Retro Comics are Awesome

[andersonh1]

Detective Comics #110
April 1946

Batman and Robin in Scotland Yard!
There's not a lot to this one. The mecanics of the villain's plot, which involves using Professor Moriarty's methods to baffle police (though how this is supposed to work is not explained... Moriarty only had one, or maybe two appearances in Doyle's stories, and the police could just consult the books) are lost a bit amidst the novelty of Batman and Robin working with Scotland Yard. Of course Alfred has to go see "his native London", and despite engaging in his usual bumbling detective routine, his hero-worship of Sherlock Holmes is a nice character moment. He even gets to go to 221B Baker Street, dressed in his deerstalker hat. There's also another bit of pre-Comics Code violence as Moriarty tries to shoot Batman in the head, and does in fact wing him elsewhere on the second attempt, but when Moriarty turns on another attacker, Batman uses Alfred's "Sherlock Holmes" pipe to fake having a gun as he jabs it in Moriarty's back and demands that he surrender. Seeing Big Ben and the houses of Parliament drawn in nice detail gives a good sense of putting the main characters in a different locale, much like the sequences on Mount Rushmore from the cross-country racing story.

Detective Comics #111
May 1946

Coaltown, USA
This is essentially the Batman version of the plot from Action Comics #3, "The Blakely Mine Disaster", where a greedy mine owner refuses to provide safety equipment for the mine because of the extra expense. There are some extra human interest elements, such as the mine owner's son siding with the miners, and an old teacher who is fired and has to regain her job, but it's pretty much the same story, and the ending even involves trapping mine owner Julius Reed in the mine in the hope that he'll learn his lesson, just like Superman trapped Blakely and his party guests.

I don't know if the plot was purposely recycled or if it was just coincidence, but as many stories as these guys had to churn out a year, it's not surprising that some repetition would occur. 12 issues of Detective comics + 6 issues of World's Finest and 6 issues of Batman (with four stories each) amounts to 42 Batman stories every year. It had to be hard to keep coming up with new ideas for plots with so many pages to fill.

[andersonh1]

World's Finest Comics #22
May-June 1946

A Tree Grows in Gotham City!
"Nails" Finney (who is always chewing his nails, hence the name) and his gang are stealing radium, with Batman and Robin in hot pursuit. Nails' car crashes outside the tree covered estate of Frances von Orsdell with the crooks escaping into the trees. Orsdell and his family before him have maintained this estate as the city grew up around it, and Orsdell is a bit eccentric, treating his trees like friends. He calls in the "tree surgeons" when any of them suffer some damage. When Nails and his men are caught, there's no sign of any radium, and the police can't hold them. Long story short, they had hidden it inside a cavity in a mighty oak tree, which collapses on and kills the crooks as they hold Batman, Robin and Orsdell at gunpoint. Orsdell is convinced his friend the tree saved his life.

It's the characters that make this story interesting rather than the crime, and I like the idea of a tree covered estate in the middle of Gotham City somewhere, so it's an interesting bit of world-building.

Batman #35
June-July 1946

Nine Lives has the Catwoman!
We haven't seen Catwoman since Batman #22 from April-May 1944, over two years earlier. This story opens with Catwoman in prison, where the other women inmates make fun of her as she's booked and issued prison clothing. A softhearted guard allows her to keep a necklace that supposedly contains a picture of her mother, the only momento she has, but Catwoman uses the cat's eye gem on the necklace to hypnotize a guard and escape prison. When she gets a new costume (I'm glad to see the cat head mask gone!) and tries to get the old gang back together, most of them won't have anything to do with her, since Batman has caught her and sent her to prison several times (do Penguin or Joker ever have this problem?). So Catwoman comes up with the idea to pretend she has nine lives and can't be killed, and with the help of two still-loyal gangsters, she pulls it off and recruits a criminal gang.

