Bur DC Comics aren't celebrating the event until September with their variant covers and their 75 Years hardcover collection.
And that's all the excuse I need to throw one more party favour at you before we wrap up warm for the long walk home! And speaking of party spirit, read what you will into this one...
Exhibit A:
Hal Jordan taking on the bad guys in his first ever outing as Green Lantern in Showcase #22, published 1959.
This new clean cut action-adventure hero was brought courtesy of the creative team of writer John Broome and artist Gil Kane.
Then the sixties happened. That's right. Those sixties...
Now, I'm not saying that Broome or Kane ever indulged in the many psychedelic delights that were reputed to be widely popular in 1960s America. I have no way of knowing that. All I'm saying is the sixties happened. And in 1970 Broome and Kane were still writing and drawing Green Lantern comics.
Which takes us to Exhibit B:
Hal Jordan taking on the bad guys in (appropriately enough) Green Lantern #75, published 1970.
I know what you're thinking! I'm thinking it too.
All jokes aside, it is fair to say that Green Lantern has always moved with the times. Nodell and Finger gave their audience a hero who shone his light over evil during a very dark period in history. Next, when the world wanted a champion for the space-age generation, Broome and Kane's GL was there to give it to them. When they called for gritty liberalism Hal Jordan popped up with his old friend Green Arrow to take on the Man under the pen of O'Neil and Adams. And years later still, when the world craved zombie after zombie after zombie, Geoff Johns filled the whole universe with the living dead in the epic crossover event, Blackest Night.
Where the world goes, Green Lantern goes with it... even if that place gets a little trippy from time to time.
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