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Showcase Presents #21
Showcase Presents: Green Lantern, Vol. 2
552 English DC Comics Test pilot Hal Jordan was chosen by the Guardians of the Universe to become Earths Green Lantern. an intergalactic hero who protects our world from the forces of evil. armed with a power ring that can create anything its wearer can imagine. Over 500 pages of black-and-white comics are included in this fast-paced collection featuring the Emerald Warriors battles with the beautiful Star Sapphire. would-be world conquerer Sonar and the renegade Green Lantern known as Sinestro.
552 pages, Paperback
First published February 28, 2007
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About the author
John Broome
432 books14 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bro...
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bro...
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 22, 2020
My new year’s resolution is to read my stack of ‘DC Showcase’ at the rate of one comic magazine per day. As they usually contain over twenty issues I should get through one and a bit per month. I can’t do more than one a day as they tend to blend into each other in a foggy blur of pseudo-science which makes individual issues hard to remember. This volume runs from Green Lantern # 18 (January 1963) to Green Lantern # 38 (July 1965) so it’s two and a half years worth of comic books.
The thing with Silver Age DC Comics is that nothing changes in the life of the characters. When this volume starts Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) works as a test pilot for the Ferris Aircraft Company run by Carol Ferris who likes Hal but loves Green Lantern. He is assisted by a ‘grease-monkey’ called Thomas Kalmaku – nicknamed Pieface, an Eskimo who knows his super-hero identity and keeps a file of his cases as Doctor Watson did for Sherlock Holmes. Jordan is a member of the Green Lantern Corps founded by the Guardians of the Universe who occasionally summon him to help out on another planet. By the end of the book, none of this has changed.
As most issues contain two stories there are nearly forty tales here so the thing to do would be to pick out the highlights. There aren’t any highlights. One yarn is pretty much the same quality as any other. Partly that’s because they were all written by either John Broome or Gardner Fox. Both have a way with science that is less than accurate but generally, Fox takes it to greater extremes of fantasy. He writes every issue from # 32 onwards but before that, it’s more or less fifty-fifty between these twin titans of the tall story.
Lacking highlights I will, in a good-natured way, pick out the worst science. Not that I know much science but a clever ten-year-old could see through most of this hokum. In ‘Green Lantern vs. Power Ring’ (GL#18) Hal is practising controlling the ring at a distance through rock when he is separated from it by a cave-in. A hungry hobo picks it up and thinks he fancies a melon. A melon appears! But the ring cannot work on anything yellow ‘due to a necessary impurity’ so how can it create melons? In GL#24, ‘The Shark That Hunted Human Prey’, a tiger shark is evolved into a human and then beyond by a freak nuclear accident so that with ‘mind power’ it can do anything. An ‘invisible yellow aura’ protects it from Green Lantern’s ring. How can something invisible be yellow? In ‘The House That Fought Green Lantern’ (#28) the ring is useless because it’s affected by the vibrations of a grandfather clock. In ‘This World Is Mine’ (#29), an evil force animates a giant papier-mâché model of Green Lantern and uses it to destroy fairground rides. Steel is generally reckoned to be stronger than papier-mâché and able to resist it. In ‘Three Way Attack Against Green Lantern‘ (GL#34), villain Hector Hammond uses his super-brain to create an ‘energy duplicate’ of a Guardian of the Universe to defeat Green Lantern. This is from Gardner Fox who had someone use ‘tornado power’ to create duplicates of the Justice League of America to defeat them. How can you create things more powerful than yourself? Oh, those duplicates!
Part of the problem is that the power ring can do anything. In ‘Secret Of The Power-Ringed Robot’ (GL#36), it transforms Hal’s flesh into a robot body, allowing a spectacular cover in which his arm comes off. In another story, ‘The Spies Who Owned Green Lantern’ (GL#37), it turns him into a letter and Pieface posts him to the criminals' hideout. It frequently reads minds and there’s a microworld inside it where Abin Sur trapped a villain called Myrwhydden in ‘World Within the Power Ring’ (GL #26) as you do.
