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Mark Waid's The Green Hornet #1
Mark Waid's The Green Hornet, Volume 1
The Green Hornet faces the most dangerous enemy in the his long and storied career: his egotistical and arrogant alter-ego, Britt Reid! A journalist with great influence in his city, Reid takes on the public persona of a social crusader, but he's far too sure of himself and his judgment. When he finally oversteps his bounds, an innocent man pays a terrible price... and the legend of the Green Hornet may be forever tarnished! From the mind of superstar writer Mark Waid (Kingdom Come) comes a new era for the classic pulp hero!
160 pages, Paperback
First published November 19, 2013
17 people are currently reading
92 people want to read
About the author
Mark Waid
3,181 books1,271 followersMark Waid (born March 21, 1962 in Hueytown, Alabama) is an American comic book writer. He is best known for his eight-year run as writer of the DC Comics' title The Flash, as well as his scripting of the limited series Kingdom Come and Superman: Birthright, and his work on Marvel Comics' Captain America.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
April 8, 2025
2.5 stars
"It helps to know that people can do the right thing, eventually." -- Britt Reid, a.k.a. The Green Hornet
This volume does the right thing, eventually . . . unfortunately that being in the final chapter. Writer Waid professes to being a longtime fan of the fictional vigilante - who premiered on radio three years before the first print appearance of Batman - but his take on this character edges into that tiresome 21st century habit of deconstruction. But why fix something that isn't broken? Would it be too much to ask that The Green Hornet be portrayed as he was in his 1930's/40's-era radio series, mid-1960's TV show, or the NOW comics line of the late 1980's? Only briefly during the action-oriented climax do we finally get Hornet and his sidekick Kato heroically crashing through doors to kick the blazes out of the assembled bad guys of a post-Great Depression but pre-WWII Chicago. A lot more of those fun encounters - and a hell of a lot less of the muddled political intrigue with its endlessly perfunctory dialogue scenes between villainous crime bosses - would have been welcome.
"It helps to know that people can do the right thing, eventually." -- Britt Reid, a.k.a. The Green Hornet
This volume does the right thing, eventually . . . unfortunately that being in the final chapter. Writer Waid professes to being a longtime fan of the fictional vigilante - who premiered on radio three years before the first print appearance of Batman - but his take on this character edges into that tiresome 21st century habit of deconstruction. But why fix something that isn't broken? Would it be too much to ask that The Green Hornet be portrayed as he was in his 1930's/40's-era radio series, mid-1960's TV show, or the NOW comics line of the late 1980's? Only briefly during the action-oriented climax do we finally get Hornet and his sidekick Kato heroically crashing through doors to kick the blazes out of the assembled bad guys of a post-Great Depression but pre-WWII Chicago. A lot more of those fun encounters - and a hell of a lot less of the muddled political intrigue with its endlessly perfunctory dialogue scenes between villainous crime bosses - would have been welcome.
October 1, 2025
An interesting new approach to the classic Golden Age character. nice read. Recommended
November 21, 2013
Mark Waid's Green Hornet presents a flawed hero who while seeking to do good gets himself enmeshed in more schemes than he knows. He fights crime under a mask while also crusading against crime using his bully pulpit as a newspaper owner. There is a sup-plot of Nazi-inspired sabotage that the Green Hornet get charged with committing. And the newspaper alter-ego decides to run for mayor. Add dissension in the ranks of characters and you end up with plenty of plot lines for the next volume (not to mention a bit of humble-pie for the hero).
February 16, 2015
I picked this up on a recent Comixology sale because I have a love and adoration for Mark Waid's writing. But this is almost incomprehensible. The art is pretty slipshod and generic, which certainly doesn't help when distinguishing characters, but the plot is all over the place and half the time barely connects together. What's even worse is that this was a passion project for Waid, so I can't even put the general shoddiness down to work-for-hire. Just a mess.
July 14, 2015
This review originally appeared at http://www.comicpow.com/2015/02/25/ma... and covers both volumes 1 and 2. If you go to my Comic POW! site you can see the associated images.
--
As I mentioned in my John Carter first look, I’m somewhat new to Dynamite’s properties; more accurately, their licensed properties. When I attended the Pulp Panel at Baltimore Comic-Con 2014, I was interested in the Green Hornet for the first time. My only previous exposure was the trailer for the Seth Rogan film. I knew it was an old character from the time of the radio serials, but not much else. But after hearing about Mark Waid’s take on it, I flagged it as something to check out. Last time we looked at Kevin Smiths’ Green Hornet. This time we take a look at Mark Waid’s first two volumes. I don’t want to muddle things with comparisons, so I’ll just be taking a look at what Mark Waid did and, in about a month, there’ll be a comparison article.
