Back Where It All Began - 75 YEARS OF GREEN LANTERN

In 1940, while much of the world was headed on a devastating course towards World War, a new hero burst into life in the pages of All-Americans Comics to “shed light upon dark evil.”  And 75 years later the legacy of this self-same hero continues to do just that.  In that time we have been introduced to literally hundreds of character baring the moniker of Green Lantern but I thought it would be a fitting 75^th anniversary tribute to take a look back at where it all began.

All-American Comics #16 has a cover date of July 1940 but according to that wonderful reference source Mike’s Amazing World of Comics the issue actually hit newspaper stands on May 21, 1940.  The book was a collection of humour and adventure romps that included original stories alongside reprints of older strip comics.  The cover art of most previous issues promised readers a rollicking good adventure but nothing compared to the thrilling noir of a masked, cloaked Alan Scott leaping perilously across an exposed girder straight into the muzzle of a loaded tommy gun.  The character’s origin tale is a whistle-stop tour of everything that ever went into a ‘boys’ own adventure’.

The Green Lantern opens with an explosive train crash orchestrated by a crooked businessman seeking revenge after losing out on a new construction contract.  The only survivor of the crash is his rival who is protected by the supernatural light emanating from a mysterious green railway lantern. The lantern speaks to the survivor, Alan Scott, in “an ageless, toneless voice”, recounting the details of its own magical history.  It first came to earth as a flaming meteor with prophetic abilities and was duly carved into a lantern shape by Chinese lamp maker with a reputation for sorcery.  Fearing the lamp was cursed, the lamp maker’s associates killed him and burned his possessions own to meet their only dreadful end to the mystic green flame.  The lamp next turns up many years later to grant sanity to a patient in a mental asylum.  The patient remoulds the lamp into a modern railway lantern which finally passes into the hands of Scott during that fateful train journey.  The lantern imbues him with extraordinary powers and recruits him to fight evil.  All this this in 3 pages of a comic book!  They don’t write ‘em like that anymore…

Despite the many developments and new directions introduced with Green Lantern over the course of the last 75 years it is pleasing to note some of today’s core character traits were established in this very first story.  The Lantern explains the nature of its gift to Alan, “Power shall be yours if you have faith in yourself.  Lose that faith and you shall lose the energetic power of the Green Lantern, for will power is the flame of Green Lantern”.  Without these words, penned by legendary writer Bill Finger, Geoff Johns might never have created the emotional spectrum and the landscape of the modern day Green Lantern universe might look very different indeed.  How could artist Martin Nodell have know, when he devised this character at the age of 25 under the pseudonym Mart Dellon, that it would go on to become his most famous creation. Nodell didn’t want his works in comics to stigmatise his chances of an advertising career.  And while we are discussing credits, much respect should be paid to Sheldon Moldoff for bringing us the gripping noir cover mentioned earlier. 

Under the green flame’s instruction Alan Scott fashions a ring from its metal that manifests his powers for 24 hours before being recharged at the green flame’s lantern source.  His first act as a newly appointed superhero is to swear vengeance on the saboteur responsible for the tragic deaths of his fellow train passengers.  The ring immediately flies him through the air to the villain’s hideaway.  It spirits him straight through the wall where he confronts the crook and his startled henchmen.  The flames protective green aura renders Alan impervious to bullets and a steel blade but he unwittingly discovers the green energy’s ‘Achilles heel’ when he is struck over the head by a simple wooden billy club.  This flaw in Green Lantern’s power set was published a full 3 years before Kryptonite was officially introduced to the Superman mythos and would be the forerunner to the Silver and Bronze Age Green Lantern Corps’ weakness to exert the powers over anything coloured yellow.

Of course, the hero was not down for long and Scott immediately bounced back with a flying kick that Bruce Lee would be proud of and a round of good old fashioned fisticuffs that soundly took care of his would be attackers.  Powered by his ring, he whisked the criminal’s leader high into the sky and threatened do drop him.  Not surprisingly the bad guy spilled everything and signed a confession before promptly dying of shock.  Poetic justice is served and Alan feels destiny pulling him towards a life fighting evil wherever he finds it.  The saga ends with our protagonist declaring he will become a dreaded figure sporting a costume so bizarre that he will never be forgotten.  With that he dons the famous Dracula cloak and the red and green swashbuckling garb that has been the original Green Lantern’s signature style ever since.

