Comic Book Review: DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #4: Green Lantern edited by Jack C. Harris
This volume contains six stories of the Silver Age Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, mostly about first appearances of certain concepts.
“The Planet of Doomed Men” story by John Broome, art by Gil Kane & Murphy Anderson, was in Green Lantern #1, the first issue of Hal’s solo comic after his debut in Showcase. Hal Jordan is testing an experimental space-plane when he feels a sudden weakness and has to quickly correct course.
We then move to the Planet Oa, in the central galaxy of the universe. There we meet the Guardians of the Universe, small blue men with balding white hair. They have summoned an energy duplicate of Hal Jordan to check up on their newest Green Lantern.
There’s a recap of this Green Lantern’s origin. Abin Sur crashlanding on Earth and receiving fatal injuries. The alien searching for a suitable replacement “without fear.” Hal Jordan being transported to the crash site, being probed to verify his honesty, and agreeing to become Green Lantern. Testing his powers and dedicating himself to fighting evil.
The Guardians are convinced that Hal Jordan is a suitable member for their Corps, and send back the energy duplicate with the memory of the meeting removed, as they’re not quite ready to meet Hal directly.
Hal muses on the difficulties his secret identity makes for his love life, as his sweetheart Carol Ferris has eyes for Green Lantern, but even though she also likes Hal Jordan, Carol wants to put her career first for him while she’d drop it for the mighty hero. Hal doesn’t want to “cheat” by revealing his double life.
Then his lantern glows, revealing itself through the invisibility shield Hal uses to keep it hidden. It communicates that the inhabitants of Calor, third planet of Proxima Centauri, are in danger. He speeds to the rescue, wondering if he’ll ever know where his orders come from.
On Calor, the intelligent but primitive natives are praying to Ka-Ma (represented by a barren tree) for assistance against the creature Dryg. They are unsurprised when Green Lantern arrives, but grateful.
Dryg turns out to be a sixty-foot-tall gorilloid creature with a mohawk that spawned in a volcanic area but has been venturing out to kill Calorians for its own unspoken reasons. The battle is made more difficult by Dryg having the ability to suppress its opponents’ willpower.
Hal eventually reasons that it might be vulnerable to extreme cold and attacks it indirectly. Once Dryg is comatose, he freezes it in a giant ice cube and stashes it in the uninhabited polar area of the planet. The Calorians thank Ka-Ma for sending a deliverer, and while Green Lantern does not believe in Ka-Ma, he sees no reason to interfere in their religious beliefs, so just heads back to Earth.
This story was about half recap and status quo-setting, but at least the mission itself showed off Green Lantern well.
“The Power Ring that Vanished” story by John Broome, art by Gil Kane & Joe Giella. starts with Green Lantern flying over Coast City when suddenly an invisible force yanks his ring off his finger. His velocity will allow him to glide for a while, but if he can’t get his power ring back, Green Lantern will fall and die!
Having established the stakes, the story flashes back to a meeting of the wealthy in a Coast City suburb. Among the guests is one Hector Hammond, who came out of nowhere a month ago displaying amazing scientific prowess and instantly gaining social clout. He’s a handsome fellow, with the kind of slick charisma that some women find appealing.
Among those women is Carol Ferris, as Mr. Hammond demonstrates that his suit is made of a special chemical formula that resists staining (ala Alec Guiness in The Man in the White Suit). He invites some of the partygoers to an afterparty at his house, and Carol gets to be in his car. The house is striking-looking, and can fly!
Hector also shows off his personal astronomical laboratory, and humblebrags about the discoveries he’s making, as yet unknown to ordinary scientists. Carol finds the man fascinating, though she spares a thought for Green Lantern.
Cut to Hal Jordan, working on a plane with his mechanic buddy, Thomas Kalmaku.
Quick sidebar on Mr. Kalmaku. When he was introduced in 1960, this man of Inuit descent was referred to as an “Eskimo” and had the nickname “Pieface.” At the time, the general population of the United States did not understand “Eskimo” to be an insult, and “Pieface” was a jocular reference to a round face with a bland expression, not meant to be particularly racist. Mr. Kalmaku was okay with the nickname and his friends used it by preference.
And despite some connotations of the relationship between Hal and Thomas, Mr. Kalmaku was treated with far more respect than the ethnic sidekicks of Golden Age comics. He wasn’t stuck with exaggerated features or a “funny” accent, dressed normally for his job, was a skilled mechanic that pilots could rely on, and in contrast to Hal had his life much more together, with a stable marriage and family life.