As I did last time, I’d like to first quickly outline the story and then take a look at the themes Mark Waid is exploring. This time the story takes place in the 1940s, closer to the original Green Hornet stories. This allows Mark Waid to make use of pulp tropes and simpler technology. There are just some plots that don’t make sense in a world with Twitter, cell phones, the Internet, etc. The Green Hornet and Kato have been operating for a while, but not long enough that all the lowlifes know who they are. A new mob boss, Cerelli, arrives from San Francisco and already knows who The Green Hornet is, such is his infamy. In a plot that comes right out of the pulp era, The Green Hornet finds out that Axis power agents have infiltrated the USA and are trying to sabotage US efforts to assist the Europeans in the war. They are also waging a propaganda war to try and keep the US out of the war. Eventually Britt Reid figures out that the city’s industrialists are on the take as the Germans are paying them and they’re also collecting insurance on the goods they destroy. Additionally, it turns out that Cerelli is a German masquerading as an Italian. After The Green Hornet and Kato disrupt the German plot, they decide to retire as the events of this arc were hard to manage. Unfortunately, Lenore Case blackmails/guilt trips them into continuing. Thus we end with a proper pulp ending – the hero did some good, did some bad, and lost some of himself and his freedom in the process. (At least he’s alive at the end)
In addition to comparing The Green Hornet to Batman again, there are three themes I want to explore. The main theme is the theme of lies and deception. This is held up by the pillars of controlling information and a complexity that leads to a loss of control. These are central themes that Mark Waid likes to explore. Here are some relevant quotes from my 2012 interview with Mark Waid:
Me: Because for me the thing that brings in Jurassic Park is it seems like there’s a million places where the Plutonian could have been stopped, but people weren’t honest with each other. Or they had different agendas. And that’s kinda what keeps it going and it seems so real. Because the same thing happens in Jurassic Park, especially in the novel – the whole reason it kicks off is because people are being dishonest. Dennis Nedry shuts off the stuff and all that.
MW: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I think that’s a big part of it. It’s not just about one guy and his foibles and all these other stellar, completely beyond reproach super heroes who have to stop him. It’s that watching his sins sort of exposes their own. Everybody has things they’ve done in the past that they regret, everybody has things they’ve done that are mistakes. When you watch them compound each other as they sort of realize from each others’ point of view how they’ve contributed to the overall problem, I think that’s what makes the narrative as strong as it is.
and later in the interview:
Me: The last geeky thing I wanted to ask you before we circle back around to Thrillbent: I noticed, at least between these two titles, I haven’t read your Daredevil or some of your older material, but you seem to have a big focus on themes of trust and themes of infidelity. For example, Bette and the Plutonian and in Insufferable – we haven’t seen the consequences yet – but Nocturnus he stole someone’s wife who became Galahad’s mom.
MW: Yeah, I gotta say, when you put it that way I never really thought about it, but I guess those are honest themes in all of my work because I really believe that the most destructive things that people can do (we get interrupted by an announcement made over the PA). Alright, here’s the thing, if you think of super hero comics and the entire medium of super hero comics as an inverted pyramid then at the very apex is the concept that Superman can put on glasses and live among us and not tell us who he really is. And there’s pluses and minuses to that. And I think that my fascination with this idea secrets – the way you keep secrets in the super hero universe – secret identities and secret alter-egos and secret powers – has always been a fascination to me. So it makes sense that the most dramatic stories I can tell are the ones where people aren’t honest with each other or don’t tell each other everything they need to know. And even the simplest omissions of fact can lead to huge, horrible consequences. So that, to me, that’s the huge part of a lot of the drama that I write.
The most basic deception, of course, is that of Britt Reid and Kato playing super-criminal. In a lot of ways, this is the least interesting deception on its own. Of course, it is this deception that leads Britt to act upon his assumed identity and set in motion the complexity and loss of control. What I find more interesting are the contrasting deceptions carried out by Cerelli and the Chicago industrialists. Both are working for the German cause, but present quite different fronts. Cerelli tries to mask his seditious work by hiding in other illegitimate work. It allows him to operate among shady characters without attracting any extra attention. This works extra well because the police are already corrupt so they wouldn’t pay another mobster much attention as long as the mobster paid their bills. Also, his supposed racket is importing weapons, so if the Germans needed weapons, it wouldn’t arouse suspicion. On the opposite end are the industrialists. In the USA we’ve had a split personality view of the rich for a while. We are never surprised to hear about decadence, perversion, and white collar crime. At the same time, these people command respect and are often offered perks like being able to turn themselves in and another chance at life rather than being ruined in prison.
Key to the ability to run the deception campaigns is being able to control the flow of information. Britt Reid runs what appears to be one of the most widely read newspapers we’ve been conditioned to find information to be more truthful if it’s on paper. Additionally, a newspaper is supposed to have editorial checks to make sure it isn’t printing falsehoods. (Although, that has only been the case in a small portion of the history of newspapers in the USA) So Reid has an enormous power with his newspaper to guide what the public thinks as well as their outrages. He often strives to use this power for good and even uses the leads he gets as The Green Hornet to print headlines that move the public to push the police and government officials to investigate things. This can lead to some issues and Mark Waid is a smart enough writer to have Ried face some difficulties to allow our suspension of disbelief not be stretched to the limit. For example, Reid is manipulated into accusing a family friend of being a Nazi sympathizer and then when he’s revealed to be wrong, it makes it seem as though he did it for personal gain – to become mayor. (Which the same people had pushed him into) Additionally, it was tough for me to believe that the criminal underworld wouldn’t realize that secrets only The Green Hornet knew ended up in the newspaper. Reid is lucky his reputation and violence make most of those at the top dismiss the notion. Reid is not the only newspaper in town and his rival are not above using tricks and photo opportunities to make Reid look bad.
