Green Lantern/Green Arrow

Green Titans

Green Lantern/Green Arrow -
Hard-Travelling Heroes
By Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams
DC ISBN: 9781401280420

“In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who worship evil’s might, beware my power… Green Lantern’s light.”
Green Lantern

One of those fragmented, early childhood memories I have is from the very early seventies. I would have been maybe two or three years old but I was already into comics, especially the American superhero stuff which was a lot more intriguing than some of the British comics at the time (unless you were really into Disney). Note to parents: if you want to start your kids reading early so they are way more advanced than the other readers in class, give them comics like Superman and Batman and they’ll soon want to know what’s being said when these characters take on monsters from space and such like in the colourful drawings.

I remember I used to regularly stay with my nan and uncle for a few hours one evening a week in the early 1970s and my uncle would always be reading at least three science fiction novels at any one time plus there would be one or two comics laying around. These were mostly DC comics (although I remember those non-coded drug issues of Spider-Man turning up) which he would either pick up with the novels from a cornucopia of sci-fi, crime and sleazy novels called Comyn’s Books* in Tottenham (if I remember the name correctly... now sadly long gone) or from one of the nearby news stands or possibly the only other news stand I knew that sold American comics at The Angel, Edmonton (that news stand is also now, alas, long deceased).

Anyway, I remember one of the titles he used to read was definitely this Green Lantern/Green Arrow run of comics from 1970 and I can just about remember flicking through the first issue, number 76, and taking in the pictures. Of course, I didn’t know how important this run would become in the history of comics at the time, nor how influential but, I did love the artwork by Neal Adams (who didn’t) and I kinda knew it was very different to a lot of the other DC comics at the time because the two heroes featured on that classic cover of Green Arrow destroying Green Lantern’s power charger (yeah, like a lot of comic covers in the day, that didn't actually happen in the issue itself) were to be found inside constantly at loggerheads with each other in this and later issues. I knew something was going down here but I was too young to know what.

Of course I’ve caught up with the odd back issue of this relatively small run of about 13 issues (and short story appearances in The Flash) in the intervening decades but, somehow, not most of them and this beautiful deluxe edition hardback from DC (also available now in paperback) finally allowed me to catch up with these guys in a complete reprint of this important run of comics. Why is it important? Well… at the time it was…

The Silver Age Green Lantern, despite being mentioned in Donovan’s groovy hit song Sunshine Superman, was a failing character by this time in that sales had really hit a dip and cancellation was looming. So editor Julius Schwartz gave the character to comic book writer extraordinaire (as he would certainly be known by some after this take on the character) Dennis O’Neil, who writes not one but two introductions to this collected edition, to see if he could do something to turn around the fortunes of this ailing character. And he certainly did… taking on the political and social issues of the day and giving Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) a counter balance in the form of Oliver Queen (Green Arrow… who somehow seems to be known as just Arrow these days in TV land). The whole point was to keep away from the cosmic adventures (that didn’t quite happen but even the stories set on other worlds were metaphors for what was going on in the then and now, such as overpopulation) and to send the two emerald avengers on a road trip around America to argue out and find compromise on the issues of the day. This was no longer going to be a world of black and white problems with easy solutions… this was going to be a world of barely discernible greys when one or the other of the two title characters, sometimes both, would end up being shown that they were making bad judgements and, sometimes, they would fail to get the happy resolution they might be expected to get in any other DC superhero title at the time.

So the banner with the distinctive masthead I loved as a toddler came into being on the first issue of this legendary run, Issue 76, for the first story No Evil Shall Escape My Sight. This one starts off with an absolutely beautiful Neal Adams splash page of Green Lantern flying towards the reader over the top of some traffic in a busy New York City street while various credits are rendered in funky lettering and integrated onto the side and back of a truck. This is gorgeous stuff and demonstrated why Neal Adams was so highly regarded as an artist in his day and is still considered as very influential with his mix of realistic drawing style combined with dynamic layout design.