In order to keep up the pretense, Catwoman engages in dangerous and daring robberies, and the story plays with the idea that she might or might not actually have nine lives. Batman and Robin are hot on her trail, and the old flirtation where Batman often lets her go in the end is entirely absent from this story. Catwoman has a more strident attitude about her criminal activity as well. In the end, Catwoman seemingly falls to her death, leaving Batman and Robin shocked, but wondering if she really is dead or not. This story seems like a major shift for Catwoman, with a new costume, new attitude, and lots of cat wordplay. And unlike other Batman villains, I can't say that Catwoman is in any way overused. Good story.

[andersonh1]

Batman #35 concluded.

Dinosaur Island!
I've read that this story is where the mechanical tyrannosaur in the Batcave originated, and if that's the case, it's interesting that we still see it in the modern day, with all the many and varied continuity changes Batman has gone through. The story involves master showman Murray Hart looking for the next big thing, and he decides on an island theme park filled with mechanical dinosaurs. Think Jurassic Park with robot dinosaurs. As part of the promotion he invites Batman and Robin, and then challenges them to a (non-lethal) game of survival on this island, with the prize if they win being $5000 to charity. Batman agrees, but big-game hunter Stephen Chase figures this is a prime opportunity to kill the Batman.

Chase captures Breach, the hunter who was to have operated the robot dinosaurs, so instead of a non-lethal game of survival, all the robot dinos are trying to kill Batman and Robin. They figure it out, so Chase admits what he's doing via the island loudspeaker system, and gloats that he's going to kill Batman. In the end, Batman sets a trap with himself as bait to draw Chase's attention, while Robin flies overhead using a makeshift hang glider created from a pterodactyl robot to take out the robot dinosaur controls. Batman and Robin have won the contest, and captured a dangerous criminal as well.

Dick Grayson, Author!
This story goes meta as Dick Grayson becomes a mouthpiece for the Batman writers on the difficulty of coming up with new plots on a monthly basis. Dick enjoys reading books published by Crescent Comics, but complains that the plots aren't really true to life. As it happens, editor Jim Hale is a friend of Bruce, so Dick gets to go meet him. After some discussion, Hale offers Dick the chance to write a story, and Dick accepts. He's soon stumped for ideas, because every one he comes up with has already been done.

While this is going on, Big Ed Conroy gets out of prison, and for once we see a crook determined to reform. He decides to set up a delivery service and employ other ex-cons, who have all had difficulty getting jobs because of their criminal records. Conroy very sensibly goes to Commissioner Gordon and lays out his plans. But mobster Duke Ryall doesn't want to lose all his hired help, and he does everything he can to disrupt Conroy's delivery service, figuring that if he puts Conroy out of business, all those ex-cons will have no choice but to work for him. It's an undercover sting operation by Batman that exposes this scheme and allows Conroy and the others to continue working on the right side of the law. The case is over, and Dick still doesn't have a story idea, but Bruce suggests using the events they just experienced as a basis, and after reading Dick's script, Hale thinks it's good enough for publication.

So Dick Grayson was a professional comic book writer as a kid. Who knew? The odds are that it'll never come up again, just like his photography habit, but it's still a good story.

Detective Comics #112
June 1946

The Case Without a Crime
The final story in this omnibus involves a costume shop that Bruce likes to frequent, and $99 missing from the cash register. The shop is owned by Papa Brugel (and I kept thinking it was a bagel shop at first, because I kept reading the name as Bruegger's) and his adopted family. When $99 dollars turns up missing from the cash register, each of the four shop employees wonders if the other is a thief, but rather than call the cops, each tries to earn an extra $99 on the side to put in the cash register. In the end it turns out that none of them was a thief at all. Corinne, running the register, had accidentally given Bruce a $100 bill as change instead of a $1 bill, and due to a distraction at the time, neither noticed. Bruce returns the money, and all is well with Papa Brugel and his "family".



So, with four volumes down, I've now read the first seven years (and a month) of Batman, from May 1939 to June 1946. I've enjoyed it. Volume 5 is supposed to be out in May, and for now at least, my intention is to keep buying them as long as DC is publishing. I'm looking forward to sampling the craziness of the 50s and seeing how the advent of the comics code changes the series.

