green lantern

Still reading Absolute Green Lantern, however.

filed under Categories collecting, green lantern 30 Comments

So I started reading the Green Lantern series sometime around 1980, picking up issues here and there until getting it every month starting with #141 in 1981, the first appearance of the Omega Men.

Eventually, I dropped the book after #157 (1982):


…which was still near the beginning of the “Hal Jordan in Space” storyline (more on that in a bit). I seem to recall enjoying that specific issue, since I liked Hector Hammond as a villain, but GL being stuck in space all the time began to wear a bit thin on me, I guess, or the next issue didn’t grab me. Whatever the reason, I stopped with that #157.

While I did check in with a random issue partway through the run (the infamous “exploding boy” cover on #162, which I wrote about…21 years ago? Really?) I didn’t hop back on the Green Lantern train ’til #171, the infamous Alex Toth issue that all the writers removed their names from:


Now I don’t know if I knew it at the time, and given my love of fanzines I can’t see how I didn’t know, but the whole Hal in Space thing was coming to an end, with a brand new creative team and direction for the book starting in #172 (1984). I presume everyone else was sick of the space stories, or sales had dipped far enough that they were ready to try literally anything else, or maybe they just ran out of Gil Kane inventory covers to run. But I kept reading, Len Wein and Dave Gibbons showed up, turned things around, everything was great, and so on.

And it was all well and good for, oh, another decade or so.

That Green Lantern comic went through a few more creative changes over the next few years, with everyone doing interesting and sometimes peculiar work, before that series wrapped up in 1988. I followed the GL franchise into Action Comics Weekly, DC’s new serialized format that was released…well, you can guess how often it came out. And there were the well-received Emerald Dawn minis retelling Hal’s early years as a Lantern, and a new ongoing series that launched in 1990.

That 1990 series was also quite popular, and I enjoyed it quite a bit myself, even if the writer for that series is now considered persona non grata in the comics business, or, well, anywhere for that matter. It was a thoughtful, imaginative run that culminated in a tie-in to the whole “Death and Return of Superman” storyline going on elsewhere in the DC Universe. A storyline in which GL’s stomping grounds, Coast City, is destroyed.

The final issue of that writer’s run is #47, in which Hal comes to terms with that huge loss with his old partner, Green Arrow. And, when the writer actually did a signing at my previous place of employment waaaay back when, before His Troubles were known, he’d basically said as such, that he had other plans for the big 50th issue, that the Coast City thing was dealt with.

But DC was still chasing that “Death of Superman” dollar and wanted Big Changes for the characters that had been around a while and seemed possibly moribund compared to the edgier, “hipper” comics being produced by their competitors. So word came down from on high that Hal was to go away and be replaced with a new fella. And as it turned out, the way Hal went away was to make him go crazy over the destruction of Coast City and start killing his fellow Lanterns to gain enough power to resurrect the city and its inhabitants.

Am I sure this is exactly how it went down? I mean, that this was ordered by DC, not that was what happened in the comics, because that was definitely what happened in the comics. All I have is The Former Writer’s statement on the matter, and given how many brains “The Death of Superman” story broke, it all seems plausible.

At any rate, Hal was gone, we had a new guy, Kyle Rayner, on board as the one (and only!) Green Lantern. And I read his comics up through issue #55:


…and it wasn’t so much that I didn’t like Kyle Rayner, as I didn’t like what they did with Hal Jordan, and I gave up reading Green Lantern again. That was 1994.

Now they did a lot of things with Hal Jordan in the meantime…he popped up in that Day of Judgement mini-series, he was the Spectre for a bit in his own comic, and I read all of those. But it wasn’t until 2004 and the series Green Lantern: Rebirth that DC finally put Hal back in the green and black space togs. That is what finally got me back into reading GL comics, correcting a bizarre decision to try to push a new version of the Golden Age/Silver Age transition without just sort of letting it occur naturally.

From Rebirth we went right into a new ongoing series launching in 2005, and I’ve been reading Green Lantern comics in all their various incarnations ever since.

Until, I’m thinking, right about now. It may be time for the third big Green Lantern break.