O’Neil’s story quickly sets the tone for what was to come as, instead of a super villain, we have Green Lantern rescuing a villainous slum landlord who is being ‘attacked’ by some kids. After he tries to do what’s right in the eyes of the law the people in the street throw cans and bricks at him to suggest their displeasure at Green Lantern’s intervention and neighbour Green Arrow gives Hal Jordan a quick lesson in the issue of Law Vs Justice. After dealing with the strips villain under circumstances written to ensure the two are still seen by readers as the ‘heroes’ of the strip, it’s proposed that Green Lantern and Green Arrow (accompanied by one of the Galactic Guardians, for a while) go on a road trip of America to explore the dark underbelly of a nation still labouring under the horrors of the war in Vietnam and turning their hand at trying, not always successfully, to find some kind of a solution or compromise to the social injustices of the day.

And that’s more or less what this run of issues did… until it finally got cancelled but, not after it got itself noticed by the rest of the comics world, for sure. This handsome tome faithfully reproduces (sadly, sans the adverts of the day) the entire run and, even now, I found myself surprised at the direction some of these issues go as the two heroes take on pollution, racial intolerance, drug dealers, political corruption and even handle religious imagery in what must have been a very risky way for the day.

In their adventures, they are often accompanied by Oliver’s on/off girlfriend Black Canary, who is very much a feminist icon, I reckon (even at three years old I was a big fan of her costume incorporating fishnet stockings). I love the way that she’s described and drawn in action here as a total powerhouse who hates violence but is forced to use it to keep the bad guys at bay. Love the pained expression on her face as she is obliged to make short work of her adversaries.

Another impressive thing is the running continuity between issues, which take place in the same real time as the issues were published (so after a few issues the guys have been on the road for six months, for instance). As the characters get injured during their various confrontations, their wounds (not to mention their emotional scars such as when Green Arrow discovers that his perpetually young sidekick Speedy has turned into a junkie), stay with them over a number of issues. Another example is when Green Arrow gets shot in the arm, for instance. He’s still complaining about that bad arm and it becomes a major plot point even in the last story in the series. This is good stuff.

I also appreciated some of the pop cultural references in the strip too. Such as when the characters are attacked by birds under the influence of a mind controlling child and Black Canary compares the incident to the Alfred Hitchcock movie version of Daphne Du Maurier’s The Birds. Sure enough, there’s a wordless cameo of Hitchcock himself in the left foreground of the panel. Wonderful stuff.

This was a great and important comic and, comparing the social issues described within the pages, you’ll soon realise that many, possibly all, of these problems are still with us today… some in an even more magnified form. So, yeah, great comic and a truly lovely and respectful reprint of them can be yours to read now. Green Lantern/Green Arrow - Hard-Travelling Heroes is an absolutely excellent book and a must read for anyone who considers themselves interested in the history of the form. Grab this one while it’s still relatively easy to get hold of. You really won’t want to miss it.


*If anyone remembers this bookshop or has photos of it, please share with me on Twitter.

The Lego Movie

I Get A Brick Outta You

The Lego Movie
(aka Batman 40, Superman 55, Green Lantern 2, 
Star Wars 9, Lord Of the Rings 7, Harry Potter 9)
2014 Australia/USA/Denmark
Directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Hmmm.

Seems to me Lego has been with me all my life in one way or another.

I remember the really large, oversized bricks we used to play with in infants school... and how I invented a three-brick bomber to cause carnage and drop bombs on the other kid’s creations. I was actively discouraged from exercising my sense of invention in that way by the teachers and very soon learned not to stand out from my fellow classmates in any way which would make anyone think I was in any way special or unique. So after the age of about 4 or 5, I never put my hand up to volunteer for anything ever again... a policy I still practice to this day.

I remember when I was 10 years old, I won a runner up prize in a Lego competition at Selfridges by making a Star Wars X-Wing fighter out of scraps of Lego they had in their tub. Now that might not sound like a bid deal to anyone these days... but back then there was a minimum of themed Lego other than the odd set like “Police Station” or “Fire Station”... certainly no film tie-in stuff. This was just standard Lego bricks ‘n pieces I found in the “communal tub”. Luckily, I was able to score two hinged pieces and so I could at least build a useful X-Wing fighter with “s-foils” which locked into attack position when required... just like in the movie I’d seen at the cinema at the tail end of the year before (1977). I remember going to the prize ceremony at the Grovesnor Hotel for ice cream and the presentation of my runner-up prize... um... a Lego set.