1940s Batman isn't really much like modern Batman (and my favorite Batman era/characterization is probably late 80s/early 90s), but at the same time it's fun to read these early stories with all the first appearances and to watch the character evolve. It's interesting to read Dick Grayson as an actual kid, not the teenager or adult who adopted the Nightwing identity. It's good to see Batman and Robin as very effective crime fighters, because apart from the big names like the Joker or Penguin, the vast majority of one-shot criminals and gangsters that Batman helps put into jail stay there.

[andersonh1]

Back to Green Arrow...

More Fun Comics #85
November 1942

The Man Who Reclaimed His Face!
Richard Bright, actor, gets booed off the stage and is convinced it's because he's gotten old and lost his looks. He goes to get plastic surgery at Angel hospital, but Professor Angel, who runs it, is a crook who disfigures people, promising to restore their former appearance only if they do some illegal jobs for him. Bright is not the only victim, so are David Asp and John Cole, and all three finally agree to try. Green Arrow and Speedy happen across the first attempt and foil it, and of course then they're on the case, stopping other attempted crimes by the three disfigured men. But of course, as often happens once a story, GA and Speedy are slugged on the back of the head and captured. Angel forces the plastic surgeon to kill them with poison gas (which is doubly cruel, since the surgeon's family is being held in Germany, and we all know how so many were killed in the concentration camps there during WW2), but he gives them oxygen and they play dead, fooling Professor Angel.

GA and Speedy follow the reluctant crooks to the final crime and catch them, only for Angel to get away. He forces the plastic surgeon to give him a new face so he can change his identity and remain a free man. The plastic surgeon gets his revenge in a novel way: he's made Professor Angel resemble J. Edgar Hoover, and when some police approach Angel on the street, he assumes they've somehow recognized him and draws his gun, getting himself shot to death. The three victims are restored, and GA and Speedy put Bright's equity card in their trophy case.

[andersonh1]

More Fun Comics #86
December 1942

The Man Who Purchased Lives
A sinister figure stalks a hobo jungle and makes some of these men into instant millionaires. Apart from one man, who carefully uses his money to apply for med school, these men spend and gamble and behave eccentrically, until they're summoned by their mysterious benefactor. The shadowy figures plays himself up as some devilish figure calling himself Mr. Mephisto, and he makes bargains with these men, who he wants to commit crimes for him in exchange for continuing to keep them all wealthy. Some of the men are now hooked on the lifestyle that money allows them to live, and agree. The men that refuse are gunned down in the swamp on their way back to camp, which is what attracts the attention of Green Arrow and Speedy.

The two learn about the scheme and attempt to disguise themselves as hoboes to infiltrate and capture Mephisto, only to be shot down in the street when they go to the address they're given. The man who wanted to get into medical school confesses that he was a doctor who lost his medical license. He performs a blood transfusion right on the street and saves the two of them, who should be at death's door, but this being a superhero comic, they're "too tough to be stopped by bullets for more than minutes", and they're right back in the fight, bandages and all. GA has worked out who "Mr. Mephisto" is, a man named Skinny Dogfoot (shown at the roulette wheel in one panel on page 2), who only pretended to be one of the hobos as a way to recruit crooks to work for him and escape all chance of being caught. The story really plays up the "infernal bargain" angle, as if the men really had made a bargain with the devil, and it keeps things more colorful and interesting than they might otherwise be.

[andersonh1]

World's Finest Comics #8
Winter 1942

The Unluckiest Man in the World
I've taken my last kicking around. From now on every charm that people consider lucky is going to be used to make money... for me!