I was trying to talk this out on Bluesky, and I think about as far as I got was that it was “too much.” Every comic is crowded with characters, crowded with lore, crowded with ever increasing stakes and risks…it’s practically sensory overload. The alien Lanterns are no longer fun guest-stars, they’re just more noise.

The exact example I used was that it seemed like after the Sinestro Corps War, a genuinely fun and interesting multipart super-battle amongst opposing Lantern armies, every Green Lantern event continued to chase that high. It seemed fine at first, particularly with the introduction of new Lantern Corps based around different spectra (I don’t care what anyone says, I liked the Red Lanterns). But it all just seemed to go on and on and on until this last one, the GL Corps versus the…Starbreakers, I guess? It’s just one more mass of action figures to throw at the GL action figures.

Going back to that 1980s GL series, when I was talking about the “Hal in Space” story. That storyline kicks off with Hal’s bosses, the Guardians of the Universe, calling him on the carpet to remind him that he’s got an entire sector of space he’s supposed to be watching over, not just Earth. As such, the Guardians banish him from Earth for a year, and tell him to work his beat for once. It actually does come across as odd to see Hal not in his regular earthbound stomping grounds.

Which of course isn’t to say Hal didn’t take off into space occasionally prior to this, But there was a balance…sure he may have left Earth once in a while, but he always started there and usually ended up back there, if not at the end of the issue, but eventually at the end of the story. It made him slightly more relatable.

Now, it feels like it’s the opposite, with stories beginning and ending in space and if Earth is seen at all, it’s only sporadically. Even the early issues of the current Green Lantern run, with Hal stuck on Earth, while good and maintaining my interest, were mostly about Hal trying to figure out how to leave Earth.

And while the lore and history of the Corps have always been part of the comics, they weren’t the be-all/end-all like they seem to be now. It felt more special when we got the Deep Lore once in a while, not with every outing.

This may be the first time and last time I’m doing this, but I’m going to refer to something from the Family Guy TV show. There is a line Peter says, in regards to The Godfather, a line that the show’s creator Seth McFarlane apparently liberated from a college professor, in which he says the film “insists upon itself.”


It is a weird critique to make about anything: it’s both exacting enough to sound like a very specific jibe, and it’s vague enough to be wide open to interpretation. But regardless, you sort of get what’s being said here.

This is the Green Lantern franchise as it is currently: it insists upon itself. It’s self-referential, it’s repetitive, it’s Green Lanterns solving Green Lantern problems.

I tried to stick with it, I really did. But I’m just not feeling it right now, and who’s to say if I will again? Am I going to go back to new GL stories when I’m 70? Feels unlikely.

And it’s a real shame, too, because they’re bringing back the old GL villain Krona for a new story, and I have bit of a nostalgic fondness for him. But Krona is who you bring in when you want some big, universe-shaking threat and frankly, what’s one more to add to the pile here.

Honestly, that picture of my hand is in, like, the top three best pictures ever taken of me.

filed under Categories green lantern, video, wonder woman 1 Comment

I’ve had a long day, so I’m keepin’ it short and sweet for this post right here, including some stuff you may have already seen on one of my other social media platforms (like the Twitterers). Sorry about that, but I should have a new End of Civilization next week to make up for it!

First, reader Sir A1! dropped this into the comments of Wednesday’s post, and I gotta share it on the main page here: a bit of a Badger fanfilm he worked on some time ago. Some NSFW language in there, so be warned:

Second, just look at this tiny book…or conversely, look at this giant hand:

Third:


You don’t say.

Let’s write about comics and such for another 15 minutes.

filed under Categories green lantern, swamp thing, this week's comics, video games 1 Comment


A bunch of you told me this was coming, and here it is, now in my possession, the 1:10 ratio variant cover for Super Secret Crisis Wars #2, which was inspired by the cover for House of Secrets #92 (the first appearance of Swamp Thing, of course).

This cover is by Andy Suriano, who notes next to his signature that the image is “After (Bernie) Wrightson” and that it’s “For Weezie!!” — AKA Louise Simonson, the writer of Super Secret Crisis Wars, and, oh, by the way, was also the model for the woman on the cover of that original House of Secrets #92.

