GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW: VOLUME ONE

By: Tony Whitt
Review Date: Wednesday, June 16, 2004

There are two reactions you might have to reading a critically acclaimed comics "classic" produced in the past. The first reaction is to drink it all in and to marvel at just how little the hype lives up to the reality of the experience. That's the rarer of the two reactions. The second, and more common, reaction is to read with mild tolerance at best, outright disbelief at worst, and to marvel at just how little the reality of the experience lives up to the hype. Guess which category the first volume of GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW collection falls into.

The reasons for the enormity of this series' reputation are understandable enough: it's the first time that GL's series had ever tackled real life social issues; and much like sex, even poor Neal Adams art is pretty damned good. But, as O'Neil himself points out in his introduction, this set of stories is "sometimes credited with introducing serious themes and characterization to super-hero comics" and after reading them, while not wanting to take away credit where credit is due, I really have to wonder why this is so.

Yes, the stories do introduce the concept of heroes fighting against the evils that affect humanity far more often and far more profoundly than super-villains ever could: poverty, racism, sexism, everything that can make people suffer even when they live in a world with a Superman. But the way O'Neil goes about telling the stories is often slipshod and often downright embarrassing. Saying that these stories introduced serious themes and characterization may be accurate, but only insofar as these elements are presented here in a pre-adolescent stage.

The first story, for instance, shows Hal getting the first of many lectures from Ollie about helping the wrong side when he protects a slum lord from being beaten by the tenants he's trying to have thrown out. Sure, that oft-reprinted and famous scene featuring the old black man reading Hal the riot act ("I been readin' about you...how you work for the blue skins...and how on a planet someplace you helped out the orange skins...and you done considerable for the purple skins! Only there's skins you never bothered with--! ...The black skins! I want to know...how come?! Answer me that, Mr. Green Lantern!") is well-deserving of being called "classic." But what we never get to see, unless we read a reprint like this, is the aftermath: how sudden Hal's change of heart really is, and how rapidly he's willing to throw over his respect for the Guardians' authority simply because he's "seen the light." It's the sort of short-cut characterization that we're used to seeing in sitcoms and in the more poorly written dramas and it's a hallmark of the sort of "problem pieces" that littered the entire mainstream media around this time period.

Unfortunately, Hal is the least of our problems especially since he and Ollie (and, later, their nameless Guardian pal who's come to observe them and to learn more about humanity) are the most developed characters in the book. The boys decide to take a road trip to find the "fine country out there someplace" that Ollie's sure is there bad enough that the setup mirrors that of just about every television series ever created in which the main characters travel from town to town doing "good," from PLANET OF THE APES to HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN. (Oh, well, at least they're not fugitives or angels.) And just like the characters in series such as these, they encounter one-note racists whose only joy in life is to whale the tar out of "injuns"; Native Americans who call everyone else "Paleface"; and "fat cat" capitalists gleefully making their money off the work of the oppressed and not giving a good gosh-darn about it. One story even features a "boss" who's taken over a mining company by hiring ex-Nazis all of whom are itching to kill someone (as ex-Nazis do)! When the trio (long since joined by a nauseatingly tepid Black Canary) are all called back out into space for said Guardian's trial (don't ask), it's almost a relief until they land on a planet called Maltus which is plagued by (you guessed it) overpopulation.

When these stories were written in 1970 and 1971, they probably did capture and reflect the worries of their era in a way that readers could appreciate and understand. Reading them now is much like being forced to watch a B.J. AND THE BEAR marathon for 24 hours straight and wishing you had the chimp to keep you entertained.

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