I remember when I built the lego set I got as a prize back then. It had one of the “first wave” minifigures as part of the set and, if you weren’t around in the time of early 1970s Lego, then you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. These were not the “really old” minifigures like the Spaceman you see in The Lego Movie. These things pre-dated even those and were first brought out in 1975. Although they had the same basic head design, there were no features painted on them (they were just blank... kids in those days actually were allowed to have imaginations, if I recall correctly) and they were just static figures made out of bricks... no movable arms or legs on them. In fact, no arms or legs of any description, actually.

Flash forward to the middle of the last decade and Lego re-entered my life in a new and, strangely, quite special way. I had a girlfriend but she lived a fair distance away, in Ipswich. I used to go down there weekends and the way we connected, when we finally discovered it, was to get a couple of controllers hooked up to her Playstation 2 and play the heck out of the Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones games. Those games were, and still are, the best platform oriented games ever made... I still play the Lego Star Wars, now it’s been released on the iphone (at the tail end of last year). Girlfriends come and go but the Lego games remained something I’ll always love.

One of the good things about the Lego games was always the humour of the cut scenes. The silent pantomime parodies of famous movie scenes with a whacky twist. I guess a lot of people felt the same and so here we have a movie which caters for the people who like that kind of humour... almost.

You see, the thing I always liked about those Lego cut scenes was their lack of dialogue... it brought you back into a realm of silent cinema. Well, the games have dumbed down a little since then. They’ve put voices into the mix and this is the tactic which they’ve taken with the movie. It’s an easier tactic to follow I guess... it’s harder to come up with something fun without words and, I have to say that, for the most part, The Lego Movie succeeds pretty well in at least being fun.

It starts out with a plot where the main villain of the piece is doomed by a prophecy of the “special” person who will someday find the “piece de resistance” and scotch his plans for world domination which, at the point we arrive at in the movie, culminates with the “Krazy Gluing” of all the Lego worlds into one fixed position as the overall “evil plan”. The film tackles the not so strange idea of people, in this case Lego people, brainwashed and controlled by their governments and constantly distracted by just the “correct” versions of the ruling power’s favourite “bread and circuses”. If this concept sounds familiar, by the way, it’s because that’s the way pretty much everyone of us is forced to live our lives... but that’s a different conversation for a different time.

The film is full of humour and, more importantly, chock full of ideas involving construction and the way the “builder” analogy is applied to various aspects of everyday life and popular culture, including the more surreal flights of fancy and “go anywhere in your head” kind of attitude which I personally can only ever approve of in, pretty much, most all walks of life. However, there’s a point when the neat, self sealed world of, um, Legoland, kinda dies a little for me in the movie... when the film decides to enter the real world of humans and justify why all this would be happening from the viewpoint of real people. And there, in the last 20 mins or so of the movie, is where I think the film loses its edge and starts to feel flat. I can understand that there could be a rich vein of exploration in terms of the outside world and the way the human spirit enables the imagination, but I think in the modern, or should that be post-modern, cinema scene, this kind of almost sugar coated justification is no longer necessary. I think the inner world set up within the picture is enough to highlight the spirit of the human imagination in itself. What with the film being made by, you know, real people and all.

So yeah, the last sequences of this film kinda dulled the edge of the execution of the concept for me, but this didn’t stop the rest of the movie being fun and, like I’ve said a few times before, sometimes the journey is worth it even if the end goal is not always attainable. The effects work, which obviously makes up the bulk of the movie, is all fantastic and the story moves along quite a lot. Batman is in it a fair bit but you also get a fair few cameos from characters in other franchises, including a little sequence where Dumbledore from the Harry Potter films and Gandalf from Lord Of The Rings get into a little verbal disagreement... which made me chuckle and wish I’d brought my dad along.

All in all, despite the unnecessary contextualisation of the play area of the story of the movie, the film works well. It’s not one I could see myself watching again, in all honesty, but it’s certainly an entertaining time at the cinema and the kids will most likely love it.

Legends of the Superheroes

Just-less League

Legends of the Superheroes
1978 USA
Directed by Bill Carruthers & Chris Darley
Warner Archives Region 1

Holy Catastrophe, Batman!

You know, on paper, Legends Of The Superheroes must have sounded like it might just have worked and, frankly, the line up for this live action superhero-fest is enough to get any comic book fan clamouring to see this... that was my first mistake.

