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Just finished the original 66 issue run of Silver Age X-Men. It really ends like they know the series is over. It's strange to be reading these from the future already knowing the juggernaut this franchise becomes.

Batman #94
September 1955

The Sign of the Bat
Script: ? Pencils: Sheldon Moldoff Inks: Charles Paris

It shows us how far this character has come from his roots when the fact that Batman chose the bat as his theme in order to scare criminals is the explicit subject of a story rather than a constant running theme of the entire series. But that's what we get here, as Batman goes after John Marstin, head of a jewel robbery gang. There's no proof of his crimes, even though Gordon and Batman know he's guilty, and a signed confession from one of his former accomplices is stolen right off Gordon's desk. Batman goes to Marstin's home to confront him as the criminal is burning the signed confession, only to have Marstin mock Batman for being slow.

"You're too late, Batman! Bat? Ha ha -- you sure took a slow creature for your emblem!"
"Marstin, you'll never laugh at the bat-symbol again!"

Here we get a very welcome reminder of Batman's roots, something it seems like we've largely lost in these tame mid-50s stories. There are some slight discrepancies with the old issues (Batman mentioning "hoodlums" plural causing his parents deaths and Bruce sitting at a desk when the bat came through the window rather than in his study. And a bat being "an unlucky omen to the underworld" doesn't have the same ring to it as "criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot". So it's still not as hard-hitting as the original, but it's still nice to be reminded of the whole point behind the Batman imagery that Bruce employs.

Bruce starts to use the bat-symbol itself against Marstin and his mob, shining a silhouette on the wall or tying a bat-shaped kite to their car, all part of his "war of nerves" against the gang. Martin's gang just happens to be planning a jewel robbery at an opera, a production of "Die Fledermaus", which is of course "the bat", so Batman uses the imagery of the play against them as well. A few other tricks with the bat-insignia finally make many of the gang members crack, and they're ready to divide the loot and quit. Batman and Robin's final attack on the gang is at Marstin's mansion, where they ride gliders shaped like actual giant bats into the yard where Marstin is dividing the loot with the gang and arrest them all. When Marstin is about to be led away in handcuffs, he angrily says that Batman did this to him. "No, Marstin! It was the bat-SIGN that cracked this case!"

Call this a "back to his roots" story. It's not the crook or the plot that are especially notable, but it's great to see Batman acting like Batman, and actually using fear of his image to catch a gang of crooks for once! I liked the story, but this is the type of thing he ought to be doing far more often. I liked this one a lot.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow #88
February-March 1972

An almost all-reprint issue, includes Summons from Space, The Menace of the Marching Toys (unprinted Alan Scott story intended for GA Green Lantern #39) and The Origin of Green Lantern's Oath! The omnibus does not reprint this issue, so on to issue #89.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow #89
April-May 1972

...And Through Him Save a World!
Script - Denny O'Neil Art - Neal Adams

Hal visits Ollie, who is reading in the newspaper about a man named Isaac, who is in a city called Abraham (the biblical references won't stop here) where he posed as a painter and put some toxic substance on the walls of the local Ferris Aircraft branch. Hal calls it a childish prank, but of course Ollie loves it. Turns out Hal is giving Carol a ride to Abraham that same day, and he invites Ollie along to enjoy the pristine countryside around the small town (which has an aircraft research facility for ... reasons?). The Ferris Air facility is, according to the narrator "a cluster of ugly structures, shocking as blood on the face of a baby." Purple prose, thy name is Denny O'Neil.

Ollie goes hiking in the woods while GL spends his time with Carol, still in the wheelchair after Sybil's attack on her back in issue #83. Naturally the first thing Ollie runs into as he practices his archery is a mouthy security guard, though after Ollie punches him out and explains that he's a guest of the boss, the guard is seemingly more contrite, though Ollie isn't buying it and neither am I. They've been hunting for Isaac after his stunt in the office. And of course, that's exactly who Ollie runs into as soon as the guard leaves. All subtlety goes out the window here, or it would if the series had any to begin with, as Neal Adams draws Isaac to look like a classic rendition of Jesus. And he's got a little birdie perched on his shoulder, this friend of nature.

