Whatever happened to Star Sapphire Miri Riam?

How could DC comics create someone so utterly adorable and then drop her like a hot potato? Miri Riam was one of the funnest new characters to come out of the Green Lantern series in the past few years, a character with a lot of layers and a lot of potential to be a cool character. But after going to all the trouble to introduce her and build her up, DC hasn’t done squat with this manic pixie dream girl in the DCnU reboot. Why the heck not?

She’s adorable! And pink!

There are a lot of multi-colored Lanterns these days. Green Lanterns, Blue Lanterns, Red Lanterns, Orange Lanterns, and there have been a ton of new characters introduced alongside these different colors. Miri Riam was one of my favorites, but for some reason, DC doesn’t want to use her anymore, despite at least one series dedicated entirely to showcasing the various colored Lanterns. So where is Miri Riam? Why isn’t she filling our hearts with love anymore?

Who is she?

To understand Miri Riam, you’ve first got to understand the Star Sapphire. To understand the Star Sapphire, you’ve first got to understand Green Lantern. This should be fun.

If you haven’t seen the movie, the Green Lantern Corps is an intergalactic group of space cops who use green Power Rings to police the cosmos. The Power Rings are fueled by willpower, and if you are a very strong-willed person, then you could be chosen as a Green Lantern. There are hundreds of members of the Green Lantern Corps, and the one starring in most of the comic books is Hal Jordan of Earth. He’s a pretty cool guy. Green Lantern is usually one of the second-tier superheroes at DC Comics, nowhere near as popular as Superman or Batman. But then along came a writer named Geoff Johns who had a pretty simple but brilliant idea: what if Lanterns came in other colors?

Green Lantern had been around for so long that everybody took the word ‘green’ for granted. But not Johns. When he started writing the Green Lantern comic, he started introducing all new colors. His idea was that all of the colors are attached to a certain emotional state. If green represents willpower, then yellow could represent fear, red could represent rage, blue could represent hope, and so on and so forth. And he came up with new Lanterns for each color in the rainbow.

Also adorable!

But Johns didn’t just create these new Lanterns wholesale and expect the readers to accept them. He was more creative than that. Johns looked back through the history of Green Lantern comics and found a bunch of old characters and concepts that he could plug into his new vision. For example, Green Lantern’s arch enemy, the villainous Sinestro, had once upon a time used a yellow Power Ring. So Johns decided that Sinestro would be the first Yellow Lantern, and that he would build his own Sinestro Corps based around fear. This proved to be incredibly popular with the fans.

If you’ve ever wondered why Green Lantern got a movie in 2011 instead of more well-known superheroes like Wonder Woman or the Flash, here is your answer. Johns’ ideas were so beloved by the fans that Green Lantern’s popularity skyrocketed. There are currently four different comics being published today based on the Green Lantern Corps and Johns’ ideas, and Geoff Johns himself was promoted Chief Creative Officer at DC Comics. Not bad for a guy who started out writing Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E.

So anyway, Johns is building his multi-colored Lanterns and he finds another old Green Lantern villain called Star Sapphire. This villain was based around the idea that the enemies of the Green Lanterns would use their own wives and girlfriends against them. So the Star Sapphire was an evil alien force that took control of Hal Jordan’s girlfriend Carol, and tried to use her to kill the Hal. Johns decided that, as twisted as it may be, the Star Sapphire represented love. So he took the one Star Sapphire and turned her into a whole Star Sapphire Corps, with many different women getting pink power rings to promote the power of love.

Hot space babes in skimpy outfits. Comics, everybody!

Johns went on to create the Red Lantern Corps, the Blue Lantern Corps, the Indigo Tribe, the Black Lanterns, and even Larfleeze, the Orange Lantern of greed.

And with each of these new Corps, he and the other writers at DC needed to create new characters to fill them.

Which finally brings us to Miri Riam, one of the brand new Star Sapphires. Up to this point, nobody could be sure if the Star Sapphires were heroes or villains. Clearly the classic Star Sapphire was a villain, but the new Star Sapphire Corps weren’t so bad. All they wanted to do was spread and promote love throughout the universe. How bad could that be?

Follow your dreams, neon pegasus

Miri was introduced in Green Lantern Corps #29 in 2008, by writer Peter Tomasi. Miri was a blue-skinned alien and a newly wed, and she and her husband were in a spaceship on their way to their honeymoon. Because that’s something aliens do too, apparently. Unfortunately, the villainous Mongul decided to rob them of their supplies, killing Miri’s husband in the process. Her heart was broken, and the universe heard her plea. Miri was found by a Star Sapphire Power Ring and was indicted into their Corps as someone who knew great love. She was a cute character with a great personality. And clearly, Miri Riam was no villain. She just wanted to help people, and help she did.

Miri was quickly pulled into a battle between the Green Lanterns and the Sinestro Corps, where she proved that being a champion of love is not just about punching the bad guys. Miri helped saved the day, but at the same time, she had mercy for the Sinestro Corps members and helped them find love as well. Miri was cheerful and friendly no matter who she was dealing with. She also showed everyone the true power of love when she brought one of the Green Lanterns back to life, fueled only by the love of his girlfriend.

She’s a love-necromancer

Miri didn’t appear much after that and only had a small role in The Blackest Night storyline. She was trotted out one last time before the big reboot, where she showed up trying to act like a bad guy as a ploy to get the Green Lantern and his girlfriend back together. It didn’t work. Then the DC reboot came along in the fall of 2011 and both the Green Lantern and the Star Sapphire corps came through relatively unchanged. In fact, the Star Sapphire Corps played a big role in the latest issue of Green Lantern: New Guardians.

But where was Miri Riam?

Why should you care?

Miri Riam was too adorable  to disappear forever. She’s a fun and friendly character in a universe full of wicked villains. Comic books need more characters like her. They need characters who are good people, who are optimistic and see the best in everyone. Plus she’s the perfect manic pixie dream girl character. Smart, cute, funny and very pretty, Miri is the sort of space babe you wouldn’t be afraid to take home to meet your parents.

Total cutie

The Star Sapphire Corps are still a big part of the Green Lantern comics. And the series Green Lantern: New Guardians is designed specifically to show off all the various multi-colored Lanterns. So why not use Miri Riam? The series has been struggling to put together a core group of colored Lanterns since the very beginning, and Miri would be perfect! She’s new, she’s fresh and she’s got a lot of spirit. Or maybe team her up with Simon Baz in the pages of Green Lantern. He could use some supporting cast members that are different from every other Green Lantern. Use Miri! The Green Lantern franchise needs some cute new blood.