The Speedforce
The concept wasn't invented until the mid 1990s, to help 'explain' the powers of the Flash.
Do we need that? Should we have explain Elongated Man's powers through a Stretchy Force?
Like a lot of things in comics, there are cool concepts that one writer creates, the next writer elaborates on, and it keeps going until what was a cool concept gets bloated and overwrought from its own mass of continuity.
Like, there is simultaneously a Speed Force, a Negative Speed Force, a Still Force (which might also be the Speed Force), and two under fundamental Forces (Strength, Sage). And the Speed Force is part of the Seven Forces of the Universe, whose counterpart is the Seven Hidden Energies of Creation...
Elaborate metaphysics and cosmology can work REALLY WELL as setting material, as long as things are more-or-less consistent and the writing is good. But comics isn't all top-class writing, there's a lot of potboiler stuff that adds complication without substance, and it usually ends up a muddle.
Like, part of the advantage of the Speed Force is that when they introduced it, they also introduced Max Mercury, a character whose approach to speed was much more zen and got away from specific chemicals, lightning, and science fiction explanations - and that worked.
They were introduced about 20 years ago, and enlarged the mythology enormously. Now you can have internecine battles galore. One idea is that the farther from the center a color is (Green being the center), the easier it is to use, but the more control that emotion has over the user.
The color spectrum started off with Geoff Johns harkening back to Sinestro's yellow power ring and then expanding out from there. Folks may argue about the execution, but the basic idea was interesting. And now there are white lanterns, black lanterns, and ultraviolet lanterns.
It is a neat idea, but its creeped. Now Green Lanterns, which were lone patrolmen in vast reaches of space, and just one more person with a sci--fi gun. Angry people now have ring guns, even people who give us hope have essentially sci-fi ring guns. If everyone is super, no one is.
I mean, the Green Lanterns were basically an adaptation of the Lensmen/Galactic Patrol by E. E. "Doc" Smith. There's nothing completely new under the sun. The problem with most of the Corps is that they didn't have anything to do. The Green Lanterns' duties were vague, but they helped people.