Carol is talking to GL about the fact that Ferris may need to declare bankruptcy if a new jet fuel isn't successfully developed. There are environmental concerns, but Carol is confident they will be solved. Even in a story where Ferris is "the evil polluting corporation" Carol is still written as more reasonable than the straw capitalists we usually get. GL saves Carol and the plant foreman from a collapsing drainage rig which would have killed them both. GL quickly determines that it failed as a result of sabotage. GL charges up his ring and goes to find Green Arrow to hunt the culprit, complaining about the noise from the jet engine testing. So industry is bad, ugly, noisy, and often lethal, and nature good and peaceful. I don't entirely disagree, but even so... they apply the message with a sledgehammer and strawmen. It gets worse when Ollie is talking to Isaac and he's "the companion of birds and beasts" and dying due to "lung disease aggravated by industrial pollution"... which everyone else is surviving just fine. Ollie decides he's joining the cause, but then GL arrives and reveals that people were nearly killed by Isaac's sabotage, something Isaac hadn't considered. GL arrests him, Ollie knocks him out with sleeping gas from an arrow, and I was laughing so hard when Isaac reams Ollie out for being just another polluter. You earned that Green Arrow, you self-righteous jerk. And he earns the beating by the security guard who returns with backup. Poor Hal is the only one who's done the right thing, but he's decked by the guards as well.

And here's where for whatever reason O'Neil decides to really double down on the biblical imagery with Isaac as Christ on the cross, and Hal and Ollie as the two thieves on either side. The Ferris employees are the mob calling for his death, and they leave all three chained up. They have Hal's ring, so it's up to Ollie to break free, which he finally does, but too late to save Isaac who dies thanks to his lung disease as the sun is rising. Carol arrives at that point, with the GL ring, having learned what happened. Carol's philosophical comment about Isaac's death sets Hal off, and he destroys the airplane, telling Carol to "send me a bill." That is interesting, since on the last few pages Green Arrow turns against Isaac and Hal is suddenly sympathetic, so the two of them both go through a change of attitude. But having read ahead, there are never any consequences for Hal's act of very expensive vandalism and property destruction here, not even a dressing-down by the Guardians, and there should have been.

This has been a preachy series since the Green Lantern/Green Arrow phase began, but this issue cranks it into overdrive. Normally I'm fine with O'Neil's sermonizing, but I think this story took it too far, because I was just rolling my eyes at half of it.... and I'm definitely a believer in preserving nature and minimizing pollution, but modern technology has given us a standard of living that I appreciate. I don't want to depend on some hippie's herbal mixture to cure my ills, as Green Arrow does. There's a balance here somewhere that is completely ignored in this story. And the use of biblical imagery to essentially equate Isaac with Jesus, dying on the cross for our environmental sins apparently, is really pushing it.

This is the last issue for years of the regular Green Lantern series for four years, and he begins appearing as a backup feature in The Flash. The first round of backup stories are in my GL/GA trade, so I've read those long ago, but thanks to the omnibus I can keep going forward.

Green Lantern moved into the Flash as backup stories with the cancellation of his own series, and would stay there for four years, I think.

The Flash #217
August-September 1972

The Killing of an Archer!
Script - Denny O'Neil Pencils - Neal Adams Inks - Dick Giordano

"Noble" is not a word I'd use to describe Green Arrow. "Sanctimonious" and "self-righteous" are closer to the mark. In any case, Ollie accepts a challenge left on his doorstep to meet a neighborhood thug and nearly gets his head handed to him when they ambush him, using a bright light to temporarily blind him. He fights back and is doing well, but his injured arm where he was shot a few issue back throws off his aim, and he kills a man. Having just bashed GA's attitude, I will say I prefer the man here who is shocked and badly shaken when he kills someone to the GA in "The Longbow Hunters" and the following series to whom killing people becomes a matter of course. In this regard at least, when it comes to Oliver's unwillingness to take life, I prefer this version of the character.

