Keli Quintela
Keli Quintela is a female comic superhero who features in DC Comics.
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Biography
Keli Quintela was a female human born who lived in La Paz in Bolivia. A month ago, the 11 year old Keli was searching the junkyard with a boy named Marcos where they were looking for items of value that they could sell for money. The pair were present at the scene where they witnessed a man killing an alien seemingly dressed in the attire of a Green Lantern. Afraid for their lives, the two would flee the area with Keli going home and using her sister's phone to search the internet about Green Lanterns. She would later return to the junkyard where Quintela found the dying alien named Iorl. Before he expired, he gave her a gauntlet like device to Keli telling her to make the world her own before throwing the device in fire but expired before he could reveal anything else to her. Due to his clothes, Keli came to believe she had been deputised to be a member of the Green Lantern Corps. Unable to sleep the night, the next day she went to Marcos to find out what he knew about the incident though he claimed to had known nothing except that bad people were involved. She then revealed the gauntlet to him where he believed that it was a hack of a Green Lantern Power Ring and tapped into the same source of energy. Marcos believed that Keli should surrender the device to a Green Lantern but she refused as she intended to learn how to use it and leave La Paz to meet with superheroes. Tapping into the gauntlet, she was able to fly from La Paz where she decided to travel to Metropolis. (Young Justice v3 #9)
Operating under the moniker Teen Lantern, she traveled to the United States to utilize her newly acquired cosmic assets to defend human populations. She arrived in the city just when it came under attack from invaders from the extradimensional realm of Gemworld. While navigating the skies over Metropolis, she intercepted a catastrophic containment breach where a localized horde of monstrous entities was actively terrorizing civilians. She deployed to the active combat zone, using her hotwired gauntlet to construct an expansive, protective hard-light barrier that shielded the population, successfully subduing the vanguard and prompting her to formally ally with the teenage superhero team Young Justice. Teen Lantern manifested a mech suit construct and saved Wonder Girl Cassie Sandsmark from a fall. Joining the heroes, she helped fight the attackers off only to be dragged into the portal that the enemy were using to escape back to their world. (Young Justice v3 #1) Teen Lantern later arrived on Gemworld on-top of Jinny Hex's pickup truck where she joined the other members of Young Justice as they joined Princess Amethyst and prepared to battle Dark Opal. (Young Justice v3 #2) Whilst in Gemworld, they came to find Superboy Conner Kent who had been stranded there for sometime. (Young Justice v3 #3) Teen Lantern and the heroes would then gather to fight Dark Opal. (Young Justice v3 #4) The villains power threatened to rip Gemworld apart with Young Justice looking to stop him. (Young Justice v3 #5) Gathering themselves, Keli came to reveal her name to the heroes and the nature of her powers. In the final battle, they were able to defeat Dark Opal and end his tyranny by bringing him before the courts of Gemworld. The nobles were all seemingly thankful to Young Justice for their aid and agreed to send them back to Earth. (Young Justice v3 #6)
However, they ended up being sent to a wrong Earth in the Multiverse and went through a series of alternate worlds in the search for their reality. On Earth-42, they encountered the Lil' League where their version of Cyborg attempted to send them back to their Earth. However, they ended up on Earth-26 where they encountered Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew who used the Multiverse Mallet to send the young heroes home. Despite this attempt simply led to them end up on Earth-22 where Superman and his Justice League who at first attempted to arrest Young Justice. They came to convince the heroes to help send them home with Doctor Fate agreeing to use magic to accomplish this task. (Young Justice v3 #7) The team though would end up on yet another Earth with this being Earth-3 where the counterparts of heroes were supervillains on this world. In this time, they came to battle their doppelgangers in Gotham City at a time when the world was bereft of the leadership of the ruling Crime Syndicate of Amerika. (Young Justice v3 #8) Keli defeats her evil counterpart Hack and then helps Jinny escape the attack of Jinny's own evil doppelganger and Drake, the evil Red Robin of Earth 3. Asking themselves where are the others, they don't know Tim and Bart are in the company of Earth 3's Batwoman, also known as Stephanie Brown, a thing that makes Tim both happy and nervous. Still, she had a map of the Multiverse given to her by a dying Earth 3 version of Doctor Fate. Young Justice can finally go home, but Tim Drake wants to help Earth 3 in giving these evil versions of his new team a lesson. (Young Justice v3 #9)
Keli maintained her defensive parameters alongside her displaced teammates as they navigated the volatile, reality-warping transit streams of the multiverse. While her ally Jinny Hex unpacked her family legacy via an extensive retrospective loop, Keli remained integrated within the primary vanguard's defensive posture. The reconnaissance baseline quickly shattered into a hostile battlefield engagement when the squad was ambushed by the Crime Syndicate’s brutal, mirror-universe counterparts—including Amaxon Thunder, Hex, and a rogue variant of Tim Drake. As the unpolished heroes fought to prevent total systemic subjugation by their Earth-3 doubles, Keli calibrated her unapproved emerald energy arrays to counter the lethal offensive, attempting to maintain structural coordination with Cassie Sandsmark and Bart Allen despite her profound lack of official Green Lantern training. (Young Justice v3 #10) Quintela initiated an immediate tactical extraction script along with her multiversal teammates to escape the oppressive, mirror-universe containment grid of Earth-3. Weaponising her