When the board threatens to kick Reid out, he quits and buys a radio station. He talk a lot about it being the medium of the future, which it was at the time. It also makes a lot of sense for what Reid wishes to accomplish. A radio station is orders of magnitude faster than a newspaper in getting new information out to the public. Most newspapers need the morning’s news printed the night before in order to have it ready for press time. While some newspapers printed morning and evening editions back before TV and the Internet, the news is still always several hours old. With a radio station Reid can run circles around his newspaper rivals. Radio also allows for the emotion of voice to be transmitted along with the words, causing people to be more easily stirred to action.
Finally, Reid sets up a proto-Internet by ordering news service terminals from around the world. It was the fastest way to get information before satellite transmissions. This allows him to know what’s going on around the world right away. While this would be overkill for most local heroes, given this story involves Nazis, this level of information flow is important.
These two themes lead us to another Waid favorite – the chaos of complex plans. As The Green Hornet continues to spin lies and deceptions, more and more of Chicago is thrown into the web and he starts having to deal with the chaos added by human interaction. For example, when he’s trapped in a basement he attempts to corrupt the last honest cop on the force. He mentions the man’s wife needs medical treatment and the money will help. The cop accepts the money and Kato asks Hornet if he’s perhaps set something bad into motion by getting rid of the last good cop. Then we cheer as he later gives the money back to The Green Hornet – he was incorruptible! But it turns out his wife didn’t find his honesty to be so noble when she was dying. She kills herself and if that wasn’t enough to put him over the edge, Reid has Casey offer him the money through legitimate means right after his wife kills herself. He becomes an uncontrollable sociopath that causes Reid all kinds of grief – even though he’s working FOR The Green Hornet. Eventually Hornet is forced to have him jailed by making it seem as though he killed his wife (rather than her suicide).
Additionally, one of the negative aspects of The Green Hornet being as masked man is that anyone can pretend to be The Green Hornet. So he has to deal with a counterfeit Hornet who’s forcing kids to work for him and threatening to ship them off to be sex slaves in Asia. After he deals with that, he’s once again stuck dealing with a Green Hornet imposter problem right as he and Kato decide to retire. It turns out that Casey has purposely donned the costume to get herself arrested. She is addicted to information and to the thrill of stopping crime so she wants to get information from criminals in jail. Finally, she’s blackmailed Reid because if he doesn’t continue now, he’s saying she went to jail in vain.
As I did last time, I’d like to make some comparisons with Batman, The Green Hornet’s pulp contemporary. On a basic level, Waid has Reid gain a sort of arrogance and overconfidence that leads him to believe his mission to be so righteous he often puts them above his relationships – the very same relationships that keep him sane and keep him grounded. In this iteration, Kato plays the dual roles analogous to both Robin and Alfred. Especially important within this story is his Alfred role as Reid’s conscious. Finally, Casey is made into a 1940s version of The Oracle. Not only is she responsible for combing the proto-Internet, but she also keeps track of where the cops and his rival are in real time.
So, there you go. We’ve now seen a modern Green Hornet and a period piece Green Hornet. In a little over a month we’ll have the big compare and contrast article.
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
--
As I mentioned in my John Carter first look, I’m somewhat new to Dynamite’s properties; more accurately, their licensed properties. When I attended the Pulp Panel at Baltimore Comic-Con 2014, I was interested in the Green Hornet for the first time. My only previous exposure was the trailer for the Seth Rogan film. I knew it was an old character from the time of the radio serials, but not much else. But after hearing about Mark Waid’s take on it, I flagged it as something to check out. Last time we looked at Kevin Smiths’ Green Hornet. This time we take a look at Mark Waid’s first two volumes. I don’t want to muddle things with comparisons, so I’ll just be taking a look at what Mark Waid did and, in about a month, there’ll be a comparison article.
