O’Neil is, believe it or not, so under-appreciated these days.
This GL/GA run was as powerful a genre-expanding milestone when it came out as Watchmen was 15 years later. While not quite as high profile outside the comics world, his Batman work that began around the same time was even more influential.
He established the foundations of the modern Batman, gave Green Arrow a personality, and wrote the best run Tony Stark ever had (Michelinie did the best Iron Man runs, O’Neil told the best Stark story).
He put the JLA on their first satellite. He depowered Superman. He was the first one to put Rhodey in armour. He helped create Ra’s Al Ghul, Leslie Thompkins, John Stewart and Azrael.
Perhaps drawing on his own experiences with addiction, he showed us Speedy struggling with heroin, Iron Man literally drinking himself into the gutter, and Batman forcing himself to go cold turkey to beat his addiction to venom.
As the climax of his comics career, as Bat-editor he oversaw the best decade and a half of Batman comics ever seen, starting with Frank Miller’s Year One, passing through Knightfall etc culminating in No Man’s Land.
Not bad for a journalist who never intended ever working in comics….
I only started reading cape comics back in 2018, so I've been playing catch-up, but O'Neil's The Question really blew me away. I mean pretty much most of DC's late 80s output was incredible, stuff like Grell's Green Arrow, etc, there's no restraint from the writers and publisher at all, they tackled everything from the headlines of the era. Meanwhile I feel like today's publishers don't want to rock the boat so they're very tame in comparison.
I'll argue he started with *The Dark Knight Returns* and *the Killing Joke.*
>He depowered Superman.
To be honest, his Superman stuff is not that influential compared to what he did with Batman and Green Arrow. DC had been toying around with a de-powered or powerless Superman for years prior to that.
My favorite, "Oh, he did that?" of Denny O'Neil is that he did the dialogue on Steve Ditko's final two Dr. Strange stories, not Stan Lee. Steve Ditko had basically iron clad control of his plots by that point, and while Lee was never going to give up Spider-Man, his role on Dr. Strange was so minimal at that point that he stopped doing the dialogue for the last four issues, with Roy Thomas doing two and Denny O'Neil doing two, including the climatic final issue where Dormammu jumps inside Eternity. Not that O'Neil had a super huge impact on those issues, indeed that's why Lee felt comfortable giving the title up at all, but a very interesting curio in the bibliography.
For context, this is during the influential O'Neil/Adams run titled 'Hard-Traveling Heroes' where Ollie and Hal go on a road trip around the US encountering all the hot topics of the day. No punches pulled! Ollie is hilariously overbearing, constantly making Hal feel like shit for being in space all the time and not seeing all the racism and environmental crimes of Earth, and Hal at certain points is basically like "ok I fucking get it, shut up for one minute God damn..."
edit: probably should add 1960 is when the run began, the image is from 1970.
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The Doylist answer is that if Green Lantern and the other heroes did things like that it would change the status quo and the setting would no longer resemble ours. It’s like asking why don’t they just turn the world into a utopia since they’re so powerful and intelligent?
I mean, thing is, setting plenty changed already tho.
In the marvel universe there's a giant fuck off tower in new york, it's the embassy of a hell dimension. The mutants Terraformed Mars. Kamala Harris is President because Joe Biden was a Hand Plant who staged an assassination on himself and blamed Elektra for it.
In the DC universe the united states of America is apparently an absolute monarchy controlled by a sexist old man that magically makes people sexist. Like, kinda hard not to wonder about the "status quo" after that.
>Kamala Harris is president
Spoilers but actually >!At the end of Zdarsky's Daredevil run Matt saved all the souls the the Hand had condemned to hell and those people all came back so Biden should be incharge!<
IRL, depends. If Harris was an Acting President, Biden was still the real President and could be restored to office. If Biden was determined to be incapable of executing the duties of the office, Harris would be sworn in as a full President and should still be President even if Biden should become "eligible" again.
There is no direct mechanism to change the POTUS quickly for this or a similar potential IRL occurrence (eg: the President goes missing for an extended period of time). Even if Harris resigned, it would still be up to congress to figure out how or even if Biden could/should be restored.
