McGinn: Green Lantern subject of cool new collection

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer Updated 12:57 PM Friday, June 12, 2009

Superman and Batman are cool, but I’m all about the more underappreciated inhabitants of the Hall of Justice.

So I’ll take this opportunity to wish the Green Lantern a happy 50th birthday. (When the Atom turns 50 in 2011, the cupcakes are on me.)

Probably more as a result of corporate synergy than a heartfelt birthday present — a direct-to-DVD animated Green Lantern movie comes out on July 28 — DC Comics recently gave the emerald gladiator his own “Chronicles” series.

Old comic books have been reprinted and repackaged more times than Batman has died, but the softcover “Chronicles” series is the best idea yet.

The concept is simple — pick a superhero and reprint every story in exact order, in color, for 15 bucks.

Each volume contains roughly a year’s worth of comics. For the first volume of “The Green Lantern Chronicles,” that shakes out to six issues dating 1959-60.

You can find better deals elsewhere — DC has a black-and-white “Showcase Presents” line that’s as thick as a phone book — but old four-color comics really deserve to be seen in, well, color.

The Green Lantern needs to be green.

Until the start of a Green Lantern series, Superman and Batman were naturally the only ones to get this sort of treatment.

Both of them are up to Vol. 7, which means readers still are firmly in the 1940s.

The Green Lantern series is the first to blast right into the “silver age” of comics — and most everything we know and love about superheroes originated in the silver age.

So I should probably clarify my birthday wishes.

The silver age Green Lantern is at the half-century mark — the golden age Green Lantern turns 70 next year.

If you don’t speak dork-ese, I’ll break it down real easy for you.

Beginning in 1956 (and lasting until about 1969), the silver age marked a comeback in superhero comics after a downward shift in the market.

With the 1954 creation of the Comics Code Authority — a self-censoring body for comics — there wasn’t much anybody could do in comics besides smile and act heroic.

The gory acts of violence that once made horror and crime comics all the rage were suddenly out.

So old heroes like Green Lantern and the Flash (and even my pal, the Atom) were redesigned and given new origin stories for the atomic age.

Others were made even more iconic than they already were.

Batman was given his little yellow oval insignia. Superman was given an Arctic hangout, the Fortress of Solitude. Batgirl and Supergirl arrived.

And then there was the competition.

Marvel Comics busted out the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and pretty much everybody you can think of outside of Wolverine and the Punisher, who came along in the ’70s.

All this stuff happened in the silver age.

Decades later, the stories are as cornball as you’d expect, given the strict guidelines of the Comics Code.

But to be fair, Green Lantern’s origin story, in which he inherits his power ring from a dying alien who’s crashed on Earth, remains one of the best superhero origin stories.

Elsewhere in this first Green Lantern book — the silver age Flash gets his own “Chronicles” series on Sept. 23 — you can see why these comics were thrilling in their day.

Two years before Alan Shepard became the first American in space, Green Lantern was flying from planet to planet. No rocket required.

If you think about it, Green Lantern was a perfect hero for the time — Hal Jordan, his real identity, is a test pilot.

When Green Lantern takes on some spies who’ve stolen the plans for the new X-500 “spaceplane,” it’s never explicitly stated, but you just assume they’re Soviets.

But, really, even if they reprinted this stuff without words, Gil Kane’s art is so iconic, it deserves all the repackaging it gets.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.

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