As I did last time, I’d like to first quickly outline the story and then take a look at the themes Mark Waid is exploring. This time the story takes place in the 1940s, closer to the original Green Hornet stories. This allows Mark Waid to make use of pulp tropes and simpler technology. There are just some plots that don’t make sense in a world with Twitter, cell phones, the Internet, etc. The Green Hornet and Kato have been operating for a while, but not long enough that all the lowlifes know who they are. A new mob boss, Cerelli, arrives from San Francisco and already knows who The Green Hornet is, such is his infamy. In a plot that comes right out of the pulp era, The Green Hornet finds out that Axis power agents have infiltrated the USA and are trying to sabotage US efforts to assist the Europeans in the war. They are also waging a propaganda war to try and keep the US out of the war. Eventually Britt Reid figures out that the city’s industrialists are on the take as the Germans are paying them and they’re also collecting insurance on the goods they destroy. Additionally, it turns out that Cerelli is a German masquerading as an Italian. After The Green Hornet and Kato disrupt the German plot, they decide to retire as the events of this arc were hard to manage. Unfortunately, Lenore Case blackmails/guilt trips them into continuing. Thus we end with a proper pulp ending – the hero did some good, did some bad, and lost some of himself and his freedom in the process. (At least he’s alive at the end)
In addition to comparing The Green Hornet to Batman again, there are three themes I want to explore. The main theme is the theme of lies and deception. This is held up by the pillars of controlling information and a complexity that leads to a loss of control. These are central themes that Mark Waid likes to explore. Here are some relevant quotes from my 2012 interview with Mark Waid:
Me: Because for me the thing that brings in Jurassic Park is it seems like there’s a million places where the Plutonian could have been stopped, but people weren’t honest with each other. Or they had different agendas. And that’s kinda what keeps it going and it seems so real. Because the same thing happens in Jurassic Park, especially in the novel – the whole reason it kicks off is because people are being dishonest. Dennis Nedry shuts off the stuff and all that.
MW: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I think that’s a big part of it. It’s not just about one guy and his foibles and all these other stellar, completely beyond reproach super heroes who have to stop him. It’s that watching his sins sort of exposes their own. Everybody has things they’ve done in the past that they regret, everybody has things they’ve done that are mistakes. When you watch them compound each other as they sort of realize from each others’ point of view how they’ve contributed to the overall problem, I think that’s what makes the narrative as strong as it is.
and later in the interview:
Me: The last geeky thing I wanted to ask you before we circle back around to Thrillbent: I noticed, at least between these two titles, I haven’t read your Daredevil or some of your older material, but you seem to have a big focus on themes of trust and themes of infidelity. For example, Bette and the Plutonian and in Insufferable – we haven’t seen the consequences yet – but Nocturnus he stole someone’s wife who became Galahad’s mom.
MW: Yeah, I gotta say, when you put it that way I never really thought about it, but I guess those are honest themes in all of my work because I really believe that the most destructive things that people can do (we get interrupted by an announcement made over the PA). Alright, here’s the thing, if you think of super hero comics and the entire medium of super hero comics as an inverted pyramid then at the very apex is the concept that Superman can put on glasses and live among us and not tell us who he really is. And there’s pluses and minuses to that. And I think that my fascination with this idea secrets – the way you keep secrets in the super hero universe – secret identities and secret alter-egos and secret powers – has always been a fascination to me. So it makes sense that the most dramatic stories I can tell are the ones where people aren’t honest with each other or don’t tell each other everything they need to know. And even the simplest omissions of fact can lead to huge, horrible consequences. So that, to me, that’s the huge part of a lot of the drama that I write.
The most basic deception, of course, is that of Britt Reid and Kato playing super-criminal. In a lot of ways, this is the least interesting deception on its own. Of course, it is this deception that leads Britt to act upon his assumed identity and set in motion the complexity and loss of control. What I find more interesting are the contrasting deceptions carried out by Cerelli and the Chicago industrialists. Both are working for the German cause, but present quite different fronts. Cerelli tries to mask his seditious work by hiding in other illegitimate work. It allows him to operate among shady characters without attracting any extra attention. This works extra well because the police are already corrupt so they wouldn’t pay another mobster much attention as long as the mobster paid their bills. Also, his supposed racket is importing weapons, so if the Germans needed weapons, it wouldn’t arouse suspicion. On the opposite end are the industrialists. In the USA we’ve had a split personality view of the rich for a while. We are never surprised to hear about decadence, perversion, and white collar crime. At the same time, these people command respect and are often offered perks like being able to turn themselves in and another chance at life rather than being ruined in prison.
Key to the ability to run the deception campaigns is being able to control the flow of information. Britt Reid runs what appears to be one of the most widely read newspapers we’ve been conditioned to find information to be more truthful if it’s on paper. Additionally, a newspaper is supposed to have editorial checks to make sure it isn’t printing falsehoods. (Although, that has only been the case in a small portion of the history of newspapers in the USA) So Reid has an enormous power with his newspaper to guide what the public thinks as well as their outrages. He often strives to use this power for good and even uses the leads he gets as The Green Hornet to print headlines that move the public to push the police and government officials to investigate things. This can lead to some issues and Mark Waid is a smart enough writer to have Ried face some difficulties to allow our suspension of disbelief not be stretched to the limit. For example, Reid is manipulated into accusing a family friend of being a Nazi sympathizer and then when he’s revealed to be wrong, it makes it seem as though he did it for personal gain – to become mayor. (Which the same people had pushed him into) Additionally, it was tough for me to believe that the criminal underworld wouldn’t realize that secrets only The Green Hornet knew ended up in the newspaper. Reid is lucky his reputation and violence make most of those at the top dismiss the notion. Reid is not the only newspaper in town and his rival are not above using tricks and photo opportunities to make Reid look bad.