Meanwhile Hal is broke, and apparently unemployed. He runs through a list of all his jobs: test pilot, insurance agent and toy salesman, all in the past. Dinah Lance phones him to tell him something's happened to Ollie. GL heads to his apartment to find his costume, bow and arrows all destroyed. An altercation in the alley outside gets his attention, with three young men hassling an older man. Hal intervenes and easily captures the three teens, who admit they planted a bomb in the basement... a bomb which goes off right at that moment to give us a cliffhanger ending.

I presume this is the last of the O'Neil/Adams stories, since it's the final story in the trade. End of a very short era, and a change in direction that was meant to hopefully save the Green Lantern series, running since 1960, from cancellation. Clearly it didn't work, despite how well-remembered this run is. This final story focuses in on our main characters at least, rather than another social issue, and it's certainly a compelling fix for Ollie to be in. It's entirely self-defense, he was lured in and attacked, and his attackers were trying to kill him. The death of the sniper was not intentional. But a decent human being would still be horrified in a situation like that. I think we may well end on a high note with this story before we move further into the Flash GL backups.

The Flash #218
October-November 1972

Green Arrow is Dead!
Script - Denny O'Neil Pencils - Neal Adams Inks - Dick Giordano

As the bomb goes off, Hal gets a shield up just in time to protect himself and the teenagers from being killed. He stuffs them in trash cans to keep them "on ice" and goes to keep the building standing until the firemen arrive. It doesn't seem like this should be much of an effort for Hal, but here it exhausts him, either because his ring's power is still reduced or because O'Neil loves hobbling GL power so he doesn't outmatch Green Arrow quite so badly. Black Canary arrives, having seen his efforts and the two compare notes on Green Arrow and go to search for the missing man.

Ollie is still in a bad place after killing that man, and is still going over the event in his mind. He's taken out his Arrowplane, which he'd still held on to after losing his fortune, and bails out, letting it crash. "Green Arrow is dead!" he thinks, before heading for his destination, a monastery in an unspecified mountain range, where he begs for help to "forgive himself" before collapsing.

In Star City, Hal is recharging his ring. I'm not sure what that "Mortal Immortal" item is, some kind of alien sculpture? He heads out early to meet Black Canary, who has found an operation run by cult leader Joshua's sister. It may be a short subplot in a different story altogether, but it's nice to see some sort of follow up for Dinah's experiences back in #78. Unfortunately it's the usual sledgehammer social justice preaching by O'Neil as 'sister Joshua" rants about running all immigrants out of the country. Black Canary can't fight against the odds, despite a valiant effort, and is saved from death by being thrown off the roof only because Hal shows up, rescuing her with a giant Green Arrow ring construct. The story ends here, with both admitting they've failed to find their friend. To be continued...

Denny O'Neil is still shilling for Green Arrow in the opening caption, referring to him as "a tortured and noble man". Tortured, yes, but "noble" is up for debate. I did enjoy the story, particularly Hal and Dinah getting a chance to interact and compare notes. A lot is packed into these pages and I still enjoy that the focus is more on our main characters than on the social issue of the month, though we do get a little of that too. Green Lantern remains far weaker than he should be, but maybe I'm just used to the modern style of writing GLs where massive displays of power are used to show the heroic efforts and potential that Green Lanterns are capable of. It's just a different writing philsophy in these early 1970s stories.

Ursus mellifera wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 2:42 pm Just finished the original 66 issue run of Silver Age X-Men. It really ends like they know the series is over. It's strange to be reading these from the future already knowing the juggernaut this franchise becomes.