But what would Green Lantern be without his oath?  The traditional GL oath has seen some changes and variations over the years but the solemn vow to shine brightly over evil has its roots right here in All-American Comics #16, “…And I will shed my light over dark evil… for the dark things cannot stand the light… the light of The Green Lantern".

I’m sure Martin Nodell and Bill Finger could never have imagined how far Green Lantern would go.  All of his earliest appearances pitted him against hoodlums and petty criminals.  He stared down the barrels of revolvers and machines guns and slugged his way to victory with a tasty right hook.  It seems another world from the cosmic level dramas of Zero Hour or Blackest Night, from Kingdom Come or Lights Out.  But all of these stories owe a huge debt of gratitude to an 8 page pulp adventure from 1940 that intrigued and delighted its young readers and kept them coming back for more.  Then again, maybe the journey from street level vigilante to galactic peacekeeper is not so unpredictable after all.  For even in this very first story the mighty power of Green Lantern came from a meteor that crashed to Earth from space.  Perhaps it’s only fitting that one day it would return to the stars once again.

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You can enjoy the early adventures of Green Lantern for yourself in DC Archive Editions: The Golden Age Green Lantern, Volume 1, available from Amazon and all good comic book stores everywhere.

If you enjoyed this post please do keep coming back to Flodo’s Page through June and July 2015 when we will have some other great surprises to celebrate 75 years of Green Lantern.

If that isn't enough for you (and let's face it - why would it be?) be sure to check out these other amazing Green Lantern fansites and podcasts who will be celebrating GL’s 75^th birthday right along with us:

Blog of Oa

The Lanterncast

Green Blogger's Site

The Brighest Day, The Blackest Night

For more anniversary awesomeness with everybody’s favourite Emerald Gladiator make sure search the hashtag #GL75TH across social media platforms.

Until next time, “Beware Our Power!”

GATHERING THE CORPS

This week was a first in the life of this humble Green Lantern blogger.  It was my absolute pleasure to be invited to appear as a guest reviewer on the venerable Lanterncast, the first and longest running GL podcast around.

And this one runs longer than most...  For episode #200 the guys assemble a motley crew of listeners, as well as bringing the show's original hosts out of retirement to produce an amazing 4 hours of content all focused around our favourite Emerald Gladiator.

You can download the whole episode here absolutely free, you lucky little geek, you!

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank The Lanterncast presenters, Chad and Mark, for having me on the show. You guys rock!

And here's a little behind the scenes confession for all you Flodo's Page regulars; if you think I seem a little quiet at times it's only because I kept forgetting that I wasn't just listening to an episode of the podcast, and was actually recording live on the show!

Is The Light Finally Fading On Geoff Johns' Brightest Day?

 One of the very best things about the comic book fan community is the enthusiasm with which we take to any available medium to share our love (and hate) of the books we read and the people who create them. Whether via internet fan sites and blogs, social media like Twitter and Facebook, video reviews on YouTube or audio podcasts we are everywhere proving without a shadow of a doubt the global appeal of the ‘funny pages’.

Personally, I love comic book podcasts.  I can listen to them at work, on the go or helping out around the house.  There are probably seven or eight podcasts that I listen to regularly and around about the same number again that I catch up with from time to time.  As a Green Lantern fan first and foremost oashow that I never miss is the LanternCast.  These boys, and occasionally gals, run a mixed format of news, reviews, discussions and debates on all things GL.  One episode might be looking at the latest lantern release while the next is focusing on a character profile or a landmark issue from the silver age.  I would commend you in particular to check out their most recent offering, Episode #149, in which the guys take a long hard look at the future of the Green Lantern universe. 

