Review by Win Wiacek

Covering Green Lantern’s solo output from early 1964 to mid-1965, these reprints see the writing duties pass from John Broome to Gardner Fox, whose contributions began in Volume 4. Thankfully artist Gil Kane’s animated dynamism continues to define the super sleek SF adventure.

Broome’s work opens the collection with dinosaur attack thriller ‘The Tunnel through Time!’ and a compelling epic of duty and love as Katma Tui, who replaced the renegade Sinestro learns ‘Once a Green Lantern… Always a Green Lantern!’ The same writer also provides the baffling mystery ‘Power Rings for Sale!’ and the tense Jordan Brothers thriller ‘Pay Up – or Blow Up!’ The latter is Broome’s final work for this volume, although he’s back in Volume 6, and presents the wedding of Jim and Sue Jordan.

Fox writes the remainder, beginning with the tantalizing crime caper ‘Green Lantern’s Wedding Day!’ Fox was a master of deception, building stories around shocking scenes subsequently explained, and this is no less thrilling for being a dream of an alternate Earth. The trans-galactic Battle Royale ‘Power Battery Peril!’ precedes Fox following up on Dr. Light, a villain he created to battle the Justice League of America. His defeat by them results in a plan to pick off his enemies individually, and attempts in various titles reached GL only to result in another damned good thrashing in ‘Wizard of the Light Wave Weapons!’. The thugs in the back-up yarn, as well as giving Kane another excuse to show his love of and facility with movie gangster caricatures, come far too close to ending the Emerald Gladiator’s life in ‘The Disarming of Green Lantern!’

‘Three-Way Attack against Green Lantern!’ is another full-length cosmic extravaganza as Hector Hammond discovers the secrets of the Guardians and launches an all-out assault on our hero. Fox contrasts his scripts, though, and costumed villain drama ‘Prisoner of the Golden Mask!’ and brain-swap spy-saga ‘The Eagle Crusader of Earth!’ look much closer to home for their abundance of thrills, chills and spills.

The captivatingly bizarre ‘Secret of the Power-Ringed Robot!’ was cover featured in 1965, and how can you resist a tale tag-lined “I’ve been turned into a robot… and didn’t even know it!”? That all-action conundrum is followed by the incredible experience of Dorine Clay, a young lady who is the last hope of her race against the machinations of the dread alien Headmen in ‘Green Lantern’s Explosive Week-End!’

Physical gradually overtakes ring magic and a twist-heavy drama of espionage and intrigue ‘The Spies who “Owned” Green Lantern!’ is no exception. ‘The Plot to Conquer the Universe!’ pits the Emerald Crusader against Evil Star, a foe both immortal and invulnerable, which gives the hero plenty of reasons to lash out in spectacular, eye-popping manner.

Green Lantern teams with fellow corpsman Tomar Re to battle ‘The Menace of the Atomic Changeling!’ in a brilliant science fiction escapade and this terrific volume concludes with ‘The Elixir of Immortality!’ as criminal mastermind Keith Kenyon absorbs a gold-based serum to become a veritable superman. He might have been immune to ring energy (which can’t affect anything yellow, as ane Fule kno), but eventually our hero’s flashing fists bring him low – a fact he never forgot on the many occasions he returned as the merciless master criminal Goldface.

Entertaining and mesmerising superhero fiction, these tales are also presented in black and white in the second Showcase Presents Green Lantern, and spread across in bulkier colour paperbacks The Silver Age Volume Two and Volume Three. This series continues with Volume 6.