appa Ali Apsa is now a deranged tyrant, a violent monarch who rules over a patchwork world built to cure his loneliness: exposing himself to emotions brought him over the edge, in an unfortunately one-way path that turned him into a threat to life itself.