When Hal Jordan left Ferris Aircraft in one of his many status quo changes over the years, Thomas Kalmaku faded out of the main supporting cast, being relegated to occasional check-ins for a specific plotline or cameo.
When Mr. Kalmaku came back for a major role in the 1980s series Millenium, the social climate had changed and he very pointedly asked Hal not to call him “Pieface” anymore. Later retcons of Hal Jordan’s early career have made the nickname one other, more racist, pilots called Thomas while Hal knew better. You’ll see why I went on this sidebar in just a little bit.
Hal is suspicious of Hector Hammond, claiming that it’s not only because Carol’s started spending time with the man. He’s noticed that the man has scored significant achievements in chemistry, physics, astronomy and biology all at the same time within the space of a few months. Those just happen to be the specialties of four scientists who vanished shortly before Hammond came on the scene. Remarkable coincidence.
Hal’s plan is to disguise Thomas as Green Lantern, complete with functional power ring, and have his friend appear continuously in Coast City over the next day or so while Hal performs a wider search for the missing scientists, on the theory that if Hammond is the kidnapper, he’d have them stashed somewhere not too far from the city. And if Green Lantern is clearly visible in the sky, Hector won’t think to watch out for him elsewhere.
Thomas tests his proxy ring by lifting a table and phasing through a wall before heading out. He notes that his willpower isn’t as strong as Hal’s, and the ring can’t be recharged unlike the real one, but he can still fly with it.
Hammond sees the faux Green Lantern performing in the sky and assumes it’s an attempt to impress Carol Ferris. Hector considers his victory in the romantic area inevitable should he choose to pursue it, but for now it’s time to visit his “four wise men”, and he turns away to prepare.
Meanwhile, on a craggy and supposedly uninhabited isle off the California coast, four men with puny bodies and large bald heads gather around a tele-viewer. They exposit telepathically that they are the missing scientists, who Hammond has somehow transformed into a possible evolutionary path of humans 100,000 years down the road and forced them to refer to him as “the master.”
They locate “Green Lantern” on the monitor, then focus a “sigma-ray” on the hero to tug him to their prison. An unanticipated glitch occurs in that the alien metal the ring is made of is more strongly drawn by the sigma radiation, so is pulled faster, completely off Thomas’ finger. Thus it is that the dazed Kalmaku arrives without his power ring, which has landed elsewhere on the isle.
As a result, the still disguised Thomas can’t get the scientists off the island, which is surrounded by an energy field that allows anyone to enter, but only Hector Hammond to leave. They start a search for the missing bauble.
Unfortunately, by this time Hammond has docked at the isle, and stumbles upon the ring first. He demonstrates his newfound power and despicable character by killing a tree with it. Flashback time!
Hector Hammond isn’t his birth name. (This information is ignored in all subsequent appearances.) He was already a wanted criminal when he went hiking in the hills near his hideout. His strong basic knowledge of science came in handy when he discovered a somewhat recently fallen meteorite. He noticed something was off about the plant life near the space rock, and took pictures rather than approaching more closely.
Hammond then posed as a PhD student and asked a college botany professor to examine the photos. The professor dismissed them as a hoax, since those plants could only exist in the future, after 100,000 years of evolution. (This is not how evolution works. Roll with it.) Armed with this knowledge, Hector used safety equipment to move the meteorite indoors, then kidnapped the scientists and exposed them to its radiation.
By luck, the evolutionary path the meteorite radiation invoked was one that made the future men extremely intelligent with mild psychic abilities, but also weak-willed so that they had to obey any command given by Hammond. He chose not to evolve himself as he wanted to continue to live in human society and indulge his physical appetites.
Once Hammond enters the laboratory prison, those inside charge him, led by “Green Lantern.” He uses the power ring to knock them over, get an account from the scientists as to why the Emerald Gladiator is here, then devolves Thomas into a monkey. He taunts Green Monkey by offering him a banana. Thomas is humiliated but also amused, since Hector absolutely failed to check his assumptions.
Some time later, Hal finally stumbles on the isle. Hammond has stripped Monkey!Thomas and put him in a cage. Green Lantern flies in, and while Hector is startled to see a second GL, he’s quick-witted enough to instantly attack. There follows a duel between the two men using their power rings, Hammond holding his own with equal willpower and ingenuity.
Hector Hammond temporarily gains the advantage when a random falling branch gives Hal Jordan a concussion. Too bad for him that the twenty-four hours are up, and his duplicate ring just ran out of power. Green Lantern punches his lights out, then returns Thomas to human (reclothing him), returns the scientists to normal, then erases the knowledge of their futuristic inventions from the scientists and Hammond’s brains. It’s best that human technology advance at a normal pace, after all.
