March 1968: One Unlucky Guy

I enjoyed the first Guy Gardner story, which offered readers the same fantasy kick that Green Lantern’s debut in Showcase 22 provided.

“A friendly Guy Gardner was created by John Broome and Gil Kane,” noted Al Nickerson in Back Issue magazine. “Guy first appeared in Green Lantern 59 (March 1968), entitled Earth’s Other Green Lantern!”

“As he lay dying, the alien Green Lantern Abin Sur sought a replacement for himself in the Green Lantern Corps. Two people were Chosen — Guy Gardner and Hal Jordan. However, since Hal Jordan was closer to the dying alien, Hal was selected to be Earth’s Green Lantern.”

Kane’s artwork, admirable enough in 1959, was at a peak nine years later when he retold the Green Lantern origin story, substituting ginger-haired gym teacher Guy Gardner for test pilot Hal Jordan. And inker Sid Greene gave the proceedings a fine polish.

So once again, we readers could indulge in the fantasy of being found worthy of an omnipotent ring, of learning to fly by force of will, of smashing through the walls of criminal lairs…

But while stopping a war on Ghera, a planet inhabited by telepathic immortal children, Gardner discovers he has contracted the yellow plague that had killed all Ghera’s adults. Weakening, he orders his ring to find a successor, who, of course, turns out to be Hal Jordan.

Writer John Broome had slowly and deliberately developed Green Lantern’s cosmic mythology from the first, and Guy Gardner was another elaboration of that — the suggestion that someone could step in for Jordan as Jordan had stepped in for Abin Sur.

Gardner — Broome’s wink at fellow DC scribe Gardner Fox, perhaps? — was an example of a character who was dramatically altered in subsequent appearances. 

Acquiring a personality, he became an arrogant goofball to serve as a comic contrast to other superheroes. But his original appearance paved the way for human Green Lanterns other than Hal Jordan, and John Stewart followed four years later.