The unfortunately named James Luckless lives up to his name, with a life of misfortune where he can't successfully hold a job or meet women, and it makes him more and more bitter. As so often happens in these old stories, he turns to crime, using "lucky" items to pull his crimes. He throws salt over his shoulder and into a clerk's eyes to rob the cash register, for example. Green Arrow and Speedy get involved and after tracking Luckless's employement history, are in one of his old employers after closing when Luckless, who has recruited a gang, steals the safe with an electromagnet. In the ensuing fight, Speedy saves GA's life and GA returns the favor with one of the earliest example of the old "shoot the arrow in the gun barrel" trick. The two split up as Speedy goes on cleanup duty with the thugs while GA follows Luckless, who is stealing priceless paintings. GA is hit on the head (this quickly becomes a cliche of these stories) and left to burn to death in the warehouse.The crooks have taken his bow, so he improvises one out of cord and boards while the building is burning down around him. It's these impossible archery feats that make this series fun, and which the best stories are built around.

GA and Speedy interrogate the captured thug and learn where the next job is supposed to be, at a silversmith. This time he takes down Luckless, who thought he had killed the silversmith. GA reveals he's not dead, but Luckless had taken poison rather than go to jail, and as he dies, he grumbles that his luck is holding true to form, still bad.

[andersonh1]

I had at one point started reviewing silver age Green Lantern, and then I started jumping around and talking about some bronze age issues, etc. The second GL Silver Age omnibus, collecting GL right up to the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series, is due out in the not too distant future, so I've toyed with the idea of re-reading those stories before it's out, because the continuity of the Silver Age GL is pretty strong and books build on what came before, particularly with the evolving nature of the GL Corps.

Showcase #22
September-October 1959

SOS Green Lantern
This is the familiar origin story for Hal Jordan. The splash page features him in a flight simulator which can't actually fly, being pulled in a green beam of light towards a wrecked spacecraft. The story then goes back to Abin Sur, who knows he is dying and must pass on his duties and his power ring to a worthy individual. The ring selects Hal, who is in an aircraft trainer (of his own design, interestingly). He is taken to Abin Sur, who speaks to him, scans him with the ring and determines that he passes selection by being honest and fearless. Abin tells him about the ring's yellow weakness and what killed him, and then charges him to fight evil. And then he dies. Hal naturally promises to do what he's been asked to do, and tests out the ring by lifting a huge boulder with ease. He decides to name himself "Green Lantern" after the power battery. It's interesting to note that his uniform isn't made of energy at this point, it's actually Abin Sur's uniform that he takes, as requested.

Six pages. That's all it takes to tell the story. Emerald Dawn took six issues, and so did Secret Origin, both of which grafted on all sorts of characters and plots. SOS Green Lantern features no speaking characters other than Hal and Abin Sur, and gets the foundation for the character laid down with great economy. There's no mention of the Corps or the Guardians, and no supporting cast in this first story. And yet, to this day Hal's origin is basically the same. Writers have added in Sinestro or training on how to use the ring, or explored just why Abin Sur was in a spacecraft at all, but the basic origin show here is still intact.

Secret of the Flaming Spear
Hal returns to work and starts to put the moves on Carol Ferris, the owner's daughter, and she's definitely interested. But then a test flight that Hal was supposed to be on goes out of control. Hal slips away, puts on the ring and uniform, and heads into the sky to keep the plane from crashing. He sees a beam of radiation caught in the power ring's beam, and he traces it back to the source, where saboteurs had attempted to make the test flight into a disaster. Hal deflects the bullets with ease, but is ... sigh... hit on the head with a yellow lamp and dazed, while the men run away. Of course, their car happens to be yellow too, but Hal punctures the tires and captures them. When he returns to Ferris air, he finds Willard Ferris (who would be renamed Carl soon) with Carol. Mr. Ferris makes an announcement... he wants to travel the world before he's too old to do so, and he's leaving Carol in charge of Ferris Air for the next two years. She's suddenly all business, and has no time for Hal or a love life any more. Needless to say, he's not too happy.