On the credit side, a few ideas here seem to precede similar stories over at the Mighty Competition, a company whose oeuvre I know well. ‘Parasite Planet Peril’ (GL#20, April 1963) is a kind of highlight because it’s of ‘novel’ length and teams GL up with Flash. They are both shrunk down to a microworld. Something similar happened in the world’s greatest comic magazine in July 1963, though to be fair, the microworld idea is older than that. In fact, it dates back to ‘Out Of The Sub-Universe’, a 1928 story by Roman Frederick Starzl. In ‘The Strange World Named Green Lantern’ (GL#24, October 1963), the emerald crusader meets a living planet, a whole world that is one single entity. Perhaps lacking a big ego (geddit?), it calls itself Green Lantern after the hero it so admires. Research indicates that the notion of a living planet dates back to Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat’s 1931 short story ‘The Menace From Andromeda’. There are probably few far-out ideas that weren’t explored in the first three decades of American Science Fiction magazines.
In a few of the adventures, our hero wins when all seems lost because he had, with unusual prescience, done something earlier to foil the villain’s final attack. In ‘Master Of The Power Ring (GL#22), he had ordered the ring to drain itself of energy if another mind took it over. In ‘The Defeat Of Green Lantern’ (GL#19), he had previously created a globe of green energy to rescue him in time of need. Perhaps he read the script first, like Colombo.
As for the art, Gil Kane pencils are constrained by the DC house style and the inks of Joe Giella and Murphy Anderson up to issue #28. In number #29, Sid Greene takes over the inks and there’s a bit of a step up in quality, I think. Not a giant leap, the other two are worthy professionals, but he seems to put in more blacks and generally give it a more solid look. Kane’s pencils still keep the house style but there are odd flashes of the more dynamic poses and knobbly figures he developed over time. Personally, I prefer the restrained stuff to the unleashed Kane of later years. All the art is fine and much of it is first class.
Some of these reprint editions are being sold at ludicrous prices but this one is still available for a few pounds or dollars. A reasonably good read if taken in small doses and not too seriously. The art is a treat and the stories are good for a laugh. The science should be taken with a pinch of salt. No, an oil tanker of salt. I’m off to have dinner now. I shall eat beans and then use the wind power generated to create an energy duplicate of Superman who will conquer the world for me.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
The thing with Silver Age DC Comics is that nothing changes in the life of the characters. When this volume starts Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) works as a test pilot for the Ferris Aircraft Company run by Carol Ferris who likes Hal but loves Green Lantern. He is assisted by a ‘grease-monkey’ called Thomas Kalmaku – nicknamed Pieface, an Eskimo who knows his super-hero identity and keeps a file of his cases as Doctor Watson did for Sherlock Holmes. Jordan is a member of the Green Lantern Corps founded by the Guardians of the Universe who occasionally summon him to help out on another planet. By the end of the book, none of this has changed.
As most issues contain two stories there are nearly forty tales here so the thing to do would be to pick out the highlights. There aren’t any highlights. One yarn is pretty much the same quality as any other. Partly that’s because they were all written by either John Broome or Gardner Fox. Both have a way with science that is less than accurate but generally, Fox takes it to greater extremes of fantasy. He writes every issue from # 32 onwards but before that, it’s more or less fifty-fifty between these twin titans of the tall story.
Lacking highlights I will, in a good-natured way, pick out the worst science. Not that I know much science but a clever ten-year-old could see through most of this hokum. In ‘Green Lantern vs. Power Ring’ (GL#18) Hal is practising controlling the ring at a distance through rock when he is separated from it by a cave-in. A hungry hobo picks it up and thinks he fancies a melon. A melon appears! But the ring cannot work on anything yellow ‘due to a necessary impurity’ so how can it create melons? In GL#24, ‘The Shark That Hunted Human Prey’, a tiger shark is evolved into a human and then beyond by a freak nuclear accident so that with ‘mind power’ it can do anything. An ‘invisible yellow aura’ protects it from Green Lantern’s ring. How can something invisible be yellow? In ‘The House That Fought Green Lantern’ (#28) the ring is useless because it’s affected by the vibrations of a grandfather clock. In ‘This World Is Mine’ (#29), an evil force animates a giant papier-mâché model of Green Lantern and uses it to destroy fairground rides. Steel is generally reckoned to be stronger than papier-mâché and able to resist it. In ‘Three Way Attack Against Green Lantern‘ (GL#34), villain Hector Hammond uses his super-brain to create an ‘energy duplicate’ of a Guardian of the Universe to defeat Green Lantern. This is from Gardner Fox who had someone use ‘tornado power’ to create duplicates of the Justice League of America to defeat them. How can you create things more powerful than yourself? Oh, those duplicates!