When the board threatens to kick Reid out, he quits and buys a radio station. He talk a lot about it being the medium of the future, which it was at the time. It also makes a lot of sense for what Reid wishes to accomplish. A radio station is orders of magnitude faster than a newspaper in getting new information out to the public. Most newspapers need the morning’s news printed the night before in order to have it ready for press time. While some newspapers printed morning and evening editions back before TV and the Internet, the news is still always several hours old. With a radio station Reid can run circles around his newspaper rivals. Radio also allows for the emotion of voice to be transmitted along with the words, causing people to be more easily stirred to action.
Finally, Reid sets up a proto-Internet by ordering news service terminals from around the world. It was the fastest way to get information before satellite transmissions. This allows him to know what’s going on around the world right away. While this would be overkill for most local heroes, given this story involves Nazis, this level of information flow is important.
These two themes lead us to another Waid favorite – the chaos of complex plans. As The Green Hornet continues to spin lies and deceptions, more and more of Chicago is thrown into the web and he starts having to deal with the chaos added by human interaction. For example, when he’s trapped in a basement he attempts to corrupt the last honest cop on the force. He mentions the man’s wife needs medical treatment and the money will help. The cop accepts the money and Kato asks Hornet if he’s perhaps set something bad into motion by getting rid of the last good cop. Then we cheer as he later gives the money back to The Green Hornet – he was incorruptible! But it turns out his wife didn’t find his honesty to be so noble when she was dying. She kills herself and if that wasn’t enough to put him over the edge, Reid has Casey offer him the money through legitimate means right after his wife kills herself. He becomes an uncontrollable sociopath that causes Reid all kinds of grief – even though he’s working FOR The Green Hornet. Eventually Hornet is forced to have him jailed by making it seem as though he killed his wife (rather than her suicide).
Additionally, one of the negative aspects of The Green Hornet being as masked man is that anyone can pretend to be The Green Hornet. So he has to deal with a counterfeit Hornet who’s forcing kids to work for him and threatening to ship them off to be sex slaves in Asia. After he deals with that, he’s once again stuck dealing with a Green Hornet imposter problem right as he and Kato decide to retire. It turns out that Casey has purposely donned the costume to get herself arrested. She is addicted to information and to the thrill of stopping crime so she wants to get information from criminals in jail. Finally, she’s blackmailed Reid because if he doesn’t continue now, he’s saying she went to jail in vain.
As I did last time, I’d like to make some comparisons with Batman, The Green Hornet’s pulp contemporary. On a basic level, Waid has Reid gain a sort of arrogance and overconfidence that leads him to believe his mission to be so righteous he often puts them above his relationships – the very same relationships that keep him sane and keep him grounded. In this iteration, Kato plays the dual roles analogous to both Robin and Alfred. Especially important within this story is his Alfred role as Reid’s conscious. Finally, Casey is made into a 1940s version of The Oracle. Not only is she responsible for combing the proto-Internet, but she also keeps track of where the cops and his rival are in real time.
So, there you go. We’ve now seen a modern Green Hornet and a period piece Green Hornet. In a little over a month we’ll have the big compare and contrast article.
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
October 28, 2013
Most people only know of the Green Hornet because of the recent Seth Rogen action-comedy. Because of that, a lot of people may not give this book a second look (I personally enjoyed it, but it's more of a parody than a straight Hornet movie). Those people would be missing out. Mark Waid has brought the Green Hornet to life in his latest book, and you can tell he's a big fan.
Waid's Hornet story finds Britt Reid, aka the Green Hornet, running his family newspaper and using it to expose criminals publicly, while infiltrating the criminal element as the Green Hornet. The main element to Waid's story is basically, what if the "hero" (and Reid does NOT consider himself a hero) became too self involved and ego took over? Waid tells a great story focused on something that is readily present in comics, but never engaged, and that is hubris.
The story is a bit of a slow starter and could be confusing at the beginning for first-time Green Hornet readers. However, those that stick around will be pleasantly surprised. Waid definitely has the book moving in an exciting direction and even leaves readers with a cliffhanger that feels just like the old radio dramas. Pulp action really seems to be making a comeback, and The Green Hornet is no exception.
Note: I received a free digital copy through NetGalley.
Waid's Hornet story finds Britt Reid, aka the Green Hornet, running his family newspaper and using it to expose criminals publicly, while infiltrating the criminal element as the Green Hornet. The main element to Waid's story is basically, what if the "hero" (and Reid does NOT consider himself a hero) became too self involved and ego took over? Waid tells a great story focused on something that is readily present in comics, but never engaged, and that is hubris.
The story is a bit of a slow starter and could be confusing at the beginning for first-time Green Hornet readers. However, those that stick around will be pleasantly surprised. Waid definitely has the book moving in an exciting direction and even leaves readers with a cliffhanger that feels just like the old radio dramas. Pulp action really seems to be making a comeback, and The Green Hornet is no exception.
Note: I received a free digital copy through NetGalley.
February 17, 2014
Mark Waid's Green Hornet takes the pulp hero in interesting directions. Green Hornet pretends to be a criminal, and backs that up with apparent violent acts, threats, and bribes. In truth, the information gained is used against the criminals as Green Hornet and Cato fight crime.