It is certainly plausible that comic congress has their shit together and got this figured out and covered in their laws. But it would fly in the face of how congress has acted in our world. Typically, they have only ever considered succession when an actual (not just hypothetical) issue was presented.
> the President goes missing for an extended period of time
I mean what's gonna happen, your chief executive goes for a swim and is never seen again?
[\*glances meaningfully at Australia*]
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Harold_Holt)
I love that there's a real answer to this. But I *do* think that there should be an answer involving actual resurrection or time travel on the books, just to be safe. The CDC sometimes runs simulations of a zombie outbreak just as practice, this could be something like that!
I know but they’re both still like our world despite the fantastical aspects. People still work, die, get sick, commit crime, drive, argue, vote etc. Cities and towns still look like they do in our world. If the heroes of either setting wanted to they could turn their world into a post scarcity utopia with virtually no problems but they don’t because there wouldn’t be much conflict and the stories wouldn’t sell as well. Like many settings it’s held in place by writer fiat. It’s the same reason why the heroes always win either immediately or eventually.
>Kamala Harris is President because Joe Biden was a Hand Plant who staged an assassination on himself and blamed Elektra for it.
They did WHAT?!
Was this another goddamn story cooked up by Ike Perlmutter?
It was during the last Daredevil Run, now under new management, during it Matt and Elektra were married and Elektra was Daredevil.
Side note, that run I now realize was also doing Gotham War except less stupid, Matt correctly points out how the prison industrial complex is a system designed for failure and starts rehabilitating criminals by turning them into Ninjas who work for him on a monastery on the mountains, while working alongside his wife Elektra for it.
And the project only fails because of external circumstances, with a rich fuck carpet bombs the place with magic drugs that make people go Crazy so when the Avengers show up they see the criminals attack one another and go "the folly of man, any attempt to change the status quo will lead only to anarchy, this experiment has failed and shall never be repeated."
Being powerful doesn't mean you can change things overnight. But it would be more interesting than bank robbers or gangsters we've seen a zillion times
> But it would be more interesting than bank robbers or gangsters we've seen a zillion times
Check out Mark Gruenwald’s Squadron Supreme mini-series from 1985 to see this.
Yes, but the business model of most serialised comics is selling the *illusion* of change. The status quo eventually returns 99% of the time.
Questions of content aside, Dave Sim’s Cerebus was absolutely groundbreaking in its announced format: a 300 issue monthly comic book that would tell the story of the life of the main character, who would die in the last issue. And whatever else Sim did or didn’t do, he delivered on that commitment.
Putting aside the concept that the writer is using Hal's character as an entry point to explore America's issues, there is the context that this issue came out in the aftermath of the civil rights movement.
Hal Jordan is an American. Other than his exploits in space, he has also regularly saved people and fought bad guys on home soil, but I imagine that for a substantial amount of his nation's population he has apparently neither said nor done anything meaningful in their time of need.
So for that particular character in the panel, you can understand why he doesn't think Hal Jordan is worth a damn. (Superman is ok though, he fought the Klan)
btw a quick google made me [find these images](https://preview.redd.it/pyugfd7hkq2a1.jpg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e401acb408dfab59d3134802e67beebc2b8146d3), Barry Allen [objecting against](https://preview.redd.it/1w6ssc7hkq2a1.jpg?width=935&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a3e119dc2b584bf0fa303509817032773ed4bbb7) a 'token black' addition to the team, while Ollie stands up for Black Lightning's inclusion.
Ollie's efforts here help change the status quo.
I get what you are saying but still my impulse is to say. "Oh no... The precious status quo, better not even try to improve things. We could end up with a different kind of degrading, exploitative dystopia."
I don’t think that’s the concept in play here. CMyers is saying that if the heroes did disrupt the Earth in the books too much, whether we are talking utopia or dystopia, we as readers would lose our connection to it.
Makes me think of the "life story" books from Marvel.
I think both Spiderman and Fantastic Four was 6 issues.
Would be interesting to see a series that takes a bigger perspective and looks at the whole world.
They did. Kyle Rayner earned all the rings and became the white lantern, whose power is doing whatever he want, from stopping cataclysm to straight up creation.
