Green Lanterns: Godhead is a three-month long Green Lantern crossover event that happened in December 2014 and ended in February 2015. This story begins in New Gods: Godhead, and goes through Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: New Guardians, Red Lanterns, Sinestro, before concluding in Green Lantern Annual #3.
Still recovering from the aftermath of Lights Out, the Lanterns run afoul with the New Gods of New Genesis, who have sensed a changed in the nature of the Source thanks to the assumed dead Kyle Rayner and found that the Life Equation has entered the universe.
Highfather decides to try to find and capture a ring from each Lantern Corp to access the Life Equation and use it as a a weapon to fight against Darkseid, sending forth his troops to take the rings for his plans. Fearing that the various Lantern Corps will destroy the universe with power he only deems his kind worthy of using, Highfather sends his New Gods to eliminate the Lantern Corps and ready his forces for the final battle with Darkseid. This time the Lanterns must band together to confront the Gods.
Godhead contains examples of:
- Affably Evil: Highfather comes off as this, a stern but well-meaning tyrant whose obsession with stopping a greater evil causes him to go off the deep-end. In the end, he realizes how far he's fallen and decides to give up and atone.
- Ax-Crazy: Orion is show to be this much to the chagrin of Highfather who is weary of Orion's Leeroy Jenkins antics. Uggha of the Council of Eight is even worse, having gleefully slaughtered billions under order of Highfather and simpy taking any excuse to kill.
- Badass Boast: Black Hand does this to Hal after agreeing to fight the New Gods, boasting how his power over death eventually gives him an edge over all that live.Black Hand: What are the living's two main impulses? Procreation and Self-Preservation. The first breathes life into more things that'll be dead someday. The second snatches life from those things sooner. Because you know how the living preserve themselves? By killing the other guy. This war. These New Gods. You'll kill them or they'll kill you. Either way, I win. And whoever survives, eventually they'll die from old age or sickness or another war. And I'll win again. Death always wins. You don't want to admit it. The living never do. But that doesn't change the fact you already belong to me. Like your father. Like every single thing that walks or flies or draws breath. Now show me where I can murder Gods.
- Bat Family Crossover: The fourth major Lantern crossover since the Flashpoint reboot and the second of the post-Geoff Johns era.
- Beyond the Impossible: Black Hand gets a villainous moment of this trope (albeit a crippling one). The Source Wall basically "kills" anything that comes into contact with it, trapping them in the wall forever. When Black Hand realizes it is essentially a graveyard, he up and awakens several dozen of the horrors trapped within the Source Wall to make an undead army of ancient Gods and Monsters to fight the New Gods. All of the New Gods who witness this are absolutely dumbfounded, and keep stating how impossible this should be.
- Despair Event Horizon: Saint Walker hit this trope in the previous arc, having lost faith after the destruction of his Corps and when he uncovered the source of the Blue Lantern Battery, living in despair after Kyle's supposed death. Seeing Kyle again restores his faith and he becomes a Blue Lantern once again to help save the day.
- Circus of Fear: Black Hand makes one of these, featuring the undead corpses of Harry Houdini and Dick Grayson's parents to perform for his amusement.
- Death Seeker: Guy Gardner starts off as this, thrusting himself into danger and fighting battles with inevitable death just so he can go out swinging out of Survivor's Guilt for his actions that led to the deaths of people during his stint as Leader of the Red Lantern Corps.
- Enemy Mine: In part 3, Hal enlists the help of Sinestro and Black Hand to confront the New Gods.
- Evil Is Petty: The Black Hand summons and plays with the corpse of Hal's father just to piss him off.
- Gondor Calls for Aid:
- To fight the New Gods, the Sinestro Corps work with the Green Lantern Corps and Indigo Tribe for added help.
- Hijacking Cthulhu: Sinestro proves to have done this to Parallax, the physical embodiment of the Universe's Fear, through sheer force of will, even allowing it to feed and then staring it down to make it fuse back together with him when the entity gets uppity.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Near the end, Hal confronts Kyle about his recent romantic relationship with Carol and expresses he's okay with it after Kyle's recent actions in saving their lives by nearly sacrificing his own, so long as he treats her well.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": The New Gods show this trope when Black Hand unleashes an army of monsters and gods enslaved in the Source Wall upon New Genesis.
