GREEN LANTERN/SUPERMAN: LEGEND OF THE GREEN FLAME

By: Jason Henderson
Date: Wednesday, November 22, 2000

The genius of Neil Gaiman lies in his freshness of vision, in the beauty and cleverness he coaxes out of everyday comics subjects. In Green Lantern/Superman: Legend of the Green Flame, Gaiman shows us what it would be like to tag along with the titular heroes as they wander through parks, museums and mythical afterlifes. This is a Superman who wanders off in the middle of conversations to pluck kittens from trees, and a Green Lantern who comes across like a Midwestern dork with a good heart who can't stop talking and likes to pepper his sentences with quotes from The Maltese Falcon.

Legend of the Green Flame was written in 1988 by a younger Neil Gaiman, then a new writer given the task of winding up the last issue of Action Comics Weekly. ACW had been a DC experimenta superhero anthology somewhat like the old DC Comics Presents, which had starred Superman and a special guest in every issue. The final story by Gaiman would feature the major heroes who had headlined this version of Action: Superman, Green Lantern, Deadman and Phantom Stranger.

So Gaiman sent Superman and Green Lantern to Hell and back in a loopy, strangely friendly little story that showed the reader that small stories can be just as moving as big ones if the voice is right. And it was never published.

Gaiman's story failed to be released for a terrible, no-good, very bad editorial reason: continuity. More properly, new continuity. Gaiman had written a story in which Green Lantern and Superman hang out together for no greater reason than that Hal Jordan, man without fear, is feeling down. He goes to visit Superman and the two hit the town, Hal tagging along as Clark does a puff piece on a museum exhibit.

Problem: This was 1988. Two years prior, Superman had been given a complete reboot by writer/artist John Byrne, and most of the changes he'd made were only now reaching full effect. Among them was the renewed tightness of Superman's secret identity. Ma and Pa Kent would know Clark's secret, but Green Lantern, among others, would not. So Gaiman's story of old friends would not work, the editors told Gaiman. But maybe Green Lantern and Superman could meet in the storystop a bank robbery together or something.

It wasn't to be. Instead, the story was socked away. Gaiman went on to do Sandman and change comics forever (that's a little extreme, but he certainly did drive up the loyalty and literacynot to mention the fashion senseof the fans.) And the script Gaiman wrote for Action editor Mark Waid languished, finally disappearing completely.


So not too long ago, Gaiman, now a wizened veteran, asked DC if perhaps his old Green Lantern/Superman story could be used. It fell outside of current continuity, but somehow this didn't matter as much today in light of Hypertime. Answer: heck yes. Except Gaiman had lost his copy as well, in a computer crash.

Next comes something of a miracle. Gaiman had copied the script and given it to a friend at a comic convention. That friend had lost his now-twelve-year-old copy, but that friend also had copied it for a friendand this guy, clearly someone with too much space in his desk drawer, still had the script.

And Green Lantern/Superman: Legend of the Green Flame is that story, newly released in a trade paperback edition. The cover credits the issue to 'Neil Gaiman & Friends,' as if the Krofft Puppets were doing the art, but this is a short way of saying that a lot of artists threw in a couple of pages. We have Mike Allred of Madman fame giving us a look at the everyday Clark Kent and Hal Jordan. We have Jim Aparo, the man behind Batman's enormously pointy cowl in the 1970s, returning to the character of the Phantom Stranger. Matt Wagner of Grendel does a chapter, and Terry Austin inks two chapters. Frank Miller does the cover, which gives us great eagle talons plunging through the torsos of our heroes.

The result is a strange story in which the only thing the reader can hold onto is the writer's voice, which is rock-steady even in Gaiman's early years. The art seems to reflect the mood of the story as it changes, but in the end, these are just illustrations, slightly divorced from the story.

It's odd that Gaiman, a friend to the afterlife if ever there was one, is on weaker ground here when he takes his heroes to Alan Moore's Hell. Deadman, who greets Superman and Green Lantern, is fantastic, sad and funny. But Hell itself is a peculiarly unmoving set piece, with our heroes being attacked by hungry bird-demons. Gaiman feels more at home in this story with the characters at rest and talking than locked in cosmic battle. The solution of the story is a wonderfully Roy Thomas-like piece of geekiness that revolves ultimately around whether or not Hal Jordan can recite the original Green Lantern's oath.

I read small stories all the time. It's depressing how thirty pages can go by and nothing, really, has happened. It takes someone like Neil Gaiman to remind me that small stories can be very, very large.

Trade Paperback from DC Comics. Written by Neil Gaiman. Various Artists.