Category: Green Lantern

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Showcase presents Green Lantern volume 2


By John Broome, Gardner Fox, Gil Kane & various (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-4012-1264-3

As the Emerald Crusader entered his fourth year (which is how this second superb collection, reprinting issues #18 to 38 of the Silver Age series kicks off) the concept of the superhero was firmly reestablished among the buying public and there was no shortage of gaudily clad competition. The better books survived by having something a little “extra”. With Green Lantern that was primarily the superb scripts of John Broome and Gardner Fox and the astounding drawing of Gil Kane, whose dynamic anatomy and deft page design was maturing with every page he drew, but the concept itself was also a provider of boundless opportunity.

Other heroes had extraterrestrial, other-dimensional and even trans-temporal adventures, but the valiant champion of this series was also a cop: a lawman working for the biggest police force in the entire universe. As such his support team was necessarily composed of some the brightest talents in American comics. Green Lantern #18 (January 1963) led with ‘The World of Perilous Traps!’ by John Broome, regular penciller Gil Kane and inker Joe Giella who teamed to produce another cracking, fast paced thriller featuring the renegade GL Sinestro, whilst Mike Sekowsky penciled Kane’s layouts for the intriguing ‘Green Lantern Vs. Power Ring’ as Broome engineered a startling duel when hobo Bill Baggett took control of the Green Ring, necessitating a literal battle of wills for it power.

Green Lantern #19 saw the return of ultra-nationalist villain Sonar in ‘The Defeat of Green Lantern!’ (Broome, Kane & Giella) a high-energy cosmic duel nicely counter-pointed by the whimsical crime-caper ‘The Trail of the Horse-and-Buggy Bandits!’ by the same team, wherein a little old lady’s crossed phone line led the Emerald Gladiator into conflict with a passel of canny crooks. Issue #20 ‘Parasite Planet Peril!’ by Broome, Kane and Murphy Anderson reunited GL with the Flash in a full-length epic to foil a plot to kidnap human geniuses.

One of the DCU’s greatest menaces debuted in #21’s ‘The Man who Mastered Magnetism’. Broome created a world-beater in the duel-personality villain Doctor Polaris for Kane and Giella to draw, whilst ‘Hal Jordan Betrays Green Lantern!’ is the kind of action-packed, clever puzzle-yarn that Gardner Fox always excelled at, especially with Anderson’s stellar inks to lift the art to a delightful high.

Fox also scripted the return of diabolical futurist villain Hector Hammond in ‘Master of the Power Ring!’ (Giella inks) whilst Broome turned his hand to a human-interest story with the Anderson-inked ‘Dual Masquerade of the Jordan Brothers!’ as GL played matchmaker, trying to convince his future sister-in-law that her intended was in fact Green Lantern!

‘Threat of the Tattooed Man!’ kicked off #23, the first all-Fox scripted issue and the start of Giella’s tenure as sole inker, as the Ring-Slinger tackled a common thief who lucked into the eerie power to animate his skin-ink and ‘The Green Lantern Disasters’ took the hero off-world to rescue missing comrade Xax of Xaos, a insect member of the GL Corps. Issue #25 featured the first appearance of ‘The Shark that Hunted Human Prey!’ (Broome) wherein an atomic accident evolved the ocean’s deadliest predator into a psychic fear-feeder whilst ‘The Strange World Named Green Lantern!’ (Broome again) found the Emerald Crusader trapped on a sentient and lonely planet that craved his constant presence…

Green Lantern #25 featured Fox’s full-length thriller ‘War of the Weapon Wizards!‘ as GL fell foul of the lethally persistent Sonar and his silent partner-in-crime Hector Hammond, whilst Hal Jordan’s girlfriend Carol Ferris once more transformed into an alien queen determined to beat him into marital submission in ‘Star Sapphire unmasks Green Lantern!’– a witty cracker from Fox who also scripted the superb ‘World Within the Power Ring!’ as the hero battled an extraterrestrial sorcerer imprisoned within his ring by his deceased predecessor!