Ten years after the last episode of the 1960s Batman TV show aired, Adam West and Burt Ward reprised their roles of Batman and Robin in the only two episodes of this show ever produced. Joining West and Ward are Captain Marvel, Green Lantern, The Flash, Hawkman, Black Canary and The Huntress. Frank Gorshin reprises his iconic TV role of The Riddler for the first episode but, it looks like he had enough sense to bail out in time before the second episode was shot. He joins up with such super villains as Dr. Silvana, Sinestro and Solomon Grundy to blow up the world unless the Justice Leaguers (never referred to as such, this is more or less a remake of an episode of the old Superfriends cartoon show) can work together, follow The Riddler’s clues and save the day... like you know they are going to.

I got really excited about this show a few months back when I found out about it, but there are two things that should have tipped me off as to just how unbelievable a mess of a TV show this is. These are the fact that it doesn’t seem to have ever aired in this country (having now seen it... I’m so not surprised) and the other obvious thing is that I’d never even heard of this one until a short while ago. Seriously... how does that happen? I was ten years old at the time and superheroes were “it”. How does this one manage to get shown anywhere without various people of my age group even finding out about it. Ahh... I guess the days before the internet had their advantages and disadvantages. But even so, to stay off my radar for this long? It’s almost like they tried to bury it (understandable)... until Warner Archives resurrected it on DVD. And I don’t really blame them to be honest... with all these superheroes in it, it’s bound to be a good seller.

To the unsuspecting public at large, that is.

Legends Of the Supeheroes is easily one of the worst, boring, only survive it by gnawing one of your own legs off* chapters in live action TV superhero shenanigans that was ever picked up on a cathode ray tube. No, worse than that... scrub out “one of”. It’s basically an excuse for various supervillains and other characters to mock the DC superheroes and for the DC heroes to go along with it and show just how stupid they are. All this to fake audience applause and horrible canned laughter. It’s unremarkably shot, has terrible acting (although West and Ward seem to be true to form, just a little more ridiculous but enjoyable when they're in their “zone”), has dire music and the cheapest special effects ever (The Flash just dematerialises and reappears somewhere else to signify that he must have run there at super speed). It’s sexist (the women seem to be deferred to in a derogatory manner quite often and chosen for their ability to look like they’re about to burst out of the top of their costume at any second), racist (don’t even get me started on “ghetto-man”) and, worse than all this, simply unfunny... although it’s definitely being played for laughs.

And as bad as you think this first episode is... the second episode manages to run this even further into the ground by being even lamer than the previous edition. The second takes the form of a “roast” where various supervillains and acquaintances run our heroes down, as hosted by Ed McMahon. Seriously, this show is so badly written and disrespectful of the characters that I’m really grateful we didn’t have this in the UK when I was a kid. It would have sullied the reputations of these characters so much that my brain would have melted and I would have never been able to read of their exploits again. Just to give you a taste of how bad this is... when Hawkman’s mother comes around and starts taking cheap pot-shots at her son, she asks him to phone when he’s next visiting home so she knows to put some clean newspapers on his bed. That’s the level and quality of humour on this one I’m afraid folks and, combined with an awful and thunderous rendition of That’s Entertainment by a supervillain called Mordru and an interview segment where The Atom and his new fiance Giganta are quizzed about the difficulties of their sex life... it has to be said that this show ran for two episodes too long.

This is the first Warner Archives disc that I’ve seen that comes with any extras... and it’s the first time I’ve not wanted one of their discs to have any. If you can handle it, and I braved it I’m afraid, there is a deleted scene and a couple of outtakes on here, including a bit where you are invited to watch the entire finale song of episode 2 again, but with slightly different sound on it. This really isn’t for the feint hearted, folks.

There’s no way I can recommend anyone, superhero fan or not, to watch Legends Of The Superheroes. Luckily for Warner Archives, unless you know just how awful and unfunny the content of these episodes actually are, then you will be drawn in by the promise of seeing the live action versions of all these superheroes teamed together... so I really have no way of warning you. Still, I have to admire the label in question because they have been responsible for some terrific releases and even this... um... curio is something which should see the light of day at some point, I guess. But it’s a hard watch and a far cry even from the original Batman TV show in terms of the camp content that made that show so brilliant. It really doesn’t take itself seriously and, although that’s not an absolute necessity and could have worked really well for them... well, it didn’t! And I almost wished I hadn’t known about this one.

Holy wasted opportunity!

*with thanks and apologies to Douglas Adams