Suriano might as well have added “Buy This, Mike Sterling” next to his signature as well. This also makes the second Powerpuff Girls-related Swamp Thing parody that I own (the first being the first issue of their IDW series).

In other ridiculous comic news…well, I wasn’t going to buy Injustice: Gods Among Us for the Xbox 360 at $59.99 or whatever the price point was, but I noticed that it recently was available in the Xbox store as a $7.99 download, so, you know, what the heck, I can probably get eight bucks of entertainment out of it. And to be frank, I liked it a lot more playing the full game than I did when I played the demo way back when. Getting the actual “story,” such as it is, and the cut scenes setting up the battles actually does help quite a bit in fleshing this game out into more than just a punch-em-up. Not much more, granted, but I’m having some fun with it. Plus, I’m trying to actually use the special fighting moves each character has, rather than my usual “push every button on the controller in a panic” strategy in dealing with games like these. I’m mostly successful.

This last Wednesday was the rare Mike-less Wednesday at the shop, as I ended up being stuck at home all day waiting for a locksmith to come and repair the lock on my front door…well, not all day, but by the time everything was done, there wasn’t any point in making the drive to work. Hopefully I won’t return on Thursday to find smoking ruins and “MIKE MUST DIE” painted in blood on one of the remaining walls, because I wasn’t thrilled the last time that happened. Alas, the lock problems were a special morning surprise, and not anything I planned for, so I had precious little work to do at home whilst I waited for the Friendly Neighborhood Locksmith to make his way to me. A little eBaying, a little store website maintenance (i.e. getting the store website back up because someone screwed up somewhere…not saying it was me, but…um, it was me)…

…and a little catching up on reading this week’s new comics over lunch. My fifteen minutes are almost up here, so let me just throw out the fact that I really enjoyed the Red Lanterns Annual. In fact, the Red Lanterns title in general is a lot of fun. I was skeptical as anyone on the Tumbling-Twitter-Journals about this when it was announced, that the world surely didn’t need a comic about the Red Lanterns, of all things, and who are, well, kinda gross when you get right down to it. But there’s always something interesting going on in the title, and this recent annual was stuffed with all kinds of crazy events and twists and turns, and personality conflicts mixed with the occasional grudging friendships are entertaining to read. I certainly like this comic more than the Green Lantern titles, which aren’t bad as such…just seem a bit staid compared to their more crimson-hued cousin.

Sinestro is good, too. Must be something about Green Lantern villains/antagonists that make for compelling reading. …Where’s my Myrwhydden series?

How the Green Lantern movie could have become a box office success.

filed under Categories dc comics, green lantern, sir-links-a-lot 5 Comments

So I was looking through this DC Sneak Previews freebie:


…which you know came out several years ago, since it actually cover-features superheroes who are (gasp) not in their mid-20s, and featuring previews of the Justice Society of America mini-series and Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn II. Of note is the intro to the GL:EDII preview:


…which features this phrase that pays:


Now that’s a slogan that would have brought attendees to movie houses in droves, should Warner Brothers’ marketing division only have dared to use it. Of course, that would have required a slight rewriting of the film to facilitate its use, but I think we all agree a rewrite for the GL film would not entirely have been out of order.

• • •

In other news:

  • Happy Sixth (Give or Take A Year or Three) Birthday to Bully, The Little Stuffed Bull Who Apparently Ages Like Jonathan Winters on Mork and Mindy!

  • Comic Book Galaxy is going off the air within a week or so, so if you’re gonna catch up on any articles there, now’s the time to do it. I wrote there for a while (I’ll repost the articles on my own site here, soon), plus I contributed this little blurb about the Thing (in relation to a still-MIA Barry Windsor-Smith graphic novel) which I think is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written.

    Thanks for asking me to contribute, Alan!

  • And now, your Indian-style Swamp Thing promo poster for the day, celebrating Charles Soule’s run on the series. BRB, going to India to get one of these.

 
 

images from DC Sneak Previews #1 (1991)

In which Mike was too lazy to scan all these himself.

filed under Categories gil kane, green lantern 8 Comments

So the other day I noticed our Green Lantern back issue section was getting a tad thin, so I did a little restocking. As I did so, I was reminded of that particular storyline in the early 1980s where Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern of Earth, was ordered by that gang of little blue Angry Police Captains to keep an eye on the rest of his assigned space sector instead of just hanging around his home planet all the time.

Thus, starting in issue #151, Hal was exiled from his homeworld and embarked on a series of exciting space adventures that, if memory serves, readers didn’t much care for, and I think didn’t sell all that well (i.e. only achieved sales numbers that Marvel and DC would beg for today).

The “Hal in Space” story more or less wrapped up in issue #171 (Dec. ’83):


…which featured some swell Alex Toth interior art, a “goodbye” of sorts to supporting character Dorine (who featured heavily in this storyline), and a script that was mucked about so much that it got Alan Smithee’d with a pseudonymous credit of “Noel Naive.” (There’s a little about that in the Grand Comics Database entry for this issue.)

And then the next issue, #172, kicked off the new creative team of Len Wein and Dave Gibbons, and all was forgiven, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

I’m here to talk about some of those swell Gil Kane covers that popped up on this run. As I was processing some of these back issues for pricing, I was enjoying Kane’s imagery on many of these covers. Kane of course is the artist arguably most associated with the Silver Age version of the character, and ballyhooed as such on this issue early in the space-exile storyline:


Aside from this issue, which also featured Kane interiors, there were seven Kane covers altogether, bunched together at the very end of the run…here they are, all “borrowed” from the Grand Comics Database (except the already pictured #171, scanned from my own collection):


The couple of “generic-y” covers they used, which don’t refer at all to the stories within, have me wondering if they dipped into some inventory images due to deadline issues, budget, not knowing what was actually going to run in the issues, etc. Regardless, those are some great Kane images, making for some attractive-looking comics even if the series itself wasn’t all that well-received at the time. Kane would return with another probably-inventory cover for this deadline-doom reprint issue, and then he’d come back for covers and interiors for the last two issues of the series. (And I think there were some art jobs in annuals somewhere in there as well.)

Anyway, this post was just an entirely transparent attempt to enjoy these covers again, and hopefully some of you enjoyed them as well. Kane’s art definitely flips that nostalgia switch for me.

Also, that “exiled in space” storyline? Only lasted 21 issues. Seemed like it was around forever…but at least it was around long enough to generate this fantastically tasteless cover, which makes it all worth it.

This is really more about Alan Scott being compared to Swamp Thing than you’ve ever wanted to read.

filed under Categories green lantern, swamp thing 10 Comments

So Rich dropped this in the comments to yesterday’s post:

“I’m interested in Mike’s reaction to the new Alan Scott GL origin in ‘Earth 2.’”

And I have to admit, the first thing that came to mind was the whole “Alan Scott is gay!” hoohar that was in the media, until I realized that bit of business doesn’t have much to do with the origin really. Then there was the second thing that came to mind, the fate of his loved one which I think everyone with a pulse saw coming from a mile away, but, you know, it’s a superhero origin story, good chance someone’s gotta be the “tragic loss” part of it. But I didn’t get why my thoughts specifically were asked after on this particular topic, until I realized:


Oh, yeah, the whole “green” thing, with “green energy” being the embodiment of the Earth’s life force an’ all, like in the Swamp Thing comics, where it’s referred to as “The Green.” And it’s referred to as such in Earth 2, where some unknown entity states

“The Green has found its champion. And so I must awaken…in the name of the Grey I must rise.”

And if you recall your Swamp Thing comics of about, oh, 23 years ago, “The Grey” was an alien fungus-type thingie that Swamp Thing fought against, and you can read more about that on this page. I don’t believe there’s any connection between the Grey in Earth 2 and Swampy’s Grey, but there could very well be a minor connection between the expressions of the Green on both Earth 2 and, um, whatever Earth is the current version of Earth we’re dealing with in our post-Flashpoint DC universe. …I’m just going to assume y’all know what I’m talking about when I write all this stuff, because frankly, looking at it as I write it makes me feel like a crazy person.