Fox’s super-scientific crime thriller ‘Mystery of the Deserted City!’ led in issue #27 whilst Broome charmed and alarmed with ‘The Amazing Transformation of Horace Tolliver!’, as Hal learned a lesson in who to help – and how. No prizes for guessing who – or what – menace returned in #28’s ‘The Shark Goes on the Prowl Again!’, but big applause if you can solve the puzzle of ‘The House that Fought Green Lantern’, both engaging romps courtesy of writer Fox whilst Broome added to his tally of memorable villain creations with the debut of Black Hand – the Cliché Criminal – who misappropriated a portion of GL’s power in ‘Half a Green Lantern is Better than None!’ as well as scripting a brilliant alien invader tale in ‘This World is Mine!’

This issue, #29, is doubly memorable as not only does it feature a rare – for the times – Justice League cameo (soon to be inevitable – if not interminable – as comics continuity became an unstoppable force in all companies’ output) but also because the incredibly talented Sid Greene became the regular inker.

Issue #30 featured two more Broome tales; the dinosaur attack thriller ‘The Tunnel through Time!’ and a compelling epic of duty and love as Katma Tui, who replaced the renegade Sinestro learned ‘Once a Green Lantern… Always a Green Lantern!’ The same writer also provided the baffling mystery ‘Power Rings for Sale!’ and the tense Jordan Brothers thriller ‘Pay Up – or Blow Up!’ whilst Fox handled all of #32, the tantalizing crime caper ‘Green Lantern’s Wedding Day!’ and the trans-galactic Battle Royale ‘Power Battery Peril!’

Nefarious villain Dr. Light decided to pick off his enemies one by after his defeat in Justice League of America #12 (see Showcase presents Justice League of America volume 1). His attempts in various member’s home titles reached GL with #33, but here too he got a damned good thrashing in ‘Wizard of the Light Wave Weapons!’, whereas the thugs in the back-up yarn, as well as giving artist Gil Kane another excuse to show his love of and facility with movie gangster caricatures, came far to close to ending the Emerald Gladiator’s life in ‘The Disarming of Green Lantern!’

Fox had by this time become lead writer and indeed wrote all the remaining stories in this volume. ‘Three-Way Attack against Green Lantern!’ in #34 was another full-length cosmic extravaganza as Hector Hammond discovered the secrets of the Guardians and launched an all-out assault on our hero, whilst both scripts in #35; costumed villain drama ‘Prisoner of the Golden Mask!’ and brain-swop spy-saga ‘The Eagle Crusader of Earth!’ looked much closer to home for their abundance of thrills, chills and spills.

GL #36 cover-featured the captivatingly bizarre ‘Secret of the Power-Ringed Robot!’ (how can you resist a tale that is tag-lined “I’ve been turned into a robot… and didn’t even know it!”?) and followed that all-action conundrum with the incredible tale of Dorine Clay; a young lady who was the last hope of her race against the machinations of the dread alien Headmen in ‘Green Lantern’s Explosive Week-End!’

Physical combat had been gradually overtaking ring magic in the pages of the series and #27’s ‘The Spies who “Owned” Green Lantern!’ despite being a twist-heavy drama of espionage and intrigue was no exception, whilst the second story ‘The Plot to Conquer the Universe!’ pitted the Emerald Crusader against Evil Star, a foe both immortal and invulnerable, which gave the hero plenty of reasons to lash out in spectacular, eye-popping manner.

Green Lantern teamed with fellow corpsman Tomar Re to battle ‘The Menace of the Atomic Changeling!’ in a brilliant science fiction escapade and the issue (#38 if you’re still counting) as well as this terrific volume concludes with ‘The Elixir of Immortality!’ as criminal mastermind Keith Kenyon absorbed a gold-based serum to become a veritable superman. He might have been immune to Ring Energy (which can’t affect anything yellow, as eny Fule kno) but eventually our hero’s flashing fists brought him low – a fact he never forgot on the many occasions he returned as the merciless master criminal Goldface…

The increasingly vast scope of these tales would become a cornerstone of the greater DC Universe and the incredibly animated, dynamic art of Gil Kane transformed how action comics were drawn. These stories changed comics storytelling forever and they’re still some of the most entertaining and mesmerising reads in all superhero fiction. What more do you need to know…?

