>> December 21st, 2004
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COMICS 101
By Scott Tipton
May 7, 2003
IN BRIGHTEST DAY, IN BLACKEST NIGHT
Anybody out there watching JUSTICE LEAGUE on Cartoon Network? It’s quite good, although it lacks some of the depth and heart of the earlier BATMAN and SUPERMAN animated series from largely the same production team. (Admittedly, it’s got to be difficult to try and develop any sort of characterization when you’re juggling that many characters.) Good as the show is, that’s not what we’re here to talk about today.
A non-comic-reading buddy of mine brought up the show the other day, with a question:
“You ever see that new JUSTICE LEAGUE show? How come Green Lantern’s a black dude? I remember him from SUPERFRIENDS being white…”
So, for the benefit of him and anyone else in the house who can’t tell one Green Lantern from another without a scorecard, follow along as we shed some light (no pun intended) on the subject.
You mentioned before that there was a Green Lantern back in the 1940s, right?
Correct you are. As the story goes, struggling artist Martin Nodell approached National Comics editor Sheldon Mayer in the winter of 1940 looking for work. Mayer informed the artist that they were looking to expand their line of super-hero comics, and if Nodell had any good ideas, they were willing to listen. Encouraged by the meeting, on the way home Nodell was inspired by a delay at the subway station, and by the green lantern the trainman waved to indicate that the tracks were all clear.
Nodell utilized the green lantern in the character he was devising, one whose greatest power would be his own will power. Nodell soon returned to Mayer’s office with his new character concept: “The Green Lantern.” Mayer approved, and brought in Batman writer Bill Finger to provide the scripts for Nodell’s stories. The two clicked immediately, and by July 1940 the Green Lantern made his debut in the pages of ALL-AMERICAN COMICS #16.
In his first appearance, entitled “The Green Lantern,” readers met engineer Alan Scott, whose company had been selected to construct a trestle bridge by the government. One of Scott’s competitors did not take kindly to the selection, and sabotaged the bridge, destroying it just as Scott was taking a train across the bridge on a test run. All aboard the train are killed except for Scott, who had been clutching an emerald-colored train lantern at the time of the crash. Suddenly, the lantern flared brightly, and in a burst of exposition began to explain its origins to the dazed engineer.
Hundreds of years ago, the lantern explained, a meteor fell to Earth, landing in provincial China, and “speaking” to those who witnessed its fall:
“Three times shall I flame green! First – to bring death! Second – to bring life! Third – to bring power!”
The meteor was carved into the shape of a lamp by a local sorcerer, who was then murdered by fearful villagers. Just as the meteor promised, the lamp came to light, killing the murdering villagers. The lamp then changed hands many times over the passing decades, eventually landing in the workshop of an insane asylum, where a patient reworks the metal into a modern train lantern. When the patient lights the lantern, the green flame comes alive again, this time curing the patient’s mental illness, bringing life.
Now, in the hands of Alan Scott, the lantern would bring power.
At the lantern’s instruction, Scott carves off a piece of the lantern’s metal to construct a ring, which would channel the lantern’s power. The ring must be touched to the lantern once every 24 hours to recharge its power. As Scott uses the ring’s power to go after the saboteurs, he discovers that the ring allows him to fly, to pass through physical objects, is capable of generating a force field to protect him from danger, and can create physical manifestations of his will; its only limitation is the imagination and will power of its wielder. He also discovers that the ring is incapable of affecting anything made of wood, and therefore its force field cannot protect him from attacks from wooden objects.
After bringing the saboteurs to justice, Scott resolves to continue to battle the forces of evil, and decides that he “must make [him]self a dreaded figure. [He] must make a costume that is so bizarre that once [he] is seen [he] will never be forgotten.” Scott then dons a poofy red shirt, green tights, red and yellow lace-up boots and a purple cape with a high Dracula collar. Mission accomplished there, dude.
Alan Scott, by the way, would accompany the recharging of his ring with a solemn oath:
“And I shall shed my light over dark evil,
for the dark things cannot stand the light,
the light of the Green Lantern!”
The Green Lantern was an immediate hit, soon appearing not only in ALL-AMERICAN, but also in the anthology title COMICS CAVALCADE, as a member of the Justice Society of America over in ALL-STAR COMICS, and eventually in his own title, GREEN LANTERN QUARTERLY. Despite the fanciful mystic trappings of his origin, Green Lantern’s adventures in the ‘40s were very much down-to-earth, with more of a focus on urban crimes like kidnapping and racketeering. Like most of the popular super-types of the era, Alan Scott had a sidekick, but not your run-of-the-mill teen version. Instead, Scott was assisted by loyal cabbie Doiby Dickles, who had saved Alan Scott’s girl Irene from some hoodlums. Dickles, never seen without his trademark derby (or “doiby,” as he would say in his omnipresent Brooklyn accent), would remain part of the Green Lantern comics until the late ‘40s, when he would meet a princess from outer space and go to rule her planet at her side. Seriously.
