Review by Win Wiacek
By 1965 Green Lantern was firmly established, his series increasingly providing conceptual highpoints and big picture foundations used by successive creators to build the tight-knit history and continuity of the DC universe. There was also a diminishing of the simple wonder of a ring that could do anything in favour of a hero who preferred to use his fists first and ignore easy solutions. What a happy coincidence that Gil Kane was reaching his artistic peak, his dynamic full-body anatomical triumphs bursting with energy and crashing out of every page. As in Volume 5, the writing is shared between John Broome and Gardner Fox, the breakdown being roughly two-thirds to a third in Broome’s favour.
This hardcover opens with two tales by Broome, Kane and master inker Sid Greene. There’s a return engagement for Black Hand entitled ‘Practice Makes the Perfect Crime!’ and a bombastic slugfest with an alien prize fighter named Bru Tusfors, ‘The Fight for the Championship of the Universe!’ They’re mere warm-ups for what follows.
‘The Secret Origin of the Guardians!’is a 1960s landmark as Broome teams the Emerald Gladiator with his Earth-2 counterpart Alan Scott to stop Krona. The obsessed Oan scientist’s misguided attempts to discover the origins of the universe introduced evil into our reality billions of years ago, forcing his immortal brethren to become protectors of life and civilisation in an unending act of group contrition.
‘The Double Life of Star Sapphire!’ is twisted romance as an alien power-gem once more compels Carol Ferris to subjugate and marry her sometime paramour Green Lantern. Fox writes another cracking magical mystery as the extraterrestrial wizard Myrwhydden poses ‘The Challenge of the Coin Creatures!’
In ‘The Other Side of the World!’ Fox continues a long-running experiment in continuity with a superb tale of time-lost civilisations and an extra-dimensional invasion by the Warlock of Ys, co-staring the peripatetic Zatanna. The top-hatted, fish-netted, sorceress is on the latest stopover in the search for her missing father, and this appearance is the penultimate chapter (see Justice League of America Archives Volume 6 to see how it all turns out).
The Flash guest-stars in a high-powered tussle with a new nemesis who’d have a track record in ‘The Catastrophic Crimes of Major Disaster!’, by which time the pattern of two stories per issue is being phased out. Oddly, second-class postage discounts had for years dictated the format of comics: to qualify for cheaper rates periodicals had to contain more than one feature, but when rules were revised single, complete tales soon proliferated. Here though are two reasons to bemoan the switch. Fox’s ‘Evil Star’s Death-Duel Summons’ and Broome’s Jordan Brothers adventure ‘Saga of the Millionaire Schemer!’ offer high-intensity super-villain action and heady, witty mystery.
The Earth-2 Green Lantern returned for another team-up in Broome’s fantasy romp ‘Prince Peril’s Power Play’. Then there’s delightfully grounded crime-thriller ‘The Jailing of Hal Jordan’ from Fox, before Broome raises the dramatic stakes with the hero’s first continued adventure. ‘The End of a Gladiator!’ details GL’s murder by old foe Dr. Polaris and concludes with his funeral on Oa, home of the Guardians!
Broome was on fire at this time, and the collection ends with the hero’s corpse snatched to the 58th century and revived in time to save his occasional future home from a biological infection of pure evil in the spectacular conclusion ‘Green Lantern Lives Again!’
If you prefer, these stories are also available in black and white in the third volume of Showcase Presents Green Lantern, or in the second Green Lantern: Silver Age Omnibus. Green Lantern Archives Volume 7 ends this series of reprints.