Menace of the Runaway missile
A week later, Hal's pretty bummed that Carol won't give him the time of day. All the other test pilots think he's so cool under pressure, but it's mainly because his mind is elsewhere. He tries to ask her out, but she's heading to a celebrities ball where she hears that Green Lantern might be there. That's fine with Hal, since he's, you know, Green Lantern, and he leaves. So in a week, Hal's become well known enough to get some public acclaim, and he's all about playing celebrity too, even though he's ostensibly trying to keep a secret identity. Naturally he dances with Carol, and tries to kiss her, and she's more than willing. She's surprised she could be as interested in GL as she is in Hal (yes, it's the old two person love triangle already). While kissing, Hal sees a missile heading for the city, and he takes off in the middle of the kiss to stop it. Of course it's... yellow... but not the tip, so he is able to stop it. Yeah. Hal finds the man responsible, turns him over to the military, and returns to Ferris as GL. But now Carol's mad at GL for leaving in the middle of the kiss, so Hal's in the doghouse in both identities.

So that's our intro to Hal Jordan. We get the classic origin story, the usual "she loves my secret ID but not me" cliche, and a quick overuse of the yellow weakness. The whole secret ID girlfriend trouble works better than it does in Superman because it's funnier to see Hal's ego take the hits. Hal's such a ladies man, as we'll see down the road, and pretty full of himself. He's all about using his celebrity status as GL and his smooth talking to charm the ladies. Here he's just after Carol, but that will change. I like that he's apparently technically skilled enough to have designed his own flight trainer, and it's interesting to think that the test flight he was supposed to pilot might have been fatal had he been in the plane, since there would have been no Green Lantern to rescue him. The art and especially the colors are a lot simpler than modern comics, but they're not bad at all. The flying in particular often shows Hal with nearby objects in view so that you get an idea where he is, and he's not in the "diving" position when he flies. He looks fairly awkward sometimes in all honesty, but that suits someone who's just learning the ropes.

[andersonh1]

Showcase #23
November-December 1959

Summons from Space!
Don’t let anyone tell you that Hal doesn’t like the ladies, because that trait goes all the way back to this issue. Hal as Green Lantern has become a celebrity in a very short time, and he’s using that status to date all sorts of prominent women. It even gets in the local paper, a fact that doesn’t make Carol Ferris very happy. It’s hilarious to see Hal in full uniform and mask taking these ladies on dates and being interviewed about it by the press. “Who are you when you’re not Green Lantern? How does your ring work?” “Sorry, that’s my secret.”

I’m just trying to picture a masked man as a celebrity with women throwing themselves at him. Maybe it’s the whole “man in uniform” thing. Maybe it’s the super-powers.

More significantly, Hal gets his first mission into space. A voice comes out of the lantern telling him to go to Venus and assist a tribe of humans there. Life on Venus is a long-discredited sci-fi convention, but we’re still a few years away from the Mariner probe when this story was published, so I’m willing to let that go. Besides, I find it interesting that the “humans” on the planet are essentially blue Neanderthals, being menaced by giant yellow pterodactyls. If we were to retcon this story to make it work with modern knowledge of Venus, perhaps this was a training mission set up by the Guardians? Who made the humans on the planet blue like themselves? Obviously John Broome was playing it entirely straight when he wrote the story, but I like the idea of the Guardians easing Hal into his role as a rookie Green Lantern. Note that they are never shown or identified in this story. It’s just a voice from the lantern, which Abin Sur made Hal promise to obey if it gave him a mission.

Interesting notes: Hal has to create the shield to supply him with air and heat while in space. It’s not automatic. And the ring doesn’t automatically translate the language of the blue humans on Venus, Hal has to think of the possibility that his ring can translate and then will it to happen. His solution to the yellow pterodactyls (that his ring is, of course, powerless to affect) is to create the image of a bird of prey even larger than the pterodactyls and scare them into a cave in a mountain, after which he seals them in. Nice lateral thinking there, Hal. All in all, not a bad little story, and it shows what can be done with the then-new spin on the Green Lantern concept.