Part of the problem is that the power ring can do anything. In ‘Secret Of The Power-Ringed Robot’ (GL#36), it transforms Hal’s flesh into a robot body, allowing a spectacular cover in which his arm comes off. In another story, ‘The Spies Who Owned Green Lantern’ (GL#37), it turns him into a letter and Pieface posts him to the criminals' hideout. It frequently reads minds and there’s a microworld inside it where Abin Sur trapped a villain called Myrwhydden in ‘World Within the Power Ring’ (GL #26) as you do.
On the credit side, a few ideas here seem to precede similar stories over at the Mighty Competition, a company whose oeuvre I know well. ‘Parasite Planet Peril’ (GL#20, April 1963) is a kind of highlight because it’s of ‘novel’ length and teams GL up with Flash. They are both shrunk down to a microworld. Something similar happened in the world’s greatest comic magazine in July 1963, though to be fair, the microworld idea is older than that. In fact, it dates back to ‘Out Of The Sub-Universe’, a 1928 story by Roman Frederick Starzl. In ‘The Strange World Named Green Lantern’ (GL#24, October 1963), the emerald crusader meets a living planet, a whole world that is one single entity. Perhaps lacking a big ego (geddit?), it calls itself Green Lantern after the hero it so admires. Research indicates that the notion of a living planet dates back to Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat’s 1931 short story ‘The Menace From Andromeda’. There are probably few far-out ideas that weren’t explored in the first three decades of American Science Fiction magazines.
In a few of the adventures, our hero wins when all seems lost because he had, with unusual prescience, done something earlier to foil the villain’s final attack. In ‘Master Of The Power Ring (GL#22), he had ordered the ring to drain itself of energy if another mind took it over. In ‘The Defeat Of Green Lantern’ (GL#19), he had previously created a globe of green energy to rescue him in time of need. Perhaps he read the script first, like Colombo.
As for the art, Gil Kane pencils are constrained by the DC house style and the inks of Joe Giella and Murphy Anderson up to issue #28. In number #29, Sid Greene takes over the inks and there’s a bit of a step up in quality, I think. Not a giant leap, the other two are worthy professionals, but he seems to put in more blacks and generally give it a more solid look. Kane’s pencils still keep the house style but there are odd flashes of the more dynamic poses and knobbly figures he developed over time. Personally, I prefer the restrained stuff to the unleashed Kane of later years. All the art is fine and much of it is first class.
Some of these reprint editions are being sold at ludicrous prices but this one is still available for a few pounds or dollars. A reasonably good read if taken in small doses and not too seriously. The art is a treat and the stories are good for a laugh. The science should be taken with a pinch of salt. No, an oil tanker of salt. I’m off to have dinner now. I shall eat beans and then use the wind power generated to create an energy duplicate of Superman who will conquer the world for me.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
September 10, 2022
Been reading this on and off in my bathroom for the better part of two years. Every story in here is weird, whether it's the average weird of Green Lantern trailing some nameless crook who somehow has the ability to zap in and out of the X dimension, or the little weirder of a guy who can make his tattoos come alive, or the really weird of a a super-intelligent mutated Shark, hyper-evolved from an atomic blast, who tricks Green Lantern by trading places with his own uniform (???).
All the ways GL gets out of his jams are incredibly innovative, although most really don't make any sense if you think about them for too long. Still, you've got to admire a guy who takes the time to dream up and create a detailed giant vacuum cleaner to remove space debris when probably something much simpler would've worked just as well.
PS: Do you get the feeling Hal Jordan and his sister-in-law are having an affair?
All the ways GL gets out of his jams are incredibly innovative, although most really don't make any sense if you think about them for too long. Still, you've got to admire a guy who takes the time to dream up and create a detailed giant vacuum cleaner to remove space debris when probably something much simpler would've worked just as well.
PS: Do you get the feeling Hal Jordan and his sister-in-law are having an affair?