© 1963, 1964, 1965, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Crisis on Multiple Earths: The Team-Ups


By Gardner Fox, John Broome & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0470-9

As I’ve mentioned before, I was one of the “Baby Boomer” crowd that grew up with Gardner Fox and John Broome’s tantalisingly slow reintroduction of Golden Age superheroes during the halcyon, eternally summery days of the 1960s. To me those fascinating counterpart crusaders from Earth-Two weren’t vague and distant memories rubber-stamped by parents or older brothers – they were cool, fascinating and enigmatically new. And for some reason the “proper” heroes of Earth-One held them in high regard and treated them with obvious deference…

It all began, naturally enough, in The Flash, flagship title of the Silver Age Revolution. After ushering in the triumphant return of the costumed superhero concept the Scarlet Speedster, with Fox and Broome at the reins, set an unbelievably high standard for superhero adventure in sharp, witty tales of science and imagination, illustrated with captivating style and clean simplicity by Carmine Infantino.

Gardner Fox didn’t write many Flash scripts at this time, but those few he did were all dynamite. None more so than the full-length epic that literally changed the scope of American comics forever. ‘Flash of Two Worlds’ (the Flash #123 September 1961, illustrated by Infantino and Joe Giella) introduced the theory of alternate Earths to the continuity and by extension resulted in the multiversal structure of the DCU, Crisis on Infinite Earths and all the succeeding cosmos-shaking crossover sagas that grew from it. And of course where DC led, others followed…

During a benefit gig Flash (police scientist Barry Allen) accidentally slips into another dimension where he finds that the comic-book hero he based his own superhero identity upon actually exists. Every adventure he had absorbed as an eager child was grim reality to Jay Garrick and his mystery-men comrades on the controversially named Earth-2. Locating his idol Barry convinces the elder to come out of retirement just as three Golden Age villains, Shade, Thinker and the Fiddler make their own wicked comeback… Thus is history made and above all else, ‘Flash of Two Worlds’ is still a great read that can electrify today’s reader.

Fox revisited Earth-2 nine months later in #129’s ‘Double Danger on Earth!’ (inked by Murphy Anderson) as Jay Garrick ventured to Earth-1 to save his own world from a doom comet, only to fall foul of Captain Cold and the Trickster. Another cracking thriller, as well as double Flash action, this tale teasingly reintroduced Justice Society stalwarts Wonder Woman, Atom, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Doctor Mid-Nite and Black Canary. Clearly Editor Schwartz had something in mind…

‘Vengeance of the Immortal Villain!’ from Flash #137 (June 1963, inked by Giella) was the third incredible Earth-2 crossover, and saw the two Flashes unite to defeat 50,000 year old Vandal Savage and save the Justice Society of America: a tale which directly led into the veteran team’s first meeting with the Justice League of America and the start of all those aforementioned “Crisis” epics.

That landmark epic can be found elsewhere (most notably in Crisis on Multiple Earths volume 1, ISBN-13: 978-1-56389-895-2), and this collection continues with the less well-known ‘Invader from the Dark Dimension!’ (Flash #151, March 1964, by Fox, Infantino and Giella), a full-length shocker where the demonic Shade ambitiously attempts to plunder both worlds.

Public approval was decidedly vocal and Editor Julie Schwartz used DC’s try-out magazines to sound out the next step: stories set on Earth-2 with exclusively Golden Age characters.

Showcase #55 saw the initial team-up of Doctor Fate and Hourman as the Justice Society stalwarts battled the monster of Slaughter Swamp when ‘Solomon Grundy Goes on a Rampage!’ Produced by Fox and Anderson, this bombastic yarn even had room for a cameo by Earth-2’s Green Lantern, and the original text page featuring the heroes’ origins is also reproduced here.

Showcase #56 also featured “the Super-Team Supreme” (and by the same creative team supreme) in ‘Perils of the Psycho-Pirate!’ wherein ex-con Roger Hayden (cell-mate of the original JSA villain) steals the magical Masks of Medusa to go on an emotion-controlling crime-spree. Fan-historians should note that this tale is a pivotal antecedent of the landmark Crisis on Infinite Earths (ISBN: 978-1-5638-9750-4) as well as a superbly engaging adventure in its own right. A text feature on the original Psycho-Pirate accompanies the story.