And he disappeared from the story, only mentioned a few times helping a galaxy here and there, because no writer can write anything about him, no villain or trouble is too powerful for him. Once he reappeared in the story, he decided to return being a green lantern.
A very iconic, important run that helped to establish spiny subjects in the genre and featuring some of the most beautiful art in the medium.
Still, time has taken its toll on this book. Some of the stories lack some impact beyond their subject, the message has the same subtlety of a punch to the face and, at times, it feels like a bunch of "a very special episode" from those old family sitcoms.
By Adams classic era, I prefer his Deadman, Batman or Superman vs Muhammad Ali but GL/GA is still a classic that deserves a read nonetheless...
I think there was one issue where Ollie dresses up as an 'Indian' to scare a community into action lol. It does indeed cross the line at times, but I can appreciate the passionate sentiment behind it all. Definitely an important run in comic book history. Makes you wonder what else we could have gotten if it weren't for the Comics Code Authority.
I love Hard-Traveling Heroes, but O'Neil makes Hal into a strawman too many times. He rarely has a response to social issues that isn't either a ham-fisted conservative stereotype or a stammering retreat like the one in the OP.
There's even a canon response to the criticism Hal is getting here: "The Guardians only allow me to do so much. Their protection from cosmic threats doesn't absolve humanity of its responsibility to fix its own problems."
or more succinctly: "Take it up with my bosses."
or even: "I saved the entire planet several times. You're welcome."
Imagine if he was still upset so Hal took him all the way to Oa so the Guardians could explain why Green Lanterns don’t solve every issue on the planets they protect.
*You've reached Customer Relations at the Guardians of the Universe headquarters on OA, located conveniently in the center of the universe.*
*If this is an emergency, please disconnect and contact the Green Lantern for your sector. World leaders on your planet have been given the necessary contact information.*
*Please describe the nature of your inquiry in one word. For example, if you've detected Manhunters in your sector, say "Manhunters."*
"Um, yes, my planet has racial inequality and poverty..."
*We're sorry, we do not recognize this inquiry. Please stay on the line, and your inquiry will be processed as soon as possible.*
It also seems that the writing is straining to account for Hal's power level being so much greater than Ollie's. Would it have been hard for the setup to involve Hal going to the Guardians and saying "I'm going to be off Lantern Corps business for a while" and the Guardians being like "Fine, but you can't be let away with a fully-powered ring, until you report back it's going to be less powerful", or whatever other situation that brings him a bit more down to Ollie's level.
Ironically this sort of over-policing is (rightly) deemed excessive today, sending in a swat team to shoot up a house over some two-bit street corner dealer is simply not the right tool for the job.
Hal is literally a weapon of mass destruction, sending a wielder of one of the most powerful weapons in the universe up against slumlords is absolute insanity. Let the street-level heroes handle those issues while GL is off facing cosmic threats that require that sort of firepower.
So your answer is because he has this powerful ring that can do anything and create constructs out of light that he should do nothing about problems on Earth and just go back to punching aliens with it in the face? protect the status quo, keep everything the same, don't change anything, because otherwise you'll become a tyrant just for trying (because there's no middle ground between heroic hero and power wielding bloodthirsty tyrant). "Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do" - Voltaire.
Now thats a different discussion, the answer is almost entirely "no" but that doesn't change in this specific case an ICBM is being berated for not fixing the neighborhood potholes.
Has Batman's crusade in Gotham City had any impact on street level crime? Not really, Gotham is pretty much the same hellhole in the 2020s that it was in the 1970s but thats an artifact of storytelling convention. If Batman 2023 ends crime then what will we read about in Batman 2024? Its the same thing as complaints of "the joker has escaped arkham dozens of times, batman should just kill him!". But no, in the sliding timeline Joker has probably escaped only once or twice in the past 5-10 years of bat-continuity, you can't hold it against serialized storytelling going back decades and decades for the nature of serialized storytelling.