Carol instantly stops being attracted to Hammond once she learns he’s a crook. Back to obsessing about Green Lantern!
Hector Hammond is assigned a job in the prison library. He knows that the key to all future knowledge is in the words of the unabridged dictionary, but how to string the words in the right order?
There’s a two-panel update explaining that Hector Hammond later exposed himself to the evolution meteor, gaining powerful psychic abilities at the cost of physical mobility.
“The Secret Life of Star Sapphire!” story by John Broome, art by Gil Kane & Joe Giella, is the origin of Silver Age Green Lantern’s first female “supervillain.” Carol Ferris, acting head of Ferris Aircraft, is out in her personal jet, Lady Carol. She muses on how she learned to fly jets from test pilot Hal Jordan. Carol turns out to not believe in polyamory; she loves Hal and the mysterious Green Lantern in the same way, so the feelings she has for one of them must be false.
Suddenly the controls seize up, forcing the plan into a dive. Carol’s skills are sufficient to allow her to make a dead stick landing in the desert, but the abrupt stop slams her head against the dashboard, dazing her.
The plane is boarded by two women in “sexy Roman warrior” outfits, who speak to Carol telepathically. They address her as “Your Highness.” The women explain that they are from the planet Zamaron, “Land of Lovely Women.” They’re very techologically advanced, and their all-female race is functionally immortal. With one big exception. For reasons lost to time, the Queen of the Zamarons must always be a mortal woman, and must look identical to the previous Queens.
The previous Queen recently died, so the Zamarons have selected a new candidate, Carol Ferris, to become Queen Star Sapphire. Carol admits that she fits the bill in appearance, but cannot leave Earth. Sadly, it’s not because of her family and professional responsibilities, but because she has the hots for Green Lantern.
It’s at this point that the Zamarons reveal they’re not just all female by coincidence, but active misandrists. Even the best of males is inherently inferior to even the lowliest of Zamarons. They’ll demonstrate this by giving Carol superpowers so that she will see how easy it is to overcome Green Lantern.
The Zamarons use an alien pipe organ to dress Carol in one of the Queen’s old hunting outfits, equip her with a powerful gem that grants her the abilities of Star Sapphire, and send her out to challenge Green Lantern.
Meanwhile, Hal Jordan learns that Carol’s plane never arrived at its destination, nor has there been any communication from her. He takes off as Green Lantern to begin a search for his sweetheart. Hal muses that at this point in the continuity, the only two Earthlings that know his secret identity are Thomas Kalmaku and Barry (Flash) Allen. He’s still keeping the secret from Carol in hopes of winning her heart as just dashing test pilot Hal Jordan.
Carol is forced to battle Green Lantern against her wishes, compelled by mental force. In aid of this she commits “thefts” of objects planted by the Zamarons to make it look like she’s an actual supervillain. Because Carol’s heart really isn’t in it, she performs poorly during Star Sapphire’s clashes with the Emerald Gladiator.
The Zamarons finally realize Carol isn’t cut out for being the queen of a matriarchy, and teleport her back to her grounded jet, sans costume or memories of the last few hours. Green Lantern finds Carol there, as well as an apparently powerless sapphire.
Carol would be turned into the Star Sapphire persona several times before she was allowed to keep her memories of the transformation, and by then there were other Star Sapphires. Later retcons changed the nature of the Zamarons and the true meaning of their power gems.
Like Thomas Kalmaku for ethnic sidekicks, Carol Ferris was a marked improvement over the majority of female love interests from the Golden Age comics. She actually had a job that wasn’t directly connected to the hero and was reasonably competent at it. On the other hand, her emotional life still revolved pretty much entirely around her romantic relationships with Hal and Green Lantern, with occasional side trips with other men.
“Zero Hour in the Silent City!” story by John Broome, art by Gil Kane and Joe Giella, is the first of the “zero hour” stories. Thomas Kalmaku is writing in his Green Lantern casebook, which of course can never be published before Hal dies, but Thomas feels it’s important to have a full recording of the truth.
The current entry features a day when Hal Jordan is stumped by an engineering problem at work, goes to a baseball game to relax (the star is a player named Ramis, who may be a sideways reference to homerun specialist Roger Maris), and then has a date with Carol Ferris. During the date, he suddenly clicks on the engineering solution and takes Carol home early.
As he’s driving back to the airfield, it still being daylight due to the season, Hal suddenly realizes that the twenty-four hours since he last charged his ring are almost up. Naturally it’s at this moment that suddenly every sound in the city vanishes. Traffic stalls, and Hal runs to a nearby park with trees he can change into Green Lantern behind.