May 26, 2016
Well, while this isn't exactly good, it was definitely a lot more fun to read than the Captain America collection from a similar time period that I read recently. I think a big part of that is 60s Cap doesn't really have super powers, while Green Lantern can, like many a Silver Age DC hero, do whatever the hell he wants. Turn himself into a letter or a robot? Sure! Travel inside his own power ring? Why the hell not. He even at one point defeats a yellow energy construct in spite of his weakness to yellow by using vague handwavey comics science to make it not yellow anymore. Plus, there's some pretty ridiculous villains in 60s GL's rogues gallery. There's sadly only one appearance by Sinestro, who is the only properly good villain here. Mostly it's Sonar, a guy with a sonic gun and an obsession with making his homeland famous, a hyper-evolved shark man who uses his hyper evolved nonsense brain powers instead of any aspect of being a shark, and a man who is totally paralyzed but has a brain from 1 million years in the future who seems to be what GL has as a recurring villain. The fights are consistently ridiculous because half the time the Hal's power ring goes on the fritz as a way to justify him not winning in three seconds flat. And the other half of the time he has to find some new ridiculous way to overcome his weakness to the color yellow. Of course, there is the typical dose of Silver Age sexism to deal with, and while Carol Ferris isn't as obsessive about Hal as Lois Lane is about Superman, pretty much any story heavily dealing with women is going to be cringe-worthy and awful. Still, the collection as a whole is basically just the usual Silver Age goofiness, and thus I have to say I found it fairly enjoyable, even if it's kinda lacking in significant character moments or anything that makes it worth reading in regards to the overall history of Green Lantern.
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December 15, 2015This collects 21 issues of Green Lantern from 1963-1965, numbers 18 through 38, in glorious black and white reproductions. While the use of color is somewhat important in Green Lantern - you have to be on the lookout for things which are colored yellow, as they will come back to bite GL in the ass - Kane's artwork is so beautiful, and his page layouts so engaging that the black and white gives us more of a chance to admire his work. The first half of the book is mostly inked by Joe Giella, who does a workmanlike job, but when Sid Greene takes over, the level of detail and shading increases exponentially. That's also about the time Fox takes over the bulk of the stories. Broome had plenty of entertainment value, and heck, he created almost all the key elements to the GL universe, including such masterful villains as Sinestro (the renegade Green Lantern), Hector Hammond (who evolved into a freakish descendant of humans, then made himself immortal at the price of being completely unable to move), and Star Sapphire (who occasionally pops out of the brain of GL's love interest Carol Ferris and takes over her body). But Fox developed everything, and his plots grew more and more intricate, while bringing a perfect combination of ridiculousness and seriousness to the table. I started buying comic books in 1966, and my first GL was #49, so I had never read any story in this book. I want more - 60s DC was way better than I remembered it.
March 1, 2014
This was disappointingly more of the same as Vol. 1 of GL, and like bad 60s DC in general.
Gardner Fox largely took over the reigns from John Broome in this volume. Fox is marginally a better writer in my opinion, but that don't mean he's good. A lot of dependence on hokey "scientific" knowledge to have GL attacked by amoebas and scientifical derivations of yellow, aliens from random planets that won't ever come back, hokey dialogue.
No big character moments, no deaths, introductions, nothing. IT's just bland more than anything else. It's the least special DC Showcase I've read in my life, it was that unclever.
Gil Kane's penciling, even in black and white, is really good, he has an expressive recreation of reality, details on objects and faces makes for fluid reading. I JUST WISH FOR LESS RANDOM ALIENS THAT ALWAYS WANT TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD AND THEN STOP AFTER ONE ISSUE!
Gardner Fox largely took over the reigns from John Broome in this volume. Fox is marginally a better writer in my opinion, but that don't mean he's good. A lot of dependence on hokey "scientific" knowledge to have GL attacked by amoebas and scientifical derivations of yellow, aliens from random planets that won't ever come back, hokey dialogue.
No big character moments, no deaths, introductions, nothing. IT's just bland more than anything else. It's the least special DC Showcase I've read in my life, it was that unclever.
Gil Kane's penciling, even in black and white, is really good, he has an expressive recreation of reality, details on objects and faces makes for fluid reading. I JUST WISH FOR LESS RANDOM ALIENS THAT ALWAYS WANT TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD AND THEN STOP AFTER ONE ISSUE!
June 18, 2013
These books are such a delight to read. Short stories, interesting characters--characters you care about and want to see do well---and stories without all the angst and dark tones and apocolyptic ramifications that today's comics seem to have. And, yes, frankly, stories in which good triumphs over evil. Plus, I much, much prefer the artwork from those times (the 1950s to the mid-1960s) than I do to what I am seeing from today. This was a golden age of comic art, in my opinion. Today's comic characters are drawn as if they pump iron 12 hours a day, and they seem to have (as I recall from a line from one of my favorite TV series)"their smiles turned upside down". If I want to feel depressed and worry about where this world is headed, I'll turn on CNN or any other news channel!
August 24, 2014
Very entertaining...some of the characters and situations show you just how different the '60s were.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews