Writer John Broome cooked up an idiosyncratic recipe to make his Green Lantern stories work. For example, for all his apparent omnipotence, the superhero was frequently the unwitting puppet of forces greater than himself.
He was empowered by the Guardians, who communicated with him unconsciously at first in giving him his instructions as their cosmic police officer. But he was also periodically summoned to the far future, with his memory wiped, to help out the people there.
In The Challenge From 5700 A.D. (Green Lantern 6, Sept.-Oct. 1961), Hal Jordan is drawn through time and given a new, contemporary identity so that he can fend off an alien invasion.
Though sometimes used as a pawn, the Emerald Gladiator frequently created doppelgangers to use as pawns in his battles against evil. In the first dozen issues, he turned his pal Pieface into a flying duplicate of himself, conjured up multiple duplicates out of the heavy air of an alien world and transformed a statue into a fighting surrogate.
That happened six issues after the first “Future Lantern” story, in Green Lantern's Statue Goes To War (Green Lantern 12, April 1962).
“The second story has a good opening, in which Green Lantern finds a small fragment while combing his hair, and he begins to have subconscious memories,” noted comics historian Michael E. Grost. “He begins to piece things together, using the sort of reasoning that is frequent among Green Lantern characters. The small fragment from the future recalls the flower brought back by the Time Traveler in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (1895).”
“The best part of either tale is Gil Kane's art in the second story, especially his depiction of a futuristic plaza surrounded by an elevated circular walkway,” Grost wrote. “This is a splendid conception; it shows up on both the cover and the later sections of the story. Green Lantern is also shown against circular backgrounds here, making for interesting geometric compositions in the art.”
Charles Terrell wrote: I managed to catch the tail end of his future arc where he finally figures things out, having his ring record his memories and restore them if he gets a lapse eliminating the need for the future to keep wiping him. Although I think they later revealed they just switched to a different GL to mindwipe and kidnap.
ReplyDeletePaul Zuckerman wrote: Dan, your analysis of Hal being a tool of others is spot-on and one that was somewhat underplayed in the stories. I get that the Guardians didn't want to reveal their identity for a while, but still! And then, having his memory wiped clean each time he went into the future--and when he found out about it, Hal seems to be OK with it. Guess he was the ultimate policeman/soldier despite his devil-may-care independence.
ReplyDeleteHal was a complicated character and because DC kept those elements in the background, Marvel readers, who got hit over their heads with sledgehammers with the characters' problems, didn't understand how complex a character Hal really is. And, frankly, I don't think DC ever got it either.
Hal also was the one character with a fleshed-out family. It's true that Barry Allen had his parents (at least until Geoff Johns got a hold of them) but Hal had two brothers an uncle and eventually a sister-in-law and nephews/nieces (I can't remember which or both).
And his relationship with Carol was exceedingly complex!
And next to Infantino, Kane drew the best futuristic cities.
Vincent Mariani wrote: Continuity wasn't a big issue in the 1950s and early '60s, but the recurring themes or concepts like this one were always welcome.
ReplyDeleteThe Professor Nichols time-traveling Batman stories, Superman's lost love for Lori Lemaris, The "Batmen of All Nations"/"Club of Heroes", The Atom's Time Pool tales, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Flash/GL team-ups, and Earth-2 convergences made for some great comic book entertainment that went beyond the standard storytelling.
These were the "events" in DC Comics in that era. Marvel blew things open with their heroes constantly crossing paths in a shared environment, and the various Universes were born.