Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the Green Lantern character was how the writers of the Silver Age continually portrayed him as a sort of "wiser elder brother" to the rest of the DC Comics super-hero community. When held alongside current revisionist trends to re-configure him -- retroactively -- as an adolescent glory hound and all-around-brickhead, this insight proves itself especially rewarding, in retrospect.

It was the Lantern himself, for instance, who was appointed (by the Guardians of Oa) the task of training his "stand-in," in the event that he should someday prove too incapacitated to wield the Power Ring in its intended fashion. This "Lantern-In-Waiting" (as it were) was one "John Stewart": a cocksure, shoot-from-the-hip young architect with (initially, at least) a chip on his shoulder roughly the size and heft of the Washington Monument. [See pictures, below]

The character eventually proved popular enough with the readership to sustain (albeit briefly) his own ongoing comics title: GREEN LANTERN: MOSAIC. As chronicled by the wildly-inconsistent Gerard Jones, the series was loose-limbed and relentlessly innovative... perhaps a little too much so, as it turned out. MOSAIC sputtered to a wholly unjustified end after a mere two dozen issues or so.

Hal Jordan was also one of the select few individuals to whom a baffled Green Arrow turned for advice, upon the eve of his fateful decision to run for elected political office in Star City...

... specifically, the office of Mayor. [See picture, below]

(Ultimately, the "super-hero running for Mayor" storyline petered out in rather limp fashion, in the wake of the cancelation of the GREEN LANTERN/ GREEN ARROW series. This was a rather disappointing state of affairs, so far as This Narrator was concerned; the prospect of a highly-visible local state politico having to maintain an equally "high-maintenance" Other Life -- particularly in the era of investigative journalism, and "let no public figure have secrets unto his own" -- would have made, I think, for compelling reading. Particulary since -- as Clark Kent so acidly points out, in the page reproduction above -- "Where would your 'secret identity' be with two blonde, bearded public figures in town...?")

Such a fixed polestar within the DCU "canon" entire was Hal Jordan's level-headed, rationalist perspective (and accompanying sage counsel), that it came as an especial shock -- during writer Steve Englehart's classic tenure on JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA -- to see it so proundly shaken, in turn. [See pictures, below]

The horrendous notion that he might have been responsible for taking the lives of innocent others -- even by well-intentioned accident -- left Hal Jordan so hammered, emotionally, that he was all too willing to surrender himself to the authorities, and meekly submit to any censure up to and including his own execution, if need be.

[This was, incidentally, a "keynote" aspect of virtually every super-hero and heroine of the Silver Age DC universe; a refreshing (and sadly missed) aspect of Heroism Defined, in these darker, heroes-who- kill-at-the-drop-of-a-hat days.]

Mention was made earlier of Hal Jordan's awe and regard (bordering upon virtual reverence, in fact) for his immortal taskmasters: the Guardians of Oa. A nicely illustrative example of this was also to be found within the pages of the JUSTICE LEAGUE title: in this instance, as intelligently interpreted by Gerry Conway (writer) and George Perez (artist). [See pictures, below]

Referencing his alien "employers," Hal Jordan flatly avers: "They gave me my Power Ring and Power Battery... they've taught me, aided me, punished me... and helped me become a man."

This was -- obviously -- as much of a "father/sonn" relationship (between the erstwhile hero and his sponsors) as it was anything else. This, too, lent the character a sort of Lancelot-style glamour ("I pledge this sword in service eternal, to King and country!") which evoked -- in turn -- a mystique which endures even today, amongst knowledgeable Silver Age aficionados.

As one of the founding members of the Silver Age JLA (along with Superman; Batman; Wonder Woman; Flash; Aquaman; and J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter), Hal Jordan was consistently portrayed -- as befitting everything explicated about his character, throughout the canon -- as its ablest "team player." The man who, after all, showed no hesitancy in accepting his marching orders from the Guardians of Oa (to say nothing of serving as a "foot soldier" for said organization, along with 3,599 of his fellows) could scarcely be handled any other way, provided the writer had been paying even the slightest bit of attention over the preceding several decades.

(A recent attempt at retroactively "modernizing" the earliest years of the Justice League canon -- JLA: YEAR ONE -- is so aberrant, in this regard, that the egregiousness of its flagrant mischaracterization in Hal Jordan's instance calls virtually every other "modern" character explication therein into serious question. A loutish, swaggering Green Lantern...? Ye cats! Talk about not playing close attention -- !)

For those whose memories of the DC comics of the Silver Age are something more than second-hand... the character of Hal Jordan stands out as one of the signal exemplars of Truest Heroism, in an age (and genre) where instances of such were as numerous as they were noteworthy.

Regardless of how ineptly the character may (or may not) be handled, now or in the future, by writers informed more by agenda than honest awareness... the simple truth of the matter remains just as the estimable Mr. Jordan himself so aptly declared it:

"Once a Green Lantern... always a Green Lantern!" )

Green Lantern: PAGE ONE
Green Lantern: PAGE TWO

Classic Heroes of the Silver Age: PAGE TWO
DC Comics In the 1970's: PAGE ONE

Golden Age DC Heroes In the Silver Age: PAGE ONE
The DC Comics "Hall of Shame": PAGE THREE

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