Review by Win Wiacek

This slightly slimmer fourth black and white collection allows a fifth volume to begin with the landmark Green Lantern/Green Arrow tales by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams. However, that doesn’t imply this collection is unworthy of your attention.

In 1968 DC was in transition with new ideas given greater headway via a massive influx of new creators unseen since the very start of the industry. Early work from some appears here, but we open with veterans Gardner Fox and Gil Kane introducing a new foe in ‘Spotlight on the Lamplighter!’ It’s a power-packed, crime-busting morality play.

Mike Friedrich pens ‘Thoroughly Modern Mayhem!’, a story as wonderful as the title is not, answering  a problem many a kid had posited. If the power ring is so powerful why not just banish all evil? When the old and weary Green Lantern of Earth-2 does just that, both he and his Earth-1 counterpart must remedy the shocking consequences. An image of Kane’s original art provides the sample.

Jack Sparling draws Fox’s clever scientific mystery ‘Steal Small – Rob Big!’ and Denny O’Neil’s metaphysical, history-warping thriller ‘This is the Way… The World Ends!’, whilst Mike Sekowsky illustrates the O’Neil scripted ‘Death to Green Lantern’. Social historians might note the inclusion of benevolent and necessary (plus favourably depicted and written) hippies/flower children as more than comedic asides. Those times they really were a-changin’.

Fox and Sekowsky’s doomsday thriller ‘Dry Up – and Die!’ is straight superhero drama apparently ending the criminal career of Doctor Polaris, whilst John Broome takes GL back to the future for another planet-saving sci-fi romp in ‘5708 AD – A Nice Year to Visit – But I Wouldn’t Want to Live Then!’

Two shorter tales follow. ‘Green Lantern Does his Ring Thing!’ is a delightful conundrum as old enemy Bill Baggett wrests mental control of the ring away from the Emerald Gladiator by Fox and Dick Dillin, whilst ‘The First Green Lantern!’ by Fox and Sid Greene reveals how the Corps began.

Contemporary space opera is back in intriguing action thriller ‘I Wonder Where the Yellow Went!’ by O’Neil and featuring the welcome return of a rejuvenated Gil Kane. Kane’s last efforts on the hero he visually created are an eye-pooping run of beautiful, dynamic classics, and none more so than the youth-rebellion parable ‘If Earth Fails the Test it Means War!’, cleverly scripted by Broome and inked by the incomparable Wally Wood.

Vince Colletta inks the less impressive Broome/Kane space spoof ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Earth’, but honour and quality are restored with the tense countdown to disaster mystery ‘The City that Died!’ (Broome and Kane). ‘Hip Jordan Makes the Scene!’ by Broome and Dillin is a regrettably old-fashioned tale of a grifting hippie way out of tune with its readers’ sensibilities.

‘Phantom of the Space Opera!’ by O’Neil and Kane is visually magical, but heavy-handed in transposing Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs to deep space, but what follows is brilliant. ‘From Space Ye Came’ and climactic conclusion ‘Lost in Space!’ by Friedrich and Kane is an unforgettable clash of ultimate enemies. Sinestro, the renegade Green Lantern, makes a brutal attempt on our hero’s life using his foe’s unrequited love for Carol Ferris as a psychological wedge.

Glorious swan-song ‘The Golden Obelisk of Qward!’ has the Emerald Crusader invade the anti-matter universe to destroy a weapon capable of demolishing our galaxy. Broome and Kane depart on a high, blending modern sensibilities with the plot-driven sense of wonder and high-octane action that made Green Lantern such an all-pervasive hit.

To date, these stories haven’t featured in colour Archive or Omnibus editions.