When the superhero craze died down, Green Lantern slipped into limbo like most of National’s other mystery men. As for Marty Nodell, he went into advertising in 1948, and had a quite successful 27-year career there (he created the Pillsbury Doughboy, as a matter of fact).
As discussed in these pages earlier, in 1959 DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz was looking to follow up the success of his Flash revival, and chose Green Lantern for his second subject. Much as he did with the Flash, Schwartz opted for a more streamlined, science-fiction approach, and placed his new assignment in the hands of writer John Broome and artist Gil Kane.
So how was the new Green Lantern different?
As reconceived by Broome and Kane in the pages of SHOWCASE #22, the new Green Lantern was daredevil test pilot Hal Jordan. The story, “S.O.S. Green Lantern,” opens with the crash landing of an alien spacecraft, piloted by Abin Sur, who lay dying within. Abin Sur was a member of the Green Lantern Corps, an intergalactic organization of “space policemen” organized by the Guardians of the Universe, a race of immortals with great intelligence and mental power. In his final moments, Abin Sur commands his power ring to seek out a deserving Earthman to carry on as his replacement, one entirely without fear.
At that very moment, at the Ferris Aircraft Company in Coast City, California, pilot Hal Jordan is suddenly enveloped in a green glow and whisked through the air at amazing speed. Jordan touches down at the site of Abin Sur’s grounded craft. The dying alien explains to Jordan that he has been chosen to take his place in the Green Lantern Corps, protecting this sector of the universe.
Abin Sur further explains that Jordan is being given a power ring and the battery of power, which can do anything that the wearer imagines, based only on his will power. To charge the ring, it must be touched to the power battery every 24 hours. Then, the bad news: due to a necessary impurity in the construction of the battery, the ring and battery will have no effect on anything that is yellow. With that, Abin Sur was no more, and Hal Jordan was Earth’s Green Lantern.
Like the Green Lantern of the 1940s, Hal Jordan also recited an oath as he charged his ring:
“In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight!
Let those who worship evil’s might
Beware my power – Green Lantern’s light!”
Gil Kane’s modern art style was a perfect match for the new Green Lantern. In contrast to the gaudy operatic costume of Alan Scott, Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern uniform was sleek, streamlined and downright snazzy. The stories were vastly different than the urban jungle of the 1940s’ street-crime-focused Lantern tales. Instead, the sci-fi trappings of the new GL origin opened the door to all kinds of cosmic concepts, such as the Weaponers of Qward, evil scientists from the anti-matter universe of Qward who are determined to get their hands on all of the Green Lantern power batteries.
At first, the GREEN LANTERN series fell into the familiar pattern of a love interest who only had eyes for the protagonist’s costumed alter ego; in this case Hal Jordan’s boss Carol Ferris, who swooned for that dreamy Green Lantern.
Writer Broome quickly stood this cliché on end by introducing the Zamarons, a female race of immortals much like the Guardians, who chose Carol as their queen due to her uncanny resemblance to their past monarchs, and transformed her into Star Sapphire. When Carol tried to say “no thanks” to the new job offer due to her love for Green Lantern, the Zamarons hypnotized her and commanded her to use her new powers to destroy GL. Eventually the Zamarons would lose interest in Carol, but the powers and evil split personality would remain.
In time, Hal Jordan would meet other members of the Green Lantern Corps, an organization of galactic peacekeepers 3600 strong. Members included the birdlike Tomar-Re, the crystalline entity Chaselon, the walking vegetable Medphyl, the alien chipmunk Ch’p, Kilowog of Bolovax Vik, the enormous GL charged with training new recruits, and many, many others. (Nothing’s funnier and still at the same time cooler, by the way, than seeing the rock dude, the veggie-man and the chipmunk charging their rings and reciting the Green Lantern oath.)
The Corps was headquartered on the Guardians’ homeworld of Oa, a planet located at the exact center of the universe. The individual members’ power batteries took their power from the Central Power Battery on Oa, which is itself fueled by the combined mental energies of the Guardians.
Hal’s most tenacious adversary over his career would be the renegade Green Lantern Sinestro. Once a revered member of the Corps, Sinestro was seduced by the power he held, and set himself up as dictator of his sector, forcing the Guardians to strip him of his ring and banish him to the anti-matter universe of Qward. For supposedly omniscient superintelligent beings, the Guardians have shown themselves to have a problem with long-term thinking, or else they might have foreseen Sinestro hooking up with the aforementioned Weaponers of Qward, who equipped Sinestro with a yellow power ring, the perfect weapon against the Green Lantern Corps.
There have been other human Green Lanterns over the years as well. When the Guardians ordered Hal Jordan to train an alternate GL in case he should become incapacitated, Hal enlisted Detroit architect John Stewart, who the ring identified as totally honest and without fear. John subbed for Hal Jordan on many occasions, and has had several lengthy stints as Green Lantern. He’s also had one of the most traumatic: he was largely responsible for the accidental destruction of a planet, he saw his wife viciously murdered before him by Star Sapphire, and was confined to a wheelchair from injuries suffered in the line of duty. Now fully recovered, Stewart once again serves as Earth’s resident Green Lantern, which just happens to correspond with his current appearance on the Cartoon Network JUSTICE LEAGUE animated series.