- Mirror Character: Highfather proves to be this to Darkseid in the story. Highfather's intention for the Life Equation ends up being not too different from Darkseid's intention for the Anti-Life Equation since wants to use it to remake the universe in his own image, whether the universe likes it or not. The only difference being Highfather thinks he's the "good guy" and right for doing so. This is finally pointed out in the end which makes Highfather finally have a Jerkass Realization.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Templar Guardians end up messing things up by concealing from Kyle that they were hiding him from the Universe so the Life Equation he now carries within him won't fall into the wrong hands. When he tries to leave them to assist his friends, they try to attack him to stop him from leaving, causing his powers to go out of control and yield to a newly-arrived Highfather who offers to peacefully take the power off his hands. If they had been honest with Kyle from the beginning and not tried to attack him, he wouldn't have gone with the Highfather in the first place.
- No-Sell: None of the Lanterns' attacks have any lasting effect of the New Gods or their forces. It takes a weapon forged from the light of the White Lantern just to cause one even a bit of damage.
- Pet the Dog: Malehedron confronts a female Red Lantern who is tied of constantly fighting, and first lets her enact some Pay Evil unto Evil revenge on some sex slavers and traffickers, then takes the ring freely given, knowing it will kill her and closes her eyes when she willingly Dies Wide Open out of respect.Malehedron: Thank you for this. You deserved better.
- Reality Warping: Whoever wields the Life Equation can do this for all reality, doing so in flashes of blinding white light.
- Reforged into a Minion: Highfather plans to use the Life Equation to do this to the Earth and its superheroes to make it a trap for Darkseid and claim victory. He even gets a habit of doing this to any enemy he sees that happens to show promise as a new recruit. He's called out for this, on the grounds that in trying to defeat Darkseid, he effectively become Darskseid.
- Spanner in the Works: Sinestro sees Hal as this, seeing him as the ultimate solution to any planner or schemer, due to him being so unpredictable and his actions so nonsensical that no one can plan for them and somehow succeeding through his instincts alone. Sinestro outright tells Hal to embrace this trope and avoid his recent tendency to engage in careful planning as a result of his new status as leader of the Green Lantern Corps.
- Taken for Granite: Relic is shown as part of the Source Wall when Kyle pulls him through it in the previous story arc. Metron examines him to find out the secrets of the Lantern Corps.
- Tautological Templar: The New Gods suffer badly from this, especially Highfather, believing since they are enemies of Darkseid, all they do no matter how brutal is righteous, which includes planetary genocide and wiping out free will as badly as Darkseid would - though this last point is what really gets through Highfather when he's confronted wiht it.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: The New Gods fully. Even Highfather has no problem wiping out 86.4 billion lives in a screw-up test to access the Life Equation and simply tells his troops to kill off victims mutated by his actions.
- Uriah Gambit: Sinestro sends the bulk of his forces to confront Bekka, both as a way of thinning out his ranks he feels got too bloated and to test Bekka's skill. The ones that survived he simply blew up to save room for stronger fighters to join his Corps.
- Villain Respect: Sinestro shows to have this for Hal, hating and admiring how his total disregard for plans and even logic ends up letting him beat Sinestro time and again. He also gives Highfather respect for his brutal dictatorship and rigid plans to enforce order not unlike his own.
- Villain Takes an Interest: Sinestro becomes enamored by Bekka of the New Gods after she steals Arkillo's ring and slaughters many of his men, which is pointed out by one of his men and he even goes as far as to recruit her into his Corps
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Highfather has nothing personal against the Lanterns. It's just that he believes that this universe would suffer for eternity if he doesn't wield the power of the White Lantern and turn galaxies into brainwashed ramparts starting with Earth to defeat what he sees as the Ultimate Evil. He demands his son Orion to spare the Green Lanterns if they give up their rings and surrender, and use non-lethal force if they fight to ensure they can be turned to his side later on.