Although getting in late to the Counterpart Collaborations game, the inevitable first teaming of the Hal Jordan and Alan Scott Green Lanterns is one of the best and arguably second-most important story of the entire decade. ‘Secret Origin of the Guardians!’ by John Broome, Gil Kane and Sid Greene (Green Lantern #40, October 1965) introduced the renegade Guardian Krona, revealed the origin of the multiverse, showed how evil entered our universe and described how the immortal Oans took up their self-appointed task of policing the cosmos. It also shows Gil Kane’s paramount ability to stage a superhero fight like no other. This pure comicbook perfection should be considered a prologue to the aforementioned Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Still looking for an Earth-2 concept that would support its own series Schwartz, Fox and Anderson debuted the team of Starman and Black Canary in The Brave and the Bold #61 (September-October 1965), pairing the heroes against the eerily translucent villain the Mist in ‘Mastermind of Menaces!’ This compelling thriller is augmented here by the text feature biography of the Black Canary.

Although not featured in this volume, Schwartz and Fox did finally achieve their ambition to launch a Golden Age hero into his own title. After three Showcase appearances and many guest-shots the Spectre won his own book at the end of 1967, just as the super-hero craze went into a steep decline.

This fabulous volume concludes with a back-up tale from issue #7 (November/December 1968) of that brilliant but ill-fated series. ‘The Hour Hourman Died!’ by Fox, Dick Dillin and Sid Greene, is a dark and clever attempted-murder mystery that packs a book’s worth of tension and action into its nine moody pages and serves as a solid thematic reminder that the golden Silver Age of the 1960s was a creative high point that simply couldn’t last. When you start at the top the only way is down…

Still irresistible and compellingly beautiful after all these years, the stories collected here shaped the American comics industry for decades and are still influencing not only today’s funny-books but also the brilliant animated TV shows and movies that grew from them. These are tales and this is a book you simply must have.

© 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1968, 2005 DC Comics. All rights reserved.

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Green Lantern: Legacy – The Last Will & Testament of Hal Jordan


By Joe Kelly, Brent Anderson & Bill Sienkiewicz, with Ro & Bleyaert (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0365-8

Green Lantern has been a DC star in one form or another since the company’s earliest days, but often that’s led to some rather extreme revamps and odd takes on what seems to be an extremely pliable character with an invaluable shtick – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

In the Silver Age revival, true-blue test pilot Hal Jordan was bequeathed a power ring by a dying officer of an intergalactic police force run by benign, if austere, immortals known as the Guardians of the Universe.

During one of the interminable crises that beset the universe Jordan saw his home town of Coast City vaporised by an alien invader. He went mad, and sought to use his power to undo the carnage, in the process destroying his beloved GL Corps, stealing all the power rings and evolving into the time-bending villain Parallax. A menace to all reality, he redeemed his life and soul by sacrificing himself to reignite Earth’s sun when it was consumed by a monstrous sun-eater.

Whilst he was alive Hal’s best friend and confidante was Thomas Kalmaku, an Inuit flight engineer nicknamed “Pieface.” Although Tom survived the destruction of Coast City, the trauma led to his marriage failing and he climbed into a bottle of booze. Just as he’s fallen as far as its possible to go a lawyer turns up with a legacy left by the dead hero. Bitter and filled with self-loathing, and despite himself, Tom is saddled with a little boy named Martin Jordan who arrived with nothing more than the clothes on his back and a note that says “Fix it.”

Thomas desperately tries to unload Martin but when the Justice League and Green Lantern survivors try to confiscate the child, he realizes that once more he’s being manipulated. There’s something unnatural about the boy, a deadly monster is hunting them both and even the time-traveling Parallax is on their trail.

Just what is the true legacy of Hal Jordan, and who or what has to die to achieve it..?

This convoluted but highly readable sidebar to the epic Green Lantern mythology might deter the casual reader, but the genned-up fan will get a lot of enjoyment out of this bittersweet, action-packed yarn, especially with the ever-impressive Brent Anderson and Bill Sienkiewicz (ably assisted by some innovative colouring and effects from Ro & Bleyaert) in the illustrators’ seats.

© 2002 DC Comics.  All Rights Reserved.

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Green Lantern Corps: Ring Quest


By Peter J.Tomasi, Patrick Gleason & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-116-8

Following on from the bombastic Sinestro Corps War, this volume (collecting Green Lantern Corps issues #19, 20 and 23 through 26) of the space opera/cop procedural drama finds the battered but triumphant interstellar peacekeepers on a deadly clean-up duty.

Dispatched by the Guardians of the Universe to collect or confiscate the deadly yellow power rings of their dead foes, an elite team of GLs is ambushed by the monstrous son of Mongul, a ruthless alien despot who controls one of the most insidious and horrifying weapons in creation. And now he’s started collecting yellow rings and rebuilding the Sinestro Corps…

Glossy and gritty, it’s tension and confrontation all the way in this highly readable thriller, but there’s still room for a few “buddy-movie” moments as Earth Lanterns Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner spend their downtime trying to open a cop-bar on the Guardian’s precinct-planet Oa…

Although this is highly continuity-dependent, determined newcomers will still be able to extract a vast amount of histrionic enjoyment out of this explosive action-blockbuster – and you could always buy the other volumes to get caught up…

© 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Green Lantern: Rebirth

Green Lantern: Rebirth 

By Geoff Johns, Ethan Van Scriver & Prentis Rollins (DC Comics)
ISBN 1845762134

The only certainties in life are Profits and Taxes if you’re a comic fan. If you take your drama seriously – as either reader or creator – there’s never going to be a moment when you can think “Wow, they killed…”, just a time to reset your alarm clock for the return of whichever heroic “Corpse du Jour” is in the crosshairs.

It must be worse for the writer who has to constantly explain not “why” but “how” the latest resurrection occurred. All over the comic universes there must be little cliques of supporting characters, alternatively worshipping these returnees or waiting for the super-zombies to starting eating the brains of the – putatively – living.

Alive again, and no longer merged with the Spectre, a ghostly force charged with gruesomely punishing – some – of The Guilty, Green Lantern must destroy the immortal entity that was secretly responsible for turning him evil and ultimately responsible for his death in the first place. Can he do it? What do you think?

Whining aside, and accepting that what publishers want, publishers get, the return to life of the Hal Jordan Green Lantern and the incipient reformation of the galactic police force he represented is big, bold, brassy and stuffed full of those clever authorial afterthoughts that old fan-boys love. The little voice inside me advising that it’s pointless trying to recreate the past is sure to be drowned out in the welter of glitzy artwork and spectacular cosmic action. This is a very readable book, if you don’t over-think it.

And if it all flops, you can just kill everybody, count to ten and simply start all over again.

© 2004, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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GREEN LANTERN: FEAR ITSELF

Green Lantern: Fear Itself 

By Ron Marz & Brad Parker

(DC Comics)  ISBN 1-56389-310-X

Comics has a rich history of successful character redesigns, and probably none more so than Green Lantern, whose backstory has now become the very fabric of the DC Universe. Therefore an epic tale featuring three generations of Emerald Crusader would seem like a fan’s dream come true.

At the beginning of World War II a team of Nazi occultists break in to a Washington DC museum and release a C’thulu-like monster. After a rampage where it defeats the mighty Justice Society by afflicting them with their deepest fears, only Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, can throw off its attack and ‘destroy’ it.

During the height of the Cold War, test pilot and Green Lantern Hal Jordan thwarts a KGB attempt to retrieve the monster’s remains and inadvertently reactivates it himself. Although aided by the Justice League of America, it ultimately falls to Jordan himself to defeat the beast.

Kyle Rayner is (at this time at least) the last Green Lantern. A freelance artist and a more introspective type of hero, it’s up to him to find a final solution when the fear-monster returns for a last assault upon humanity.

This is not a particularly unique story, but the decision to use a computer-illustrator for the artwork did make it note-worthy at the time. To what degree that was a good decision is largely a matter of personal taste, but I suspect that this is a book that will only appeal to die-hard fans.

© 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.