When a crazed bomber threatens the city, the Green Hornet attempts to find him and stop him before he strikes again. The choices made by the Green Hornet, including what looks like the accusation of an innocent man, seem to be driven by ego. These choices drive Kato to leave and the Green Hornet is headed for a major fall. Can he recover everything in time to stop the real bomber?
It's a gritty story, and I really liked it. It has shades of Citizen Kane. Also, presenting the Hornet as flawed and fallible makes for a pretty good story. Mark Waid's story is excellent and Daniel Indro's art is very good. I enjoyed it and would love to read more in this series.
I was given a review copy of this graphic novel by Diamond Book Distributors and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for letting me review this graphic novel.
When a crazed bomber threatens the city, the Green Hornet attempts to find him and stop him before he strikes again. The choices made by the Green Hornet, including what looks like the accusation of an innocent man, seem to be driven by ego. These choices drive Kato to leave and the Green Hornet is headed for a major fall. Can he recover everything in time to stop the real bomber?
It's a gritty story, and I really liked it. It has shades of Citizen Kane. Also, presenting the Hornet as flawed and fallible makes for a pretty good story. Mark Waid's story is excellent and Daniel Indro's art is very good. I enjoyed it and would love to read more in this series.
I was given a review copy of this graphic novel by Diamond Book Distributors and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for letting me review this graphic novel.
December 21, 2013
I've really been enjoying Dynamite's "masked" hero comics and although I've never been a fan of the Green Hornet in the past (and by this I mean the pulp serials/movies from the 30s/40s) I decided to give this one a try anyway since I like Mark Waid. I'm very pleased with this first volume! This volume introduces us to Green Hornet and though he's been working as the masked hero/villain for a while the book starts at a pivotal moment in his career. We get some flashback moments to let us know about his past and briefly how he became the Green Hornet and joined up with Kato. The main issue here though is a character study as GH is faced with his own ego and possible corruption. Kato becomes his conscience and won't work with him anymore leaving the Hornet to grapple with how to lead this lifestyle and still be able to live with himself. A very well-written story and I absolutely adore the character of Kato, even more so than the Hornet himself. I'm really glad I decided to read this and will be reading volume 2!
March 17, 2016
This was really good! I read Kevin Smith's take on Green Hornet a while back, and while a modern take on the character was okay - this pulpy, more adult, take on the character is better for me. I always enjoyed watching the TV show on FX many years ago, so reading a comic of the character was something I was pretty happy about doing. Getting them all from Comic Bento was good because Dynamite Comics wasn't really on my radaar until then. This Green Hornet is dark, brooding and much more in line with the Gordon Jones / Keye Luke film serial version of the character - even down to the full-faced mask that I actually prefer to the domino mask. The plot centers around Britt Reid, Newspaper Mogul by day/ vigilante crime boss by night, and his attempts to stop a mad-bomber that uses him to further a crime wave. Waid is an excellent writer, and I plan to get more trades of this and perhaps some other throw-back books from dynamite! Wonder if The Shadow is any good?
November 13, 2015
I really enjoyed Kevin Smith's updating of the Green Hornet, so I was interested to see what Mark Waid could do with a more traditional approach. Turns out the emphasis is on character ethics rather than action in the form of an old school tale of gangsters and corruption. As such this isn't bad, it's just not that original or exciting. Also, the art, while above average for a Dynamite title, suffers from the usual flaw of inconsistency in the drawing of faces. A good effort overall, falling solidly in the middle of the pack for this character, but I probably won't read further volumes.
September 5, 2016
This was my first time reading The Green Hornet, and I loved it. It offered a good, quick introduction to the character for the uninitiated, then dove into a great organized crime tale. I wanted to give it five stars, but it was a cliffhanger ending so I won't really know how the story will resolve itself until I read volume two. From what I've read so far, I would put it on par with Waid's Daredevil run.
Edit: after reading volume two, I had to come back and change my rating to five stars. Excellent read.
Edit: after reading volume two, I had to come back and change my rating to five stars. Excellent read.
October 15, 2016
The gimmick of GH is that he's a hero who poses as a villain to infiltrate crime, then exposes it in the newspaper he runs in civilian life. There are plenty of takes on that, not so different than a Batman story. But the gimmick of this book is barely about the "costumed crusader" part, it focuses on the implications for his civilian identity where you see a man overcome with his own hubris. I'm looking forward to the second half of the story.
November 1, 2015
It's nice to see a version of the Green Hornet that actually can fight and doesn't rely only on Kato. I think Waid did a good job of playing with the idea of hubris - that when people of power believe their own praise it can warp their world. I just felt the plotting was a little...off. The big bad got very bad very quickly and I feel like it was a missed opportunity for parallel.
October 11, 2013
I borrowed a copy of this from NetGalley for an honest review.
I really enjoyed reading this. The Green Hornet and Kato not only had to deal with trying to find out who were setting off bombs but they also have to deal with Brett Reid's sudden case of egotism.
This was very well written.
I really enjoyed reading this. The Green Hornet and Kato not only had to deal with trying to find out who were setting off bombs but they also have to deal with Brett Reid's sudden case of egotism.
