COMIX THAT GIVE A DAMN!
“AS I WAS FLYING THRU THE SLUMS ONE DAY” DEPARTMENT: Let’s say you’re an average red-blooded green American he-hero, and on some stroke of luck for years you’ve been flying about with long green BVD’s and a magic power ring that helps you fight crooks, right? And all this time you think “Hey, I’m a little short of wonderful!” Until one day you discover you’re a little short of brain one. Like, there you go, flying all over the place, beating up alien invaders from other planets (which is kneat, cause so many of your comic book cronies are still fighting Nazis, and winning WWII with their fists). But all along something’s been happening and you don’t know what it is. Something like slums, and poverty, and pollution and city corruption and heroin addiction and all those things which used to be problems long ago. Long ago, and hoped forgotten.
So, like I said, one day you discover they’re still with us. And all this time you went around saying, “NO EVIL SHALL ESCAPE MY SIGHT” as your power ring poofed you powerful.
Then one day you seem some young punk beating up one of those respectable citizens; a slumlord, no less. One who gouges on rent and doesn’t deliver on the improvements. So you swoop down and wallop the street punk kid, right? I mean who’s HE to go pushing a respectable well-dressed slumlord around, right?
And all the neighbors in the slum are thankful you got one more juvenile delinquent menace off their tenement steps. No more crime in the streets. And no evil escaped YOUR sight, right? And the slum tenants show their thanks…
GREEN LANTERN CO-STARRING GREEN ARROW, No. 1, by Denny O’Neil & Neal Adams, edited by Julius Schwartz. Paperback Library, 75 cents.
GREEN LANTERN-GREEN ARROW was one of the greatest comic books of all times. Was, because that action-sci-fi series has been canceled. The artist, Neal Adams, failed to meet his deadlines, and so the book is dead. This is inside scam of the publishing industry, which only THE MONSTER TIMES dares to print about the big comix conglomerates! Remember: you read it here!
Is the folding of GREEN LANTERN-GREEN ARROW news? Yes, it’s heart-breaking news for anyone who followed the series. They were a mature experiment in “involved” comix with characters who get drawn into the real problems of today, instead of corn-ball beat-up-the-jewel-thieves-at-the-wharf sort of stuff. For over one glorious year, author Denny O’Neil and gifted illustrator Neal Adams made history for Comix, and created a landmark for others who deal in comic book work to try to approach. Just try!
The greatest thing about the late, great, GREEN LANTERN-GREEN ARROW (above all the redeeming social importance, controversial causes, the trendsetting art, the incredible hand-to-hand sockemup fighting sequences, and moral lessons about the necessity of people to think individually, and not follow the herd) was the emotion which the characters felt and made you, the reader feel. Particularly when Green Lantern learns to be self-reliant again and fight with his fists, instead of with his power ring. Or when an alien from a superior civilization tries to comfort a frightened child, and the child hugs him, and the alien wonders: “A strange feeling … an emotion … as this tiny Earthling embraces me – is this what it is to be human?
So, poverty and tenements are good for one issue. What’s next? Right away, poor mine-workers slaving in a company town that’s run by the man who owns the mines … and who “elected himself” sheriff. In other words:
He is LAW! This is like the old song, “Sixteen Tons,” where coal-workers “owe their souls to the company store” – something that happens (amazingly!) to this day in the Southern Appalachian coal-mining regions. Yes, today! Not as drastically as in Denny’s story, but close!
The story was called “Journey to Desolation” and when you finished reading, you really feel you’ve “been there.”
That’s because Denny O’Neil is an author, not just a pennies-per-word comix hack. He feels what he writes, and writes about situations which everyone can identify with. Comic book superheroes went through a “relevancy” act a couple of years back, and Marvel led the way, with the frustrations of Peter Parker, alias, the SPIDERMAN. When SPIDERMAN sold, Marvel had ALL its costumed crusaders “have feelings” – but “feelings” are hard to manufacture, and so most of what passed for “emotion” in Marvel Superheroes was self-pity. And so we saw the weird spectacle of the strongest superheroes in the world whimpering and sniveling about the How the World Doesn’t Understand Them. National DC Comix tried that schtick, also, and had their heroes cry to themselves a lot, too. But that didn’t seem to be the solution and comix sales dropped off for both concerns.
Then Denny O’Neil wrote a GREEN LANTERN story, “No Evil Shall Escape My Sight!” – and gave a superhero something to be worried about, for a change. Like what really is Evil? And Good? Is a slumlord who’s legally evicting poor tenants to build a parking lot, a better person than the tenants who want to beat! him up for shoving them, homeless, out on the streets? And O’Neil did research, and artist Neal Adams photographed real tenements in New York’s East Village to get the feeling of realism to his drawings. This was no slap-dash affair. This was a comic that was FOR REAL.
Both “No Evil Shall Escape My Sight” and Journey to Desolation” are included in this paperback book, billed as “two complete novels” although the break in the narrative has been smoothened by re-writing and new art, so it’s one smooth flow. This book is the first of a series the next due out “soon” following the further wanderings of Green Lantern and Green Arrow, as they travel across America, trying to discover “what is wrong” with their country … our country … trying to find out what really is Good, and what Is Bad, and what is (to quote the author) the “hideous moral cancer that is rotting our very souls!”
If you missed the series in comic book form, you can have it now, as the paperbacks are released. Let me spoil your fun, though: they never find that “hideous moral cancer that is, if there is a “hideous moral cancer” to find at all. Times have always been tough, gang. They’ve been worse back in the days when you could have been burned at the stake for reading THE MONSTER TIMES. The great thing about GREEN LANTERN-GREEN ARROW, when it was alive, was that superheroes were finally paying attention to the problems of the real world, and using people of this world who have real emotions, and real feelings, and real exciting storytelling.
Those of our school-aged readers with who are courageous souls are recommended to try something outrageous … do an in-depth book report on G.L. G.A. for your English teacher. Justify this revolutionary action with quotations of the fine-quality writing style which author O’Neil employs, as his description of a company coal-town: “A tiny hamlet nestled between two dun-colored mountains … a place where poverty is the norm, and tears are more plentiful than bread … where women’s voices sound like the keening wind and men seldom speak … and children quickly learn that life is unending and death is merciful …” Writing like this in a COMIC BOOK! – fergoshsakes!
In case your English teacher doesn’t read O’Neil (Denny, rather than Eugene) fill her in. Green Lantern is a human who inherits a power ring and lantern from a dying alien. For years, now, he’s been taking orders from The Guardians … alien super-intellects who send him all across the universe … NOW he’s back on Earth, refusing to “follow orders” of The Guardians … quit being inter-galactic messenger-boy, and instead will use his powers to help those in America who need his super-help; minorities, poor people, drug addicts (in a recent issue of G.L.-G.A., it is discovered that Speedy, kid assistant to Green Arrow, has become a junkie! -). On this Quest, he takes along Green Arrow, and one of the intergalactic Guardians.
Gee, wish we had a real Green Lantern and a real Green Arrow around to help us all. But what I wish even more is that genius illustrator Neal Adams made his deadlines, so that one of the finest comic books of all time would still be in publication. Boo, Neal Adams!
Chuck McNaughton
*NEWS BULLETIN*
Just as we go to press, a bit of startling news comes to our editorial desk … a welcome reprieve for a great series, from the brass at National. Though the GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW comic book is dead, the Series will live on, 12 pages per installment, in the back of the FLASH comic. Good, engrossing science fiction adventure comix still live in America! Hooray!