The Invisible Destroyer!
An ad appears in the paper solicting the help of Green Lantern, so Hal goes to check it out. As he heads across the city, he spots a figure on a rooftop that he's already heard about: the Invisible Destroyer. This guy wears a suit and a cape and a cowl, but has no face. Hal takes him on but the ring has no effect, and as the Destroyer is about to overcome Hal, he vanishes. Hal proceeds to the lab of Dr. Phillips who confesses that he thinks he's responsible for the Destroyer. Hal uses the power ring to examine Phillips's mind, and discovers that the Destroyer is a creature from his subconscious, and as a creature of mental energy, he can't be directly affected by the energy from the power ring. The Destroyer feeds off atomic energy and attempts to detonate an atomic bomb in the bay outside Coast City, but Hal shrinks the explosion to a tiny size and stops it from destroying the city. During the final confrontation with the Invisible Destroyer, Hal theorizes that the Destroyer is made of pure energy, and he hits on a plan.

Hal: Scientists have theorized there is an anti-matter universe to counterbalance our positive matter universe! If the two should meet, both would be destroyed! I hope the same happens when anti-energy meets pure energy!

It's silver age psuedo-science at its finest. And naturally it works, destroying the Destroyer. Hal assures Dr. Phillips that he's free of the creature. Later on he bemoans being unable to get a date with Carol, and wishes he could solve his own problems as easily as he solves others.

[andersonh1]

Showcase #24
January-February 1960

The Secret of the Black Museum!
Carol Ferris clearly has her dad wrapped around her little finger, because she's persuaded him to agree to her marrying Green Lantern. She has no idea who this guy is, mind you, so the whole thing is a little crazy. She thinks he was about to propose during a romantic date in the park when he had to go save someone from drowning and the mood was broken.

She goes to see Hal, who flirts with her to no avail. She wants him to return some top-secret X-500 airplane plans he was studying. When he goes to do so, the plans are missing. Thinking back over the day, trying to retrace his steps, Hal thinks he had his pocket picked and the plans were stolen, but though he remembers the man who did it, he can't remember any more. He uses his ring to probe his own memory and finds that he saw the man at the amusement park. He runs into Carol there, and while she tries to get him to propose, he spots the very man he's looking for. A spy ring is operating with the park as a hiding place, and they plan to smuggle the plans out of the country on a rocket under cover of a fireworks display. Despite being hit over the head and left to die beneath the rocket engines, Hal saves himself with a protective bubble from the ring, rounds up the spies and retrieves the plans. As he's wrapping things up, Carol comes up and scolds him for running out every time he starts to propose, leaving Hal to wonder just where she got the idea that's what he was going to do.

Hal has seriously messed up his own love life, and it cracks me up. Now Carol has gone full Lois Lane and wants to marry Hal's costumed identity while she has lost interest in Hal's civilian identity. It's hilarious, and so typical of the silver age.

The Creature That Couldn't Die!
So I married Green Lantern after all! He and Hal Jordan are the same person!

Hal is testing a plane when Carol asks him to drive her to Pine City to discuss a merger with another company. Hal agrees, delighted. En route, Carol tells Hal about a dream she had where she was marrying him in order to make Green Lantern jealous, but GL never showed, so she ended up married to Hal. But while leaving for their honeymoon, while they're driving through the city, a man falls from a painting scaffold and Hal is forced to reveal who he is in order to save the man's life. And that's where the dream ended, with Carol learning Hal's secret. So she puts the question to him in real life, and of course he denies it...

... just as his car runs off the road, and just like the dream, Hal has no time to change to GL and has to save the car with the ring. Luckily for him, Carol fainted and didn't see what happened. The car ran off the road into a giant footprint, and as Hal goes to investigate, he's hailed by some men who reveal this was their fault... they created a creature in the lab that has quickly grown to massive size. Hal finds it smashing through the city, but the ring has no effect. The military arrive and can't stop it. Hal remembers that the scientist said it fed on cosmic rays, so he puts up a giant ring-created test tube around it to cut it off, and it shrinks rapidly to nothingness, while communicating with Hal, thanking him for stopping its actions, since it was a new life form and could not control its own body. I guess I can buy that its actions were a mix of confusion and self-defense, but still....

