The new DC FINEST reprint line enabled me to replace one of my black and white Showcase Green Lantern TPBs with the all-in-color The Defeat of Green Lantern by John Broome and Gil Kane (with a couple of team-ups by others), covering GL’s series from #19 through 39.
I think this is the peak of the Silver Age run (I count the Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams stuff as Bronze Age). We have a great lineup of supervillains (Hector Hammond, Black Hand, the Shark, Evil Star and more), multiple space adventures; the Green Lantern Corps (Hal Jordan teams up with several alien Green Lanterns); and human interest stories such as “The Amazing Transformation of Horace Tolliver” in which Hal accidentally turns a milquetoast office drone into a dynamic powerhouse.
Plus the ongoing romantic triangle in which Hal keeps trying to win boss Carol Ferris’s heart while she’s just as determined to win his other identity. All of Julius Schwartz’s superheroes had steady love interests — much as Iris used to nag Barry, she loved him — except Hal.
I look forward to the next volume which will enable me to wrap up the Silver Age in living color.
As a teen, I found Warren’s black and white comics magazines — Vampirella is the best known — interesting but too pricey for me to buy them more than occasionally. One of the most intriguing was Restin Dane, AKA The Rook, a time traveler whose TARDIS looked like a chess castle, hence the name. I recently jumped at the chance to pick up THE ROOK ARCHIVES Volume I by William B. DuBay, Budd Lewis, Jim Stenstrum and Luis Bermejo. My verdict? Not classic but interesting and engaging.
By the start of the book Restin is already a wealthy tech whiz with a robot butler, Manners, and a time machine. He heads back in time to the Alamo to save one of his ancestors from dying at the hands of those bloodthirsty Mexican troops — why yes, that part is unpleasantly racist — and winds up bouncing through a couple more adventures and bringing home his gunfighter grandfather, Bishop Dane, from the later 1800s. He has enemies — a vengeful widow, Granny Gadget, and would be master of time “Gat” Hawkins —and he has mysteries, such as why there’s an ancient alien base under his laboratory.
It’s good stuff, but it suffers from sloppy plotting. Restin can only stay in the past for a limited time or he ceases to exist; in fighting Gat he winds up staying too long and dissipates, slipping into limbo. And then he simply … gets out into the far future and makes his way home from there. WTF? The end result is, I’ll probably get the second volume and see if it improves but I’m not rushing.
SHADOW LIFE by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu tells the story of Kumiko, an elderly Japanese-Canadian whose daughters have put her in some sort of assisted living facility. Finding the ordered life there insufferable, Kumiko runs away and tries living on her own. This leads to reconnecting with her long-lost love but Death has Kumio marked and isn’t taking no for an answer. I like the story but the art didn’t connect with me.
All rights to images remain with current holders. Green Lantern art by Gil Kane, Eerie cover by Enirch Torres