The first topic up for discussion was the one and only Geoff Johns.  As all GL fans know, Johns is a modern day hero.  Since 2004 he has been the driving force behind all things lantern, propelling the character, or more correctly characters, from supporting cast to a heavy hitter, going toe to toe with Superman and Batman in the sales numbers chart.  Just lately however many fans, including myself right here at Flodo’s Page, have questioned whether the lantern’s light is on the wane.  With the lacklustre event that ‘Rise of the Third Army’ has been up until this point, the LanternCast have dared to ask the question, “Has Geoff Johns had his day?  Is it time to get some new blood on Green Lantern?”  The debate they had was extremely interesting and highly entertaining so you really should head on over to their site to give it a listen, or catch it over on iTunes or Stitcher.  Immediately after listening to the show I was compelled to write an email to the guys to pitch in on that and some other subjects they'd discussed.  What follows is and extract from that email.  I’d love to hear what other GL fans think too so please feel free to add your comments to the bottom of this post.

“…I would agree with your comments that Johns seems to be spreading himself too thin at the moment. I think the 'Third Army' event has fallen flat. However, part of the reason for that is that it had been billed as a bannered event. Hardcore lantern fans felt obliged to buy all 4 titles which really wasn't necessary. Enough story could have been (and mostly was) covered off in each book to get you to 'Wrath of the First Lantern'. 'Third Army' should have been produced as a sleeper plot building in the background of the GL universe which would have reached a crescendo with 'Wrath'.

In saying that, I don't think Johns is finished at the helm of GL. The story of the emotional spectrum that he has been building over the last 8 years still has a twist or two left in it. He has demonstrated his own writing abilities ably in the recent Indigo Tribe and Black Hands arcs of the main Green Lantern title. And, presuming he has an overseeing hand in the other books, I think the concept of Kyle 'Mega-Lantern' Rayner is a great one, even though it has been executed less than satisfactorily lately by a below-par Bedard (As a side point I think Tomasi and Bedard should switch titles to take advantage of the former's vivid imagination and get the latter back to what he does best on GLC).

I think you are correct in your assertions that Johns has been hampered by DC Comics' desire to reproduce a Green Lantern best-seller event over and over again. Where he is at his best is in picking up on the works of past writers and enriching them with a fresh viewpoint that quite often takes the characters involved to places their creators could never have imagined. This type of storytelling takes time. Johns cannot be expected to give his narrative the focus it deserves if he is constantly being forced to produce the next DCU crossover extravaganza.

As you mentioned on show, Johns has left numerous teaser threads dangling over the years. Given his unquestioned ability he could easily pick up on any one of these and spin 12 months or more of Lantern stories out of it. The one I want to see most is Evil Star. I'm fond of the silver age version of the character in a humorous sort of way and Johns has been teasing this one since the Starlings first kidnapped the pathetic Black Hand in volume 4, issue #5 (I think!) and turned him into the harbinger of death that gave us Blackest Night and is still a major player today. Given the overhaul the Starlings were given in that issue I can only imagine the ferocity Geoff Johns would bring to a modern day version of Evil Star in an on-going storyline!

My last thoughts on the subject concern if and when Johns finally does move on from the title. I will hopefully still be buying Green Lantern well after the writer has moved to pastures new but I would want him to have the opportunity to wrap up his epic run once and for all before he goes. In an ideal world Johns’ run would be about the rise and then the fall of the emotional spectrum. I would prefer it if he were to decimate the other color corps before he called it a day. In my head that is his sandbox and not only would it be best if another writer didn't get a chance to mess with it, it would also be fairer on them if they began their own lantern journey without having to be bogged down in the world Johns created.

I am not saying to forget about it completely. Just to end the current existence of the other corps so that only the Green Lanterns remained. In that way a new creative team has a better opportunity to use of the whole mythos going back to the beginning of the silver age instead of having to make do with the last 10 years or so…”

So what do you think?  As the song asks, should he stay or should he go now?  I’m sure this is a subject that will divide the comic book fan community so if you’re a lantern fan and you’ve got an opinion on this one I’d love to hear from you.  

UPDATE: You should check out The LanternCast Episode #153 here to listen to Jim and Dan as they spend the last half hour of the show responding to my email - Thanks guys!!