hacked alien technology, the eleven-year-old Teen Lantern deployed her unauthorized emerald energy arrays to physically shield the team as they broke through the Crime Syndicate's defensive counter-measures. Her stability parameters shifted rapidly when the chaotic transit streams of the multiverse suddenly re-anchored the group inside a high-tech S.T.A.R. Labs facility on a parallel Earth. Emerging directly into the private living quarters of the cosmic-powered youth Naomi McDuffie, Keli and the unpolished Young Justice vanguard collapsed from intense multiversal fatigue. Securing a temporary domestic sanctuary inside Naomi's home, Keli calibrated her gauntlet's energy baseline during a necessary overnight rest cycle, navigating a brief moment of civilian peace before the cosmic instabilities of Naomi's home world threatened to completely upend their newly secured extraction path back to their native universe. (Young Justice v3 #11)
Overview
Personality and attributes
In appearance, Keli Quintela was an 11 year old female human Latina female teenager with a slender build and warm brown skin. She possessed a natural, highly distinct aesthetic trait in the form of short, spiky jet-black hair styled with structural front bangs, paired with prominent large dark eyes and highly expressive facial features. Her specialized combat attire reflected an improvised, modern blend of casual urban streetwear and extraterrestrial military hardware. This wardrobe featured a casual red short-sleeved t-shirt layered over a dark long-sleeved undershirt, paired with loose-fitting blue denim jeans heavily reinforced by utility patching. Secured prominently over her right forearm and hand, she wore a massive, high-tech metallic gauntlet composed of polished silver and glowing emerald-green alien alloys that extended past her elbow. Her footwear consisted of practical, thick-soled dark athletic sneakers suitable for rapid urban aesthetics. She did not utilize traditional military plate armor, heavy ballistic helmets, or concealment masks, maintaining a highly polished, youthful, and tech-themed civilian-warrior presentation throughout her introduction to the team. (Young Justice v3 #6) As a superhero, she decided to take the name Teen Lantern for herself. (Young Justice v3 #1)
After gaining her Power Battery, she looked to become a hero and travelled to the Hall of Justice to see if she could get an internship to operate as a superhero. (Young Justice v3 #6)
At her home in La Paz, she was friends with a boy named Marcos whose mother told him to speak to Keli with more respect. Marcos tended not to talk to many people as he saw bad people everywhere. Even if Marcos did not want Keli to keep it, the girl flew away as soon as she discovered how to use it, determined to meet Superman or Green Lantern himself in Metropolis to ask about what happened her and maybe start a career out of it. (Young Justice v3 #9)
Quintela came to encounter a dying alien being named Iorl who she had believed was a member of the Green Lantern Corps. They came to pass on the alien power gauntlet they were wielding to Keli. (Young Justice v3 #9)
Powers and abilities
Keli Quintela was a human born on Earth with no special inherent powers or abilities. On a basic feats level, her standard human biology provided her with the physical strength, reflexes, and environmental durability standard for an ordinary female teenager who did not engage in advanced physical combat training. However, she was a highly exceptional member of her species due to her profound, genius-level human intellect regarding alien mechanical engineering and digital cryptography. This was until one day she came to acquire an alien gauntlet created by an unknown advanced extraterrestrial being. (Young Justice v3 #9) She came to hack into what she believed to had been a Green Lantern Power Battery and rigged her own way the source energy from within it. Keli was then able to re-program it to do whatever she wanted. (Young Justice v3 #6) Thus, she was given powers similar to the those used by the Green Lanterns. (Young Justice v3 #9)
Similar to a Green Lantern Power Ring, Teen Lantern was able to create green constructs through the power of her mind. With it, she was able to fly or create a mechsuit for herself. The gauntlet was a unique technological asset that enabled her to mimic the capability of an official power ring by drawing raw willpower energy directly from the central power battery on Oa. By using her custom-built electronic hacking rigs, she could manipulate ambient green light currents to project concussive energy blasts, generate impenetrable defensive fields, and manifest massive hard-light constructs without requiring official authorization from the Guardians of the Universe. Additionally, her unique device granted her the capacity for spatial flight, allowing her to navigate complex three-dimensional spaces and project a protective aura capable of insulating her body from extreme kinetic trauma without splitting her absolute strategic focus. (Young Justice v3 #1) Alternatively, she could use it to access information such as finding global news. (Young Justice v3 #7)
Whilst wearing the gauntlet, one could feel a kind of button there but could not see it. Marcos believed that the user controlled it bionetically whereby the skin contact allowed the device to tap into the person's cerebral cortex. Thus, the user was able to direct it with the speed and power of thought. (Young Justice v3 #9)
Notes
- The Keli Quintela Teen Lantern was created by Brian Michael Bendis and Patrick Gleason where she made her first appearance in Young Justice v3 #1 (March, 2019).
Alternate Versions
- In Young Justice v3 #8 (2019), an alternate version of the character named Hack appeared in the Earth-3 reality that existed in a world within the Multiverse. After the Crime Syndicate of America left their world, Hack and various young supervillains came to terrorise the population. Hack and Amaxon Thunder's crew attempted to steal Young Justice's Multiverse Map but were unsuccessful with them being defeated by Young Justice.
Appearances
- Young Justice v3: (2019)
- Green Lantern v6:
External Links
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