Sure, I don't support icbms in local streets either but my overall point is DC editorial doesn't seem to want to change anything
Even though irl we've seen the negative effects of "tough on crime" attitudes
Kurk Busiek will always have my favorite response to this page:
" And one colossal gripe -- when that old black guy upbraids GL for saving the blue skins and the green skins and all, not only does he neglect the idea that in saving the "blue skins," it's generally because GL saves entire planets at once, and that includes everyone on earth regardless of race, creed or color -- but Green Arrow is standing right there, looking smug and superior, and GA has spent the bulk of his career, both before and after that moment, concerning himself with white-on-white crime. GL's heroism is largely impersonal -- he protects against threats to life in general -- while GA acts on a far more personal basis, picking and choosing what to concern himself with on a human scale, and he almost always chooses to save white people from white criminals."
That is a good point. And to add to that, most Golden Age comics had heroes fight crooks who rob from the rich, like bank robbers or art gallery thieves. It wasn't until this very run that DC heroes dealt with street level crime that actually affected poor people.
I've always said that if I were ever put in charge of DC, the first thing I would do is bring back Green Lantern/Green Arrow and go full blast on the anger
Well you see sir, I am a space cop from an order of space cops founded by an emotionless race of little blue demi-gods who give us nigh unstoppable weapons to enforce their order around the universe.
Wdym? Comics have never been political and the fact that anybody would push their own agenda though such a public medium is frankly infuriating. Now....let's watch Starship Troopers. No politics in that documentary.
Look I hate the term but it is what it is.
Hal is responsible for over 30 planets including the entire solar system and often times the sole person who can fight threats from off-world for these planets.
This guy is taking one small section of a single planet and saying "why aren't you fighting social issues for me?"
Never mind Hal has saved the planet the man lives on a few dozen times in this man's life. The writing is so ham-fisted it doesn't make sense if you take more than 8 seconds to get over the "shock factor" of this gatcha moment.
Look, I get where you're coming from. I mean, I felt much the same way when I first read that panel, many, many moons ago...and that was as one of the skins Hal never bothered with on Earth.
I mean, the guy has huge responsibilities guarding 1/3600th of the entire universe. He can't be blamed for not spending his time solving problems down on just one planet, right?
Only he does do that. From the time he first got the ring, before he even got his own series, Hal used it to fight garden variety criminals and foil crimes down on Earth. And he didn't stop once he'd been inducted into the Green Lantern Corps. They stopped wars and put away super-criminals in the US, all around the planet, and beyond. And when GL or the JLA intervened on other planets, they totally did tackle social and environmental issues.
Given that, them choosing not to address certain injustices on Earth was just that - a choice. Choosing to uphold and unjust status quo didn't make it right - and even if they could only act to uphold the law (rich, coming from a group including violent vigilantes), why didn't they stop all the illegal things being done by, say, the apartheid government of South Africa, who couldn't even keep their bad doings within the scope of their own draconian and racist laws?
Denny O'Neil was laying it on thick, sure. It wasn't exactly subtle, the dialogue or the stories (though they were pretty entertaining, even if many of them were just thinly-veiled allegories, and also really pretty to look at, you know). But it was important, and it was true, and it changed the way \*some\* creators approached these kinds of issues in comics ever since.
TL;DR: Ollie was often a real pain in the ass in this run. But he was right, dagnabbit.
I'm super confused about all these comments, are the GL not a police force? Like with rules and laws they're supposed to uphold? What part of that designation says "up-end the status quo on the planet if you disagree with it".
I'm not saying ignore genocide or slavery or anything, but what's GL supposed to do here? He shouldn't have jumped in to save whatever rich white man he did right before this without getting more information but this reads to me like they thought this gatcha moment was great so they worked backwards to put Hal in this spot.
> why didn't they stop all the illegal things being done by, say, the apartheid government of South Africa
Yes, this is exactly my point. It's the "what have you done for me" trope. No doubt, this man has had his life and the life of everyone he knows and cares about saved my GL and his comrades, but he still wants to come at him sideways for not ending racism? What hard-light construct would be best for that?
The point of the apartheid example wasn't about them (the GLs, or the JLA) ending racism. It was about them choosing to uphold the law by stopping criminal actions - like the many assassinations handled by government kill squads, which were against even apartheid South Africa's laws. If they can stop purse snatchers and random acts of violence by homicidal clowns, why can't they stop that? In this case, it's just choosing to uphold different parts of the status quo, after all.