Hal goes back for Carol, bringing a doctor so he can say he left to get help, and she decides he couldn't be Green Lantern after all. But she's still determined to get Green Lantern to propose to her somehow. The story ends with an appeal to readers to let the editors know if they enjoy Green Lantern and would like to see him in hiw own series, which obviously they did.

These three issues of Showcase cover a lot of ground, and I really enjoy the mix of sci-fi, the old two-person love triangle, the world building and the creativity with which Hal uses his ring. Like so many Silver Age stories I"ve read, there's a strong problem-solving element to these stories, albeit problem solving that has no real world equivalent (cut off the giant fuscia monster from cosmic rays stops its rampage, stop an atomic explosion by shrinking it). Good stuff all around.

[andersonh1]

Green Lantern #1
July-August 1960

The Planet of the Doomed Men
Very b-movie title. This is the first appearance of the Guardians, the first naming of the planet Oa, and the first mention that it's located in the "central galaxy of the universe".

Hal is testing a new plane, when he suddenly gets dizzy and feels terrible. But he's able to recover and keep the plane aloft, and he flies on wondering what had happened. The Guardians summon his "energy duplicate" to Oa, which looks like a green energy construct of Hal. They want to learn about the new possessor of the ring and power battery in sector 2814. The energy duplicate seems to be a "clone" of Hal that is able to answer all of the Guardians' questions while leaving Hal unaware of their presence and able to continue his life on Earth uninterrupted. The sequence exists to retell Hal's origin since this is the first issue of his own title, so we get a repeat of SOS Green Lantern for a few pages with new art and a few new lines here and there. The Guardians are satisfied and send the duplicate back to Earth, summoning the real Hal to a mission through use of the Lantern, as they did before. Last time we just saw that a voice was coming from the Lantern with no indication about who it was, but this time the story actually depicts the Guardians speaking and giving instructions while watching Hal's progress on a large screen. They're pleased by how quickly he responds and charges up his power ring.

Hal heads off to a planet where once again some rather primitive people are being threatened by a beast from a volcano filled valley. Hal is impressed by the alien terrain, and even more impressed by the beast that attacks him. Thankfully it's not yellow, but it does have enough mental power to weaken his will and guard against his ring. Hal decides that since it loves heat, the way to beat it is to freeze it, and the tactic works. He heads back to Earth, thinking about charging his ring and hoping for a date with Carol.

It's interesting to see the Guardians don't reveal themselves to Hal. In fact, they go to some length to avoid that. They also note that Hal calls himself "Green Lantern", so if there is a Corps at this point in the development of Hal's fictional world, who knows what it's called? There's no mention of the Corps in this issue, or other ring wielders working for the Guardians. As always, I'm looking for how the Guardians are characterized in light of what they became in recent years, but there's not a lot to go on. I suspect that they didn't turn into jerks until we get to Denny O'Neil's turn as writer. Given his political views, I can see him making the authority figures in the book into people not to be trusted. Here they question their newest ring-wielder, examine how he got the ring, and watch approvingly as he goes about the mission they give him, so they're pretty benign here in their first full appearance.

Menace of the Giant Puppet!
Crimes are taking place around the city, but when the crooks are caught, they have no memory of committing these crimes. Both the police and Green Lantern suspect someone else is behind the crimes, someone who can control the mind. Hal agrees to appear in a parade in the hopes of making himself a target of the "Puppet Master", and it works as Hal is attacked by a giant puppet float, controlled by a crane, but it's an indirect attack and doesn't produce the results Hal wanted. Later on, the Puppet Master decides he'll really be able to commit crimes and get rich if he can use his hypno-ray invention to control Green Lantern, so he tries it, just as GL is getting friendly with Carol (who still wants to marry him). GL is pulled away, but rather than being under control, he's let the whole thing happen so he can capture the puppet master. This guy was not a very challenging villain for Hal, I have to say. The moment he finds him, he's toast.