The Golden Age Green Lantern Archives, Vol. 1

The Golden Age Green Lantern Archives #1

by Bill Finger, Martin Nodell (Illustrator), Irwin Hasen (Illustrator)

From the Golden Age of comics, these are the fantastic tales that presaged today's popular Green Lantern series. Using his ring to draw on the power of a magical lantern fashioned from a meteorite, Alan Scott battled evil in these tales from a more innocent time.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Dc Comics, Superheroes, Science Fiction, Comic Book

224 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1999

About the author

William "Bill" Finger was an American comic strip and comic book writer best known as the uncredited co-creator, with Bob Kane, of the DC Comics character Batman, as well as the co-architect of the series' development. In later years, Kane acknowledged Finger as "a contributing force" in the character's creation. Comics historian Ron Goulart, in Comic Book Encyclopedia, refers to Batman as the "creation of artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger", and a DC Comics press release in 2007 about colleague Jerry Robinson states that in 1939, "Kane, along with writer Bill Finger, had just created Batman for [DC predecessor] National Comics".

Film and television credits include scripting The Green Slime (1969), Track of the Moon Beast (1976), and three episodes of 77 Sunset Strip.

-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Erick Romero · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh, not that good. Read it because I'm making the effort to learn the history of comics so towards the end of the book I was just eager to be done with my "assignment." The stories were okay, like a bunch of primitive "Law and Order" sketches with a new racketeer or mobster to deal with every issue, so it got repetitive. The art was poor, in my opinion, with the dialogue even worse.

What I did enjoy was the basic premise, a meteor crashes to Earth and its glowing green metal gives off power. It's mysterious enough to do more with it storywise in the future. Eventually this metal is molded into a train lamp and finds its ways into the hands of engineer Alan Scott (who first was a train engineer but soon becomes a sound engineer, but whatever). Scott is told by the lamp to make a ring out of it and with that ring he will have great power. He does so and uses his power to fight evil. By the way, that famous Green Lantern oath wasn't created yet in this run of comics.

GL can fly, go through walls, is impervious to metals (but goes down when hit with wood), can erase memories Men-in-Black style, create fire, paralyze people, blind them, melt weapons, and go super fast. I DO enjoy the willpower concept that was there from the beginning.

Interesting note: villains died much of the time. GL did worry a whole lot about the ethical question of whether or not you should kill someone. Oh, also, the Doiby Dickles sidekick was annoying. Like JarJar Binks annoying.

[Joe Bogue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a huge Green Lantern fan and received this book as a Christmas present. It contains a great cross section of the history of the various characters who have used the name Green Lantern. I'm so used to DC's current "house style" of art that I found the action in some of the earlier stories hard to follow. I did crack up while reading every one of the earlier stories that featured Derby "Doiby" Dickles. He's such an outdated but hilarious character. This probably isn't the best book for a casual reader. However if you like learning about the history of the DC Comics line, or love Green Lantern, this is a book you should add to your collection.

[Sean Sexton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another collection of classic comics from DC Comics' "golden age". In this collection, we get the first ever stories about the Green Lantern, aka Alan Scott. As with many of the other early comics, these stories are a bit cheesy. Like Batman, Green Lantern tends to focus exclusively on garden variety criminals.

[☽ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really should learn at this point that certain Golden Age comics are just not for me.

[Andres Halden · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look into 1940s comics that I hope gets a better restoration at a later date.

[Victor Orozco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad at all. I’ve been a big fan of the Green Lantern, only I am more of a fan of the Green Lantern from the 1950s onwards. Basically, Green Lantern started out in the 1940s as a man who finds a mysterious magical green lantern with an interesting ring on a train as he later utilizes it to become a superhero. After a decade of success, the comic book was given a major overhaul.

The Green Lantern wasn’t magical but an agent of thousands of intergalactic peace-keepers from all over the universe and in the 1950s an alien crashes on Earth as his ring is highly intelligent power that chooses a being that can overcome great fear. It is this story that has continued decades later but does still acknowledge its existence because of the original 1940’s story. Retconned as a magical device after the alien device was damaged it thousands of years prior to the events of the comic, it allowed the old Green Lantern to still be accepted by the new Green Lantern.

I have read stories with Alan Scott as Green Lantern before but never his original story until now. It is pretty neat. Very wholesome and well-told story. Love the cute little quirks like his girlfriend Irene Miller and his faithful cabbie sidekick Darby Dickles. But I can see why the new Green Lantern superseded this Green Lantern.

It is still pretty good. C

[Chris Aylott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marty Nodell and Bill Finger's original incarnation of Green Lantern has all the rough edges of the time, but the stories have a sense of fun to them that make up for the crude art and shaky writing. There's no doomed planet or murdered parents in Alan Scott's origin story -- he may be the sole survivor of a sabotaged train, but he embraces the power of his ring for adventure and justice, not revenge or responsibility.

Scott's carefree attitude and the small-time hoods he battles gives the whole series a jaunty, working-class air, and even Doiby Dickles (surely one of the most ridiculous sidekicks in comics history) fits in. As Doiby himself says, "When dat guy gets on the scent o' a crime ring, he breaks it up like a spring thaw -- an' I ain't the one ta fabricate!"

[Brent · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fine and fun, but not as much as I expected. Perhaps having recently read Uncle Scrooge I got a little spoiled on the great art, but the writing was pretty mediocre as well. Still it's always fun visiting the golden age of comics. I have the first archive of The Batman, also written by Bill Finger and I really enjoyed that one. Though it has been a long time since I read it. You know I think I need to read that again.

[Nicolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is stronger than a lot of its contemporaries, but it’s still a bit of a chore to get through.

Essentially it’s a collection of stories in which Alan Scott callously murders mobsters.

Do with that what you will.

https://soundcloud.com/allthebooks/ep...

[Michael P. · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is pleasure in finally understanding what the first Green Lantern stories are like and a couple of the Doiby Dickles stories are fun, but on balance these stories are overrated and not very good. This book is quite a disappointment, but then Golden Age comic book stories usually are.

[Alan Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The original Green Lantern. His ring was powerless against wood, unlike the the Silver age Green Lantern (my era) whose ring was powerless against the color yellow. As Raj on The Big Bang Theory pointed out once that one could defeat both with a #2 (Ticonderoga #2) pencil. Still, a fun look back.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel I understand 1941 now better than ever before.

[Brett Anningson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is interesting... It is so culturally different than what we read today....

[Steven Heywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

These early Green Lantern stories stand the test of time, rough edges and all. Bill Finger's stories, unsurprisingly, are neatly-structured and written to pack a lot into a small number of pages. Mart Nodell's art, though sketchy at first, tells a good story and there's excellent back-up by E.E.Hibbard and Irwin Hasen. No big cosmic stuff or supervillains, this is Green Lantern as champion of social justice and righter of wrongs.