The other most famous (or perhaps infamous) Green Lantern of Earth is Guy Gardner. In an interesting twist on the Hal Jordan origin, it was at one point revealed to Hal by the Guardians that there were actually two men on earth who the ring found worthy to replace the dying Abin Sur; Hal Jordan was only chosen because he was geographically closer. Curious, Jordan went to meet the other candidate, schoolteacher Guy Gardner. Gardner was offered a position as Hal’s alternate, but through a serious of tragic events wound up critically injured and in a coma. Gardner later awoke from the coma, having suffered brain damage, and suffering from the delusion that Jordan had stolen away his fiancée. Later given a power ring during the Crisis by a faction of militant Guardians, Guy Gardner spent much of the ‘80s and ’90s serving in both the Justice League and Green Lantern Corps as a kind of right-wing reactionary loose-cannon GL, with an “I-hate-everyone” attitude and one of the most atrocious “bowl-haircuts” in comic-book history. Guy’s a hoot.
Okay, but whatever happened to Hal Jordan? And who’s this “Kyle” character?
Well, this is the part of the story that I don’t like. I’ve never liked it, and the fact that it was later somewhat redeemed in part by the introduction of the newest Green Lantern Kyle Rayner doesn’t make it any less bad.
Anyway. Travel back with me now to 1993, where the biggest news in comics is the death of Superman. At the climax of that storyline, the resurrected Superman is facing off against one of his replacements, the Cyborg. The Cyborg’s scheme to use the Earth for his own purposes depended on creating two massive engines that would as a consequence destroy two American cities: Metropolis and Coast City. Superman managed to save Metropolis, but Coast City was not so fortunate. Hal Jordan’s hometown was destroyed, with seven million souls killed. Driven insane by the tragedy, Hal Jordan first tried to recreate Coast City with his own power ring. When that wasn’t enough, Hal realized he needed more power, and he knew where he could get it. Oa.
Hal heads to Oa, murders his friend and trainer Kilowog, dispatches numerous Green Lanterns, kills Sinestro, whom the Guardians had enlisted as a last line of defense, and then murders all the Guardians but one, absorbing the almost limitless power of the Central Power Battery in the process, and renaming himself Parallax. This is where the story and I part ways. No matter how grief-stricken he was, I refuse to buy into the notion that the character I’ve been reading about for decades would commit these acts. Uh-uh. Just not buying it.
The sole remaining Guardian, Ganthet, managed to get away with the ring that had belonged to Abin Sur and Hal Jordan. He fled to Earth, where he passed on the ring by chance to the first person he saw: young artist Kyle Rayner.
I think the random aspect of his selection is a big part of what makes Kyle so appealing. Rather than being selected as the bravest and best the planet has to offer, Kyle simply stumbles onto the most powerful weapon in the universe, and has to find his own way through the responsibilities he now carries. As created by writer Ron Marz and artist Darryl Banks, Kyle could be any one of us. He makes mistakes, he has doubts and he never feels like he’s living up to the huge expectations set by his predecessors. Marz and Banks had a huge task before them in getting comics fans to accept the new Green Lantern after the vicious and extremely vocal backlash to the Hal Jordan character assassination, and they pulled it off admirably. Also helping a great deal was Grant Morrison’s portrayal of Kyle in his JLA revival, which placed an uncertain Kyle on the same footing as Superman and Batman.
As for Hal Jordan, after an attempt to destroy and then recreate the universe with an intact Coast City was thwarted by Kyle and Hal’s best friend Green Arrow (all this taking place in the pages of DC’s ZERO HOUR miniseries), he resurfaced in the miniseries THE FINAL NIGHT, sacrificing his life to destroy the Sun-Eater, a mysterious creature that was putting out the Sun, causing Earth and its inhabitants to slowly freeze to death.
A nice enough attempt to redeem a character which never should have been perverted in the first place. (And yes, I know that’s not the end of Hal Jordan, but I’ll get to that when I cover the Spectre in an upcoming column.)
When the Parallax thing took place, I spoke with then-DC Executive Editor Mike Carlin, and told him (politely and friendly-like, of course. Nothing to be gained by coming off like the Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy) how disappointed I was with the Hal Jordan developments, that I didn’t think it made any sense from a character standpoint, and that I thought it would cost them readers and money in the long run. Carlin listened and was very attentive, but he responded with a remark I still remember: “We reserve the right to occasionally tell a story with an unhappy ending.”
Nothing’s worse than a reasonable, thoughtful answer when you’re spoiling for a fight. Curse you, Carlin!
If you’ve got a question about comics, send it here to
stipton99x@moviepoopshoot.com. Scott’s head isn’t quite as big as a Guardian’s, but he still gets the job done.
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