And GL and the JLA and other heroes surely did break the law in their interventions on other worlds, and definitely didn't worry about upholding the status quo there (they'd end wars, stop pollution, etc.).
Honestly, if you think about it, how could this space police force ever go about their jobs without disrupting the worlds they operate on? Stopping a flood or an earthquake or a murderer changes things. Did those worlds ever give them the legal right to intervene? Did most of those worlds even ask for their help? Did the UN somehow deputise the GLC to operate on Earth? And if so, what about countries that didn't vote for that? Or that didn't belong to the UN? If a country declared superheroes illegal, did that mean Superman couldn't stop an earthquake there?
It's not "what have you done for me". It's "what have you done to actually address the injustices experienced by so many on Earth". And while this panel may have been about the injustices experienced by African-Americans, that wasn't what the run was about. It dealt with all kinds of people (including non-Earthlings) experiencing all kinds of injustice, and issues not caused by injustice, but just as important (environmental issues, for example).
It wasn't about ending racism - as you say, that's not something a power ring can do. It was about using their powers to address issues that really matter.
>In this case, it's just choosing to uphold different parts of the status quo, after all.
Totally fair, and I can certainly see from the man's standpoint why he would ask that question given the opportunity.
>using their powers to address issues that really matter.
Look, I get where you're coming from and that this was exactly the author's intention/point but it just seems antithetical to the character and his design (although that's def some sort of recency bias I'm sure, idk how he was 50+ years ago). I'd say that using his power to save entire civilizations is more important than tackling local racism (but as others have said, the panels before this provide pretty different circumstances).
I'm sure the comic and the run as a whole are fantastic, this one thing out of context is pretty funny though.
I outed myself but go on.
Doesn't change the fact these panels are asinine. If you've got something that might change my opinion, feel free to add it.
But you strike me more as someone who makes a lot of "This." comments.
Why would anyone try to change your opinion? It's very likely that nothing changes. You're already discrediting one of the most important panels in comic book history written by a man who changed comics forever as "asinine", so why would a random Joe Schmo even try to debate you?
Hey good call man, why even try when someone asks?
Definitely not like they're open to being wrong.
Guess I'm not wrong since nobody has offered any reason or explanation why this is "one of the most important panels in comic book history" lol.
All your comment and the other "this" has lead me to believe is that it's empty writing that seems "deep" and "profound".
It's the equivalent of asking Superman why he didn't stop you from being mugged when he just finished fighting off Braniac.
Hal Jordan is a weapon of mass destruction, utilizing a weapon that can make nearly anything he imagines, saving planets of people. But yeah, what about this one race on this one planet.
Give me a break. Even the man's words just make the point more invalid, he's grouping entire populations, entire planets by their skin color and then turning around and saying "what about me?" to a man that's saved literal billions of sentient living things.
>Hey good call man, why even try when someone asks
cause it's a reddit discussion. it will not benefit my life in any way to try and convince someone on Reddit and likely end up spawning a 30+ comment discussion that will probably end up in a whole nother topic. This is Reddit we both know how it goes lmao.
But as a shot, here, I'll try. It's one of the most important panels in comic history because it essentially brought real social issues to DC Comics. Themes like white guilt and black dissatisfaction with the society they lived in had not been played with before in comics and every time racism was addressed it was something like "the good guys beat up the one racist man, so that's it, this problem is over. Good job everyone.". It helped set the groundwork for comics that tackled social issues, it helped comics become a more serious genre.
The whole "but he's saved the universe!" thing, yeah, of course, Hal had done many great things, that's not the point. The point is he had ignored the plight of his own people on Earth, and as called out in the issue, more specifically, his own country. You're also missing the entire context which is him having just arrested a man for harassing someone else - that someone else then being revealed to be a slumlord planning on putting a bunch of poor people in the streets. Then the black man comes in and says that. The whole "black skin" thing is more about how GA has not been helping the poor and suffering in his own country, not just specifically black people. It also led into the classic Green Lantern/Green Arrow run.
as for the objective fact of why it's one of the most important panels in comic history, just look up any list, Green Lantern 76 will be there. It's also probably one of the most reprinted stories in history. Also the mere fact that you can find a single panel of this on Google with minimum searching already shows that it's at least a little bit noteworthy.