His ring detects weird vibrations from a nearby building. It turns out some safecrackers have been using a new experimental drill that has the side effect of cancelling all sound over a several mile radius. There’s just enough juice left in the ring for Green Lantern to overcome the thieves.
After turning the crooks over to the police, Hal somehow retrieves his car and heads back to Ferris Aircraft to recharge his power. Thomas pledges to keep an eye out for other zero hour cases.
“Two Green Lanterns in the Family!” story by John Broome, art by Carmine Infantino & Sid Greene, jumps ahead a couple of years to when Hal Jordan leaves Ferris Aircraft for the first time. He’s back in California to visit his younger brother James “Jim” Jordan, James’ wife Susan & their son (and Hal’s godson) Howard “Howie” Jordan.
Hal also has an older brother Jack Jordan, a politician who isn’t mentioned in this story. The initial stories introducing Jack and James made them clearly modeled on the Kennedy brothers, though that swiftly got quietly ignored as events caught up with the Kennedies.
The running subplot with James was that his wife Susan, a former reporter, was convinced that he was secretly Green Lantern. And somehow, actual Green Lantern stuff involving Hal muddied the waters every time Jim tried to prove otherwise.
Jim and Susan are going out to a show, so Hal has volunteered to babysit little Howie. The infant is restless and cranky, not settling down until Hal dons his Green Lantern uniform and takes him on a flight around the room. Howie is just about to nod off when the telephone rings.
It’s Jim, checking in from the theater. Hal assures him that Howie is fine, but then Jim spots some robbers attacking the box office. Being brave but not very bright, Jim rushes out to remonstrate with the criminals. The largest robber, Rhino, knocks him out.
Hal takes a moment to make sure Howie is protected by a green bubble before heading to the Booth Theater. He arrives just in time to see the robbers pulling away in a car. Green Lantern makes sure their stray bullets don’t hurt anyone, then blows out their tires.
Most of the criminals surrender, but Rhino claims that Green Lantern is only brave because of his ring. Them’s fighting words, so Hal removes his power ring and takes the much larger man on hand to hand. It’s a tough fight, but Hal feels the need to prove himself due to his recent romantic setback, and pulls through.
Later, Susan cites the fact that Jim has a black eye and disappearance as proof that he was the Green Lantern who fought Rhino–in reality he was seeking medical attention.
A few days later, Hal sends the family an infant-sized Green Lantern costume for Howie, and Susan quips that she has two Green Lanterns in the family!
“Secret Origin of the Guardians!” story by John Broome, art by Gil Kane & Sid Greene, hops back a couple of years, publication date-wise. We open on Earth-Two, home of the Justice Society of America, the superheroes of the Golden Age. And specifically Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern. In his role as president of the Gotham Broadcasting Company, he is hosting a “come as you were” party in which everyone is supposed to dress as they did in 1945.
Back then, Alan was a radio broadcast program host, so he’s dressed in that fashion. His “man Friday” Doiby Dickles has reverted to his old cabbie outfit, and taken his beloved taxi Goitrude out of mothballs for the occasion.
After the party, they’re driving home and reminiscing about the good old days when the radio announces that a large meteor is headed straight for Gotham City. Alan dons his Green Lantern attire and takes off. To his surprise, the meteor goes right through his power beam–and then vanishes. Below, Doiby has gone off course and smacked into a tree which is about to crush Goitrude.
Alan instinctively moves Goitrude out of the way, but is gobsmacked to see the tree bouncing off his beam. Once Doiby is safe, Green Lantern tries his power beam on the tree again, and it works! This is earthshaking since unlike Hal Jordan’s ring, which works via alien super-science, Alan Scott’s ring is mystical, powered by living green flame. And his powers don’t work on wood, never have.
Alan reasons that contact with that mysterious meteor must have removed that weakness from his ring. His first thought is to notify his Earth-One counterpart, as something similar may remove his ring’s weakness to the color yellow. He leaves Doiby on Earth-Two and crosses the dimensional barrier.
Hal Jordan is thrilled to hear from his Earth-Two counterpart and suits up as Green Lantern. But when the two meet and Alan attempts to demonstrate his new power over wood, it doesn’t work. Bit of a letdown, that. Hal suggests asking the power ring itself what just happened. Strap yourself in, folks.
The “meteor” was in fact a packet of pure energy, containing an alien mind over ten billion years old. The ring knows this because it contacted that mind when the beam intersected its path.