This was very well written.
December 21, 2013
Fun, but flawed.
http://fedpeaches.blogspot.com/2013/1...
http://fedpeaches.blogspot.com/2013/1...
March 24, 2014
Waid plays with action figures, and the art not only makes the action difficult to follow, but it also makes very different characters look similar. A frustrating read.
December 26, 2014
More thoughtful and daring than most Green Hornet comics, but still not nearly thoughtful, daring or inventive enough.
May 17, 2020
I normally like Mark Waid but this makes the Green Hornet into a bit of an arse who seems to be doing more to fund crime than fight it.
February 19, 2019
The story was awesome and the characters are enjoyable to read about.
Unfortunately I could not rate it higher due to the difficulty in following the story at times. It wasn't due to the writing but, instead, due to the art directions. So many of the characters look similar in ways that it was impossible to distinguish them so the little changes in scene where they do not explain who is in it are sometimes impossible to understand. In fact, I didn't realize some of the flashbacks in the first issue included Kato until I read the script at the end of the book that included descriptions of the artwork. There's really not more to say. I wanted to DNF at times because of how often I was confused by the art work but the appealing story and wanting to see how it evolved was what kept me hooked.
I do say, that I hope Kato is developed more because he was fairly one dimensional during most of this (excluding a brief moment towards the end).
Will not reread this, will unhaul it, and unsure whether I will continue with the series.
Unfortunately I could not rate it higher due to the difficulty in following the story at times. It wasn't due to the writing but, instead, due to the art directions. So many of the characters look similar in ways that it was impossible to distinguish them so the little changes in scene where they do not explain who is in it are sometimes impossible to understand. In fact, I didn't realize some of the flashbacks in the first issue included Kato until I read the script at the end of the book that included descriptions of the artwork. There's really not more to say. I wanted to DNF at times because of how often I was confused by the art work but the appealing story and wanting to see how it evolved was what kept me hooked.
I do say, that I hope Kato is developed more because he was fairly one dimensional during most of this (excluding a brief moment towards the end).
Will not reread this, will unhaul it, and unsure whether I will continue with the series.
December 12, 2022
The Green Hornet Vol. 1: Bully Pulpit (2013) by Mark Waid, Daniel Indro & Ronilson Freire (Dynamite)
I noticed this series showed up free on Comixology recently. It received a 3.4 on Goodreads, 4.5 on Amazon, and an 8.4 Critic Review score on Comic Book Roundup. At the time of its release, Waid was coming off his celebrated Daredevil run. The covers were attractive but I was not immediately familiar with the interior artists (Indro & Freire), however, the interiors were very similar to Brent Anderson (Astro City) and Butch Guice (Ruse). I felt the art was complimentary to the story and did not detract from the down & dirty crime noir/pulp feel that Waid was going for in this relaunch. I am not very familiar with the character, but Britt Reid was portrayed more of a jerk than I had realized. Kato was still very cool and capable. I did find the series enjoyable and I could tell in his writing that Waid had a fondness for the character.
I noticed this series showed up free on Comixology recently. It received a 3.4 on Goodreads, 4.5 on Amazon, and an 8.4 Critic Review score on Comic Book Roundup. At the time of its release, Waid was coming off his celebrated Daredevil run. The covers were attractive but I was not immediately familiar with the interior artists (Indro & Freire), however, the interiors were very similar to Brent Anderson (Astro City) and Butch Guice (Ruse). I felt the art was complimentary to the story and did not detract from the down & dirty crime noir/pulp feel that Waid was going for in this relaunch. I am not very familiar with the character, but Britt Reid was portrayed more of a jerk than I had realized. Kato was still very cool and capable. I did find the series enjoyable and I could tell in his writing that Waid had a fondness for the character.
February 21, 2023
Overall pretty good. Mark Wade knows how to spin a yarn. I love the first issue. It basically tells you what the green hornet is about and then the rest of the volume is telling this long story. Lots of Intrige and political goings-on which is not expected starting this book while it does have action it’s not the focus of this book, which is probably a turn off for some. Like a lot of dynamite books the art isn’t great. Those covers especially are not great. Some individual panels are very good some not but if you can get past the inconsistent, are you getting good suspenseful crime story
June 15, 2017
Really solid artwork in this noir reboot that's marred by a lackluster story. Mark Waid is hit or miss for me and this first volume of the Green Hornet was mostly a miss. The story of millionaire newspaper publisher Britt Reid (the titular Hornet) and his sidekick Kato has a definite Citizen Kane vibe to it as Reid battle corruption and Reid decides to run for Mayor but overall the story largely dragged.
March 18, 2022
I've been watching the 1960s Green Hornet TV show and decided to finally give this a read, since I had it in my collection. I enjoyed Kevin Smith's take a while back, even if it could've been better. This one I enjoyed a bit less. I like the overall idea and how Waid talks about where he wants to take the character. But the execution feels not so innovative and not as entertaining as I was expecting. Wondering if that improves in the next volume.
January 22, 2024
Great story and a wonderful update to the classic story lines.