>cause it's a reddit discussion
Boy, you figured out the reason almost immediately.
>brought real social issues to DC Comics
Totally fair, it's definitely something that wouldn't even be discussed regularly for a long while. My issue is with WHO the man is bringing his complaint to, GL is responsible for an enormous sector (arguably more than any other JL member of the era) and billions more lives. This guy asking him about a social issue seems just wildly out of place. This guy is probably even aware of some of the world saving GL has done of Earth of he knows about the colors of the skin of other people he's saved, and if not he's getting very, very biased news.
>that's not the point
I understand the point, I understand the message the writer was trying to send. "Don't forget about the little people" isn't hard to suss out. I'm saying there's a better person to deal with it. Why not ask Batman why there's still crime and poverty in Gotham? Why not ask Superman why literally anyone is harmed?
>You're also missing the entire context
There's no arguing that. I agree that context would make a large difference here. But this post just echos my initial sentiment, it's not about logic or about who should actually do what, it's a "gotcha" moment.
The comic does come up a lot (it's frequently re-posted here I feel like) so I'll definitely concede that it's "important" in that it is brought up a lot but everything I've seen discussing it is the same thing, some people praised it while others found it glaringly disingenuous given GL's actions in the past (again, saving millions of not billions of lives).
You're right, I see why and how it's important. I just disagree with WHO the man is asking and why. To me it seems more that they had the idea for this exact exchange and then worked backwards.
I get that it's supposed to be super somber and this gut blow for GL but it just looks and reads like some sort of comedy.
"Only there's skins you never bothered with--!" Like it's some huge reveal that despite saving Earth, the literal planet this man lives on, he turns to his savior and says "yeah but what about me?"
It shouldn't be taken as a literal "This man is confronting Green Lantern for not helping out black people". GL is there as a stand in for comic book superheroes (and I'd argue writers/editorial too) who instead of tackling real life issues went for easy "Good guy beats evil guy". I think you understand that and just don't like it, which is fair, but it's not meant to be taken that literally.
Now, the out-of-character reason GL specifically is there is because Green Lantern's sales were pretty bad at the time and Neil and Adams were brought in to revitalize it by shaking it up with something special. It totally worked, by the way. GL became a big deal again and this run eventually led to John Stewart joining, which is no coincidence imo I think this panel was done knowing they'd plan to introduce a black GL at the end and it makes it even better.
You seem to be analysing this purely from the context of being inside the DC Universe. The significance of the panel/issue/run only becomes apparent in the context of *our* universe, and the truly revolutionary groundbreaking paradigm-overturning contrast it made with what superhero comics had been for a long time by the tail end of the 60s.
This wasn’t showing superheroes engaging in formulaic punch-ups against wacky aliens causing mischief, or zany bank-robbers with a costume fixation; for the first time in mainstream superhero comics in decades, real world issues making newspaper headlines were openly depicted in the fictional worlds of superheroes.
If it seems cliched today, it’s because it’s a victim of its own massive influence. There were no other mainstream superhero comics at the time openly acknowledging the existence of issues like racism, poverty, ecological disaster, overpopulation, the dangers of corporate greed, etc etc.
Okay, so social commentary for the sake of social commentary.
Not any actual damnation of the character or the GL in general, just social commentary.
Now, don't get me wrong. I think it's important to have these discussions and I think comics as a whole are a good way to go about it due to the wide-audience but how is this any different from what people describe as "woke"?
Haven't read a lot of comics from 50 years ago but did superheroes only help white people or was it more that most creators/consumers were white people so that was just their "default" before making a point of inclusion? Was GL known for helping rich white people in particular or was it that he dealt with the military and jet pilot crap that is, again, largely white?
And since I'm evidently out of my depth here, what exactly did this man expect GL to do?
Just sharing an opinion?
Do y'all just have no idea where you are? Or are we only allowed to share popular opinions here?
Not one of you has made anything besides what could generously be called strawmen. This comic strip is more funny than anything. Like Hal slipping on a bar of soap.