I enjoy reading the early issues of some of these characters, knowing how popular they would later become. For me it's been Batman and Superman via the DC omnibuses. Superman isn't as popular as he used to be, but the character was a sales juggernaut in the 50s and 60s, and of course Batman has spent a long time now as DC's most popular character. Hard to believe he was almost cancelled due to low sales by the standards of the day. He'd be a monster best seller these days with those numbers!

andersonh1 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 12, 2025 4:03 am For me it's been Batman and Superman via the DC omnibuses. Superman isn't as popular as he used to be, but the character was a sales juggernaut in the 50s and 60s, and of course Batman has spent a long time now as DC's most popular character. Hard to believe he was almost cancelled due to low sales by the standards of the day. He'd be a monster best seller these days with those numbers!

Wow. Batman was almost cancelled?! I NEVER would have guessed that.

The Flash #219
December 1972-January 1973

The Fate of an Archer!
Script - Denny O'Neil Art - Neal Adams

Two months have passed. The final chapter of the story opens with Black Canary in a phone booth when a car hits it, throwing her clear and badly injuring her. Fortunately for her she was on the phone with Hal at the time. He rushes to the scene and finds her badly injured. She needs a blood transfusion, and the type needed is very rare, but Hal knows Ollie has the same type, because he and Dinah had considered getting married and had their blood type checked. That's an interesting little footnote to the relationship, which has honestly never seemed that close. Ollie and Dinah fight more than anything, at least in this series. I know their relationship will improve down the road.

At any rate, they had finally found a clue to Ollie's disappearance. The wreckage of his plane had been found on a mountain in California. Hal runs off a man picking through the wreckage (I love the way he makes a salad fork and spoon with the power ring and tosses the guy around with them), and the man swears revenge for the humiliation. Hal finds the nearby monastery where Ollie has been working through his issues with the local monks, one of whom has him using archery as therapy, essentially. He's none too happy to have to return to civilization with Hal, but he agrees. He's shaved his head, but still has the goatee. As they're walking through the wood so Ollie can enjoy a last few minutes of peace before heading to Star City, the scavenger ambushes them from behind a tree, hitting Hal on the head and doing the same to Ollie after challenging him, with Ollie afraid to fight after his experiences. Seems like the ring should have protected Hal, but half these stories wouldn't work if some bad guy couldn't hit Hal on the head and knock him out.

So this little situation is obviously contrived by O'Neil to make Ollie overcome his hesitancy. He's tied to a tree, while Hal is tied to a log in... and I'm not kidding here, some yellow mud like quicksand or something, so he can't use the ring. He's slowly sinking, and the scavenger, named Rink Willard, is gloating. Ollie can feel that his arrows have spilled behind him, and uses the tip of one to cut through his ropes while Hal is slowly sinking out of sight. As dumb as this whole scenario is, Ollie's final unerring shot is pretty cool. With the sun in his eyes he fires at Willard, hitting the scope on his rifle and pushing the gun backwards hitting Willard on the jaw. Problem solved, and the final panel shows them in the hospital with the blood transfusion in progress. "I can almost believe in a happy ending," Ollie tells Hal.

How Hal doesn't have a fractured skull after being brained by Willard with his rifle stock I don't know. The tired old "tap 'em on the head and knock 'em out" trope is trotted out again and is this issue's method of taking the mighty Green Lantern out so Ollie can save the day. This is a weird story, because the first half of it works fairly logically, but the scenes with Willard are just so artificial and contrived, and it's obvious that the end goal will be to have Oliver pick up the bow again. And I guess that had to happen somehow if Green Arrow is going to continue to exist as a character, but it's pretty clumsy writing. But I don't know what other direction they could have gone in the few pages they had.

This was the final chapter in my old trade paperback collection, but the omnibus continues through the Flash backup stories, and so will I. Looking ahead it's nice to get back to some Green Lantern solo adventures for a while, but the quality is not always the greatest. Neal Adams has another chapter or two down the road, but we're otherwise done with his main contribution to Green Lantern, and it's a shame. His art is the best thing about this era.