Read
December 22, 2025every time I flip through a good comic and get instantly caught up in it, I check and it's by Mark Waid
February 20, 2018
I really liked this. It actually made the whole "Let's pretend we're villains" thing work.
August 10, 2016
The Green Hornet has been mostly absent in my life since I was maybe eight years old and making Green Hornet rings and plastic hornets with my classic (then new) Mattel™ Goop Thingmaker® , which was one of my most favorite toys back in the 1960's!
Yet for some reason, The Green Hornet appears to be making a come-back of sorts. With this particular graphic novel, The Green Hornet has been featured in at least three graphic novels that I've read in the past few weeks (Masks and Dark Knights).
Here, author Mark Waid tries to put a new twist on an old character, making him more human, if that's possible -- he's not a super-human or super-hero. He's a vigilante. He works to ingratiate himself with the underworld by appearing to be one of them ... a criminal. He does this with violence and threats, using the very means of the criminals themselves. So how does this separate him from the criminal underworld? Therein lies the question that Mark Waid uses to build his plot.
The Hornet is trying to find a mad bomber who has threatened the city. The Hornet uses strong-arm tactics that put him on the same level as the criminal underworld. This action creates rifts within his own world, the most severe of which is with his trusty servant/partner Kato. Most of this story is psychological as it follows Britt Reid's descent in to becoming just what he's fought against, risking his personal life and fortune as he becomes singularly focussed, and then his attempts to rise above the filth of the underworld.
Waid does this well and manages to build some suspense but over-all the plot seems quite re-hashed. The attempt to make our heroes (and superheroes) relatable and as human as possible, we tend to see them descend in to the world they fight against. It's a version of the Stockholm Syndrome, identifying and bonding with "one person (who) intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other." Is there a comic book character who hasn't gone through this is the last couple of decades? It just doesn't feel real any more. And Kato's 'leaving' never, ever felt like it was the end of the line for The Green Hornet or Britt Reid. Instead it felt like "stay tuned next month to see how they get back together!"
Waid's use of Citizen Cane as inspiration is wonderful. More so that he admits to it. If the book didn't have Waid's strong hand writing it, this would have never survived the storyline.
The artwork is fine. Daniel Indro's contribution is slightly stronger than Ronilson Freire's. Indro's is a bit more three-dimensional and realistic, while Freire's seems flat by comparison. Both manage to capture a gritty, violent world.
Looking for a good book? Mark Wiad's The Green Hornet Volume 1 brings our 1940's crime-fighter in to the spotlight, but mostly for his criminal activities. It's not a bad read, but isn't a book that is easy to recommend either.
This review originally published inLooking For a Good Book. Rated 3.0
Yet for some reason, The Green Hornet appears to be making a come-back of sorts. With this particular graphic novel, The Green Hornet has been featured in at least three graphic novels that I've read in the past few weeks (Masks and Dark Knights).
Here, author Mark Waid tries to put a new twist on an old character, making him more human, if that's possible -- he's not a super-human or super-hero. He's a vigilante. He works to ingratiate himself with the underworld by appearing to be one of them ... a criminal. He does this with violence and threats, using the very means of the criminals themselves. So how does this separate him from the criminal underworld? Therein lies the question that Mark Waid uses to build his plot.
The Hornet is trying to find a mad bomber who has threatened the city. The Hornet uses strong-arm tactics that put him on the same level as the criminal underworld. This action creates rifts within his own world, the most severe of which is with his trusty servant/partner Kato. Most of this story is psychological as it follows Britt Reid's descent in to becoming just what he's fought against, risking his personal life and fortune as he becomes singularly focussed, and then his attempts to rise above the filth of the underworld.
Waid does this well and manages to build some suspense but over-all the plot seems quite re-hashed. The attempt to make our heroes (and superheroes) relatable and as human as possible, we tend to see them descend in to the world they fight against. It's a version of the Stockholm Syndrome, identifying and bonding with "one person (who) intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other." Is there a comic book character who hasn't gone through this is the last couple of decades? It just doesn't feel real any more. And Kato's 'leaving' never, ever felt like it was the end of the line for The Green Hornet or Britt Reid. Instead it felt like "stay tuned next month to see how they get back together!"
Waid's use of Citizen Cane as inspiration is wonderful. More so that he admits to it. If the book didn't have Waid's strong hand writing it, this would have never survived the storyline.
The artwork is fine. Daniel Indro's contribution is slightly stronger than Ronilson Freire's. Indro's is a bit more three-dimensional and realistic, while Freire's seems flat by comparison. Both manage to capture a gritty, violent world.
Looking for a good book? Mark Wiad's The Green Hornet Volume 1 brings our 1940's crime-fighter in to the spotlight, but mostly for his criminal activities. It's not a bad read, but isn't a book that is easy to recommend either.
This review originally published inLooking For a Good Book. Rated 3.0
April 2, 2017
Green Hornet has been going Strong since 1935, and I enjoyed very the first volume of Mark Waid´s run, about to start on the second volume, and very much looking forward to the release of the first omnibus of Kevin Smith´s run.
July 12, 2017
Booooooooooooring
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