Anyway, minor connection between the two, right. Well, we’re still dealing with “The Green” and I’m sure no one writing comics, particularly not James Robinson, is unaware of that particular nomenclature being used by Alan Moore to describe Earth’s life force during his Swamp Thing run. So I guess it’s simply an alternate take on the same sort of thing Moore was getting at, down to the Green choosing a champion to fight on its behalf when necessary.

Another small parallel that I’m inferring in this story is that, near the end of Alan Scott’s interaction with this green energy, he asks it

“…The way you speak. Were you…at one time…were you human?”

The question isn’t answered, but one possible interpretation is that whoever was speaking on behalf of the Green there was in fact a previous champion of the Green, who chose his successor in Alan Scott…who may someday also be absorbed into this life force of the planet, until he too reemerges to chose his own successor. It’s kinda sorta similar to previous Swamp Things retiring to the Parliament of Trees, where they guide the Green from sort of behind the scenes, while a more active champion is their avatar in the world.

Again, I’m sounding like a crazy person. I’m just trying to describe the comics, I swear.

Anyway, yeah, Rich, there are some interesting parallels between what’s going on with Alan Scott in Earth 2 and the saga of the Swamp Thing. I don’t think the twain shall ever meet, but I do think Robinson is writing a knowing reinterpretation of what Moore had put down.

Speaking of Swamp Thing, Swamp Mark popped in with some swampy news in yesterday’s comments, noting that in addition to the coming Animal Man crossover, Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. will be part of the fun for issues #13-#15. And that there will be a small tie-in with Ravagers #5. So, thanks, Swamp Mark, for letting us know. I realize that, as Swamp Thing’s Best Friend, I probably should be a little more on top of reporting what’s going on in Swamp Thing’s world, especially since we now have an ongoing Swamp Thing series again and I shouldn’t just take it for granted. But, you know, I get distracted easily and sometimes I forget. So you all keep nagging me about keeping up with Swamp Thing news…sure, I might grumble a little, but I know it’s only because you folks care. I hope.

Also, as for my being crazy…at least my pal Tim doesn’t think I am. “Probably sane” is very likely the nicest thing I’ll hear about myself this week. Or month. Or…well, I’d better stop there.

“…Or maybe I have been turned into a…a walking skeleton..?!”

filed under Categories green lantern 6 Comments

So, those odd x-ray superhero t-shirts in the current Diamond Previews, as featured in the latest installment of The End of Civilization?


I believe I’ve found the inspiration for at least the Green Lantern shirt:


Maybe they’ll pull more t-shirt designs from this comic. Like a Brainiac versus Ibis the Invincible image on a nice pastel-colored ring-tee. …But not as skeletons, that’d be weird.
 

image from Justice League of America #137 (December 1976) by E. Nelson Bridwell, Marty Pasko, Dick Dillin & Frank McLaughlin

Let’s all just enjoy a swell Gil Kane splash with Green Lantern and Zatanna.

filed under Categories gil kane, green lantern 10 Comments


Mmm boy, just get a load of those shapely gams…oh, and I guess Zatanna’s legs ain’t half-bad either. Also, GL’s dialogue seems a bit humorously redundant: “This magic is stronger than my ring! My ring is helpless against this magic! I can’t overpower the magic with my ring! My ring, normally very powerful, is powerless against…” ZATANNA: “Enough already, I get it! Geez.”
 

image from Green Lantern #42 (January 1966) by Gardner Fox, Gil Kane and Sid Greene

Green Lantern Confessions dot Tumblr dot com.

filed under Categories green lantern 3 Comments

So ever since I made my “Green Lantern is a romance book” joke a couple of days ago…


…I now can’t stop reading double-meanings into Hal ‘n’ Sinestro’s adversarial banter.

Also, I am tempted to start a “Swamp Thing Confessions” Tumblr which is just pictures of me reading Swamp Thing comics, each with the caption “I like reading Swamp Thing comics.” Because surely that’s confessional enough.
 

image from Green Lantern #125 (February 1980) by Denny O’Neil, Joe Staton and Frank McLaughlin