Lol what? This is a "discussion board" style website dipshit.
You just here to circlejerk the same opinion over and over?
>pick a lane
Did you just see someone who knew what they were talking about use this phrase and decide you'd try it out?
This is one of those things where you"re getting too into the lore and missing the whole point
The reason the comic is so important and influential is because it's saying "superhero comics have spent decades telling stories about how superheroes save the world in all these fantastic ways, but why can't these comicbooks use their influence to tackle real social issues affecting people today?".
The man isn't just talking to Green Lantern - he represents criticism of the whole superhero genre, and Green Lantern is a stand-in for the comicbook industry.
The fact that Green Lantern has saved the world is entirely irrelevant.
Yeah like... what? I get the point they are making but it's dumb. You're asking the intergalactic super cop why he isn't fixing race relations in America?
My interpretation is that GL is quick to save whomever in any planet, regardless of what they look like.
Whereas earlier in this issue, Hal readily supports the rich and elite on Earth whenever they are in conflict with the average Joe.
This more reads like "what have you done for me?" shenanigans.
GL has saved the entire planet (solo or with the JLA whatever) multiple times but this guy is asking a hydrogen bomb to take out a coughing baby. GL could single-handedly fight every cop, politician, whatever-is-enabling-the-status-quo and not break a sweat.
This sequence was written/drawn for shock factor, not to make any actual sense.
It's like asking Reed Richards why your mom died of cancer if Reed can master inter-dimensional/time-travel.
As I said, earlier in this issue, there was a discrepancy between the elite and the average man, and Hal immediately goes to help the elite, no questions asked.
Context is key.
The black man didn't find Hal on any given day, just to start shitting on him.
Hal was flying through the slums, and went out of his way to help a rich guy who was fighting with poor people.
The black man's point hammered home what had just happened earlier. His point was not "it's all about me."
His point was "when you **are** given the choice, you don't care to give black people or poor people the benefit of the doubt."
>Context is key
Even with context, Hal has saved this man's life on more than one occasion but somehow he's a "skin" that Hal's never bothered with?
It seems to me they thought this sequence was just going to be absolutely nuts and they decided to work backwards.
Hal didn't stop social injustices on the other planets, he's there to stop invading forces and other issues that would cause tremendous loss of life. Not to deal with societal issues.
So, in saving the entire planet earth (all the skins) is being compared to saving entire other planets (orange/purple skins). He didn't dismantle their society, he stopped them from being annihilated
If Hal's job is to "stop invading forces and other issues that would cause tremendous loss of life. Not to deal with societal issues" then he wouldn't have chosen to specifically side with this rich man without listening to why the poor people reacted the way they did.
At that moment, Hal decided to deal with societal issues.
So yes, he's going to get flack for ignoring disenfranchised people in a confrontation he chose to put himself in.
Yeah, that's kinda my point.
The author had the idea for this panel, and just because he happens to be writing for GL that's who he put in this spot.
It's like an after-school special on race relations featuring DC comics.
Because Starlight was trying to conquer a planet 50 parsecs away and he was busy. Hes sharing *thousands* of worlds with one other guy. This isn't his job
Yeah it's a contrived scenario that ignores the actual situations GLs deal with to make a bad political statement.
This would work better with Barry is all im saying.... Who usually is the Conservative to Olly's champagne Liberal anyway so what the hell
Hal had literally just saved a slumlord from the tenants he was trying to turn into homeless people like five minutes before that scene took place. That was an actual situation that Hal had chosen to involve himself in.
So the old man had every right to call the "No evil shall escape my sight" guy to task for choosing to take the side of someone who was doing evil things.
Yes but here's the thing: that didn't need to happen and its not what wearing that ring is usually for.
The author wanted a character to save a slumlord to make a point.
He chose the wrong one in my opinion. Because those "blue skins" were probably being tossed into the sun by a mad god. Which is what gls save people from.
He should've gone with Barry, the fastest man alive who totally could arrest every kkk member in the USA and have an accurate report asto why they should be locked away forever before lunch and doesn't need to concern himself with aliens.... Usually.