Ursus mellifera wrote: ↑Thu Jun 12, 2025 7:54 am

andersonh1 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 12, 2025 4:03 am For me it's been Batman and Superman via the DC omnibuses. Superman isn't as popular as he used to be, but the character was a sales juggernaut in the 50s and 60s, and of course Batman has spent a long time now as DC's most popular character. Hard to believe he was almost cancelled due to low sales by the standards of the day. He'd be a monster best seller these days with those numbers!

Wow. Batman was almost cancelled?! I NEVER would have guessed that.

I think it was about 1962. Sales were way down, by the standards of the day. 400,000 copies a month for Batman and Detective comics was in the mid 200,000s, which would of course be enormously successful today. Shows how things have changed. That's why we ended up with the "new look" Batman in 1964, as an attempt to revitalize the line. But I think it was the tv series that really revived interest in the character, and of course we got the O'Neil and Adams revamping around 1969 or 1970 with a back to his roots approach. But yeah, the character wasn't doing so well in the early 60s. The omnibus collections are about to hit that point if they keep going, and it's the sci-fi era for the character, so I'm curious to read it.

Finishing up Batman #94:

The New Batman
Script: Edmond Hamilton? Pencils: Sheldon Moldoff Inks: Stan Kaye

The only other time I can remember Alfred wearing the Batman costume was in Batman #22, April-May 1944 in "The Duped Domestics!", and I think he did it to try and impress his would-be girlfriend, who turned out to be Catwoman. This time it's memory loss that's to blame. Alfred is cleaning the Batcave, tries on a bat-costume just for fun (and given his scrawny physique, it does not fit him at all!), and accidentally sets off a catapault which hits him on the head. When he wakes up, he thinks he's Batman. Bruce and Dick return, and Bruce figures they'd better take their time bringing his memory back to avoid the chance of him never recovering. So Bruce plays butler, while Dick looks after Alfred when they go out to fight crime as Batman and Robin. I'm not going to go through all the plot mechanics on this one, but Bruce and Dick have to keep him believing he's Batman, keep him alive at the same time (which involves contrived ways of keeping him out of the fighting), and fight various crooks. And as we would expect, eventually another blow to the head restores Alfred's memory and things are back to normal.

This story feels pretty uninspired, honestly. While it's nice to see Alfred get a central role in a story for the first time in a long time, the whole thing is just whiling away time until he gets his memory back.

Mystery of the Sky Museum!
Script: Edmond Hamilton Pencils: Sheldon Moldoff Inks: Charles Paris

Batman and Robin are summoned by Commissioner Gordon to help with trouble at the Sky Museum, "the world's greatest collection of ancient airships and planes". Trouble starts the moment they arrive in the Batplane, when they have to help get an old-timey plane and the pilot safely to the ground. The pilot turns out to be the curator of the museum, William Malcolm, who is in a coma and is rushed to the hospital. His assistant John Goss has no idea what the trouble could be, and gives permission for Batman to look around. Turns out the old plane was sabotaged. Batman investigates and runs into resistance from several of the old pilots, who resent the Batplane's presence among their antiques.

Later, after examining some of the aircraft, Batman and Robin spot a shadowy figure starting an old plane and aiming it for them in a clear attempt to kill them. They recognize the man as Marty Fleer, a wanted criminal. They stop the plane and go to find Malcolm's assisstant, but he has vanished from his office, amidst signs of a struggle. When Batman and Robin split up to search, Robin is hit on the head and put into a balloon. Batman rescues him using one of the old planes (which of course he knows how to fly!) and determines that Robin was attacked in order to get Batman away from the museum. Turns out the whole thing was set up to conceal a plot to smuggle wanted men out of Gotham in the museum's zeppelin. Goss is the ringleader, having charged $10,000 per crook to get them out of town.

This is another of those stories that seems to have been inspired by the aircraft featured in it, with the plot written around them. An air museum is a logical thing for them all to have in common. Normally I'd expect Bill Finger to have written something like this, but it was Edmond Hamilton this time. It's nothing spectacular, but the story is a fun mix of a little education with some Batman action.