Ten billion years ago, there was an alien race known as the Oans. They were highly advanced and functionally immortal. Their infants could lift large boulders with mental force, while the adults devoted themselves to the study of nature. But they also had time to play, among other things racing giant frogs.
One of the Oans, Krona, decided he wanted to peer back in time to discover how the universe was created. This field of study was forbidden as legend had it that learning that secret would cause the universe to be destroyed. Krona scoffed at this as superstition. He pushed his time viewer further and further back. One day he managed to get a glimpse of an immense shadowy hand holding a cluster of stars in its palm. Krona was intrigued, and tried to push back even farther–
And a cosmic lightning bolt destroyed the machine and nearly Krona himself. This also brought evil into the universe, spreading among the non-immortal races causing murder and injustice. Krona learned nothing from this setback, vowing to try again until he succeeded. Krona being immortal, the Oans transformed him into an energy packet that was sent careening through the multiverse so that it would never reform into a physical being.
The Oans, shamed by their species having brought evil into the universe, chose to become its guardians. They created the Green Lantern Corps to assist them, and gradually aged into the Guardians of the Universe we know today. Since Krona was clearly never coming back, they didn’t bother to keep tabs on him.
But Krona, with nothing better to do, kept scheming how to escape his imprisonment. While passing through the universe of Earth-2, he detected the energy of the Green Flame, and was able to change course enough to get near it. The plan worked–Alan’s beam allowed the Krona-energy to enter the ring and it was Krona’s mental energy that allowed Alan’s ring to affect wood.
Once Alan traveled to Earth-1 Krona was able to sneak away and reform his physical body.
Hal contacts the Guardians, who have already been listening in, perhaps alerted by some sort of long-forgotten alarm. They know that Krona is still on Earth, but shielded from their senses by his own immense mental powers. No doubt he’ll be starting his “see the beginning of the universe” plan again, and it will be possible to figure out where he is by a surge of evil in the area.
The Guardians ask Hal to hold down the fort until they can arrive on Earth, and Alan volunteers to help him. The two heroes spend several pages teaming up to fight various disasters. When the Guardians arrive at their temporary Earth HQ, they summon the pair, and make a shocking announcement. Alan Scott will now be the official Green Lantern of Earth-1 and Hal Jordan is ordered to turn in his badge and gun uniform and ring.
Flash back a bit to Krona preparing a new version of his wayback machine, and making preparations for the obvious possibilities. He needs a way to infiltrate the Guardians once they arrive. So he secretly possesses Alan Scott’s body, kicking out the man’s mind.
Once Krona in Scott’s body is within range, he springs an unbreakable mental net over the Guardians, making them his puppets. However, the evil now permeating his essence affects his judgement, and instead of efficiently puppeting Hal too, Krona chose the more cruel route of getting him fired.
Hal is having none of this, and demands a duel between him and Alan to see who deserves to be the real Green Lantern. Krona easily wins the fight, thanks to his ability to not just use the power ring but create yellow force fields. It would take too much effort to destroy the unconscious Hal, still protected by his own ring, but Krona reasons that if the universe does get destroyed, that will kill Hal anyway.
Then Krona forces the Guardians to watch as he discards Alan Scott’s empty body, but keeps his ring. It’s a vital part of the plan. If viewing the origin of the universe does in fact destroy it, he will simply have the ring transport him to the non-destroyed universe of Earth-Two. Fiendishly clever!
Meanwhile, the disembodied mind of Alan Scott wakes up Hal Jordan through his ring. He explains the situation, and Hal puts Alan’s mind inside the power ring so that they can work together. And so they do, finally overpowering the renegade Oan.
We learn that the Green Lanterns had actually switched rings before Alan had been taken over by Krona, so the Oan was wearing Hal’s all along. He’d failed to check, and Hal’s defeat earlier was him taking a dive a little too easily. The Guardians smash Krona’s machine, then convert him to energy again, but this time sent on a course that will never come near any planet or star.
Krona’s come back a few times since then, the most interesting time in the JLA/Avengers crossover series. The Guardians’ history, established here, has been added to and retconned many times. The other thing that this story influenced was the image of a hand holding a cluster of stars, marking the point beyond which no DC character should look to see the origin of the universe. It’s been reused a lot.
The volume ends with a listing of Green Lantern’s greatest villains and when they first appeared.
The art is good, though perhaps a bit staid. The stories are more interesting for their ideas than the execution, leading to more fun stories down the line. I like the Krona story best because it really does feel epic, while the Star Sapphire story feels disappointing because it undercuts her even while trying to make us worried for Carol.
All these stories have been collected in other volumes, but this one is a must-have for the Green Lantern completist.
