The Lanterns have no souls to manipulate. So the gem can’t use that tactic. Nor those it losses the power of the Emotional spectrum to disrupt the rings. So that’s out.
Any of the heavy hitters alone would take the majority against Thanos. Together. I don’t see how Thanos survives.
The Black lanterns definitely have souls- hence why Diana and some of the others were able to change the color of their rings, and come back to life.
Anyway's, Thanos wins unless Nekron is included. Nekron has no soul, and would overpower Thanos easily. If Nekron isn't here, then Thanos could just control the black lanterns, and/or destroy their souls.
But yeah, Nekron would stomp Thanos w/the soul gem. He might even be able to take on IG Thanos, considering it took the entire white lantern corps to stop him, and even the Anti-monitor was beaten down by him.
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"Why is everybody so ****ing stupid?"- Kim Jong Il, Team America.
With a track record like Thanos, I find myself baffled when people claim that he'd be beaten, especially by meat puppets. There's a very good chance that these Black Lantern's may become his pawns before any fight began. He was seen controlling the dead, not to mention that every female version of Death loves him. Look at Hela for example.
Also props to OP for giving Thanos an item uniquely ill suited against black lanterns. That said, the situation is still salvageable if we use the 70s classic version of the soul gem. Warlock has used it to manipulate matter and dead corpses in fact.
That's also wrong. The Black lanterns were revived, but their minds were under control. The ones who were already dead when possessed couldn't change to another color, but they could still resist the possession. We saw this with Jessie Quick and her father, as he willingly ran into the Black lantern EMT to save her, sacrificing himself.
There were limited instances of phenomena like this, but it definitely exhibits at least a small amount of independence from the influence of Nekron. It was even mentioned, iirc, that the souls were being manipulated, not just the bodies. This is how the Spectre was turned into a black lantern.
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"Why is everybody so ****ing stupid?"- Kim Jong Il, Team America.
Uh, that's not what happened in those scans. Like, at all. In fact, Larfleeze and Sinestro BOTH explicitly claim to be on the verge of making the "kill-shot", before Hal stops them.
Also, this Superman was basically under mind control- meaning he still had a soul, and Thanos could control him, along with all of the other living BL's.
Regardless, Nekron himself would crush Thanos akin to me crushing a gnat with a newspaper.
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"Why is everybody so ****ing stupid?"- Kim Jong Il, Team America.
It is possible. Thanos has a unique affinity for Death in all of it's forms from what his history has shown at least.
He has also been able to summon the dead, and control them. My point was just to say that any hard claims being made on a subject as controversial as Thanos' interactions with the dead may be the exact opposite of what a few have expected.
It's like putting Hank Henshaw up against Galactus' Punisher's and expecting him to get destroyed without taking into account that he is a high level Technopath. Just saying.
Why would that matter to Thanos? Are the BL's dead or alive? Thanos is a cosmically charged mystical being, and has used this power in the past to usurp powers well above his station. Prep or no prep. With the Soul Gem, he could take whichever BL to Soul world that he so chose. I really think that he's being undersold here. No one is talking about him facing off against Nekron, but at the same time this does not negate his ability to control the dead. Being hit by the BL's may just feel good to Thanos as well. There's just a whole mess of things that needs to be proven in order to say that Thanos becomes the victim in this case.