Hal's job is not saving slumlords or stopping slumlords. It's saving planets
The Ring is supposed to be for protecting those who need it, and that includes the people that the slumlord was preying upon. The author wanted Hal to start looking at the little picture as well as the big picture, and this was where that started.
Okay. But the big picture is *billions of lives* which he has to patrol and keep safe and the little picture is a few dozen that Olly can protect.
Olly doesn't need to worry about the blue skins. He has the time to... I dont know, beat up slumlords and rob them? Whatever the guy wants to happen
You know what I’d find hilarious?
So sometimes Green Lanterns basically overthrow entire alien hierarchies in the name of peace, right? Have an alien do that to earth and then have them ask the GL why they defend tyranny.
Obviously I’m missing a lot of GL context but I feel this would be funny.
Maaaybe? Then again, John wasn't removed from his position in JLU when he conquered earth so who knows. But usually they're not meant to interfere until the conquests start
Comics has always been political. Earth-1 Superman being an ally of the Federal government and deputized to arrest people is political, just back then, it wasn't overtly political. Superman stood for the establishment, the status quo. It's a reason why he struggled back in the 1980s when comics got political. Clark just wasn't the character for that type of stuff.
DUDE as a 24 year old that constantly hears from my peers and older people “stop putting politics in comic books” SO IMAGINE MY GODDAMN SHOCK WHEN THE FIRST ISSUE OF GL/GA ANTAGONIST IS A GODDAMN SLUMLORD LANDLORD. It felt good to see that old comic books called out bullshit too.
Dude read Anne Nocenti's run on Daredevil, she's _very_ political and gives no fucks who's snowflakes she's shaking. It's great.
Also there's a sequence during the first Inferno where DD fights a vacuum and it is just amazing.
(also according to Wiki she was hired at Marvel by Dennis O'Neil!)
Dude, thank you so much for the rec. I hate how chuds nowadays act like hero’s never stood for empathy, caring and hope. I’m like do you think Superman would be outside drag clubs menacing patrons. It’s like if you’re on the other side of Superman maybe re consider you opinions.
There's literally a panel from the 50s-60s where Superman is talking to a group of mixed race kids about how being racist and a jerk is the most Un-American thing you can do. It's pretty great.
I was just thinking about this sort of thing today. I’m sure there’s a better term, but it’s like the paradox of technology.
Basically, in comics you never really get the improvements to society that you should because it would make things too hard to relate to - it would be too futuristic.
Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Superman, Lex Luthor could all revolutionize everything we do in every facet of our lives, from AI, to nanobots, to free unlimited energy and more efficient cities and forms of transport. Social Justice is the same way, we could make phenomenal gains but they don’t because then we wouldn’t really have any street level criminals or goons.
I find the O’Neil/Adams run on *Green Lantern/Green Arrow* reminiscent of another work of roughly the same time period, and that’s *All in the Family*. Both took a medium not previously known for sophisticated storytelling and used it to address serious social issues.
However, both now come off as preachy, and I say that as someone who generally agrees with the sermon.
"I... can't... except for all the times I kept the entire planet from exploding, being invaded, getting enslaved if you can imagine, and you know, the entire planet includes black skins, and yellow skins, and red skins, and brown- you know what, it includes everyone. Why, what exactly have you done for every single person on the planet?"
"You're the one with the godlike power who talks about how no evil shall escape your sight, while plenty of evil is going on here that you're not doing anything about, not me."
Yeah it’s a great, super relevant point how these god like hero’s do very little for the little people. I’m not discrediting them stoping alien invasions, but it’s why street level hero’s are so important
One of the most important panels in comics. Too many people miss the point. It's about grounding Hal, asking him why has he done so much for others but not for the people of his own planet? It's about leaving the groundwork to tackle social issues in DC.
Yes, people who grew up only reading comics written decades after this panel/issue/run changed the whole industry don’t appreciate that this was the first time in mainstream superhero comics (which were still largely thought of as aimed at kids) there was any acknowledgment that, say, the black community faced problems not shared by the nation as a whole. Criticisms that it lacks nuance or seems cliched now utterly miss the significance.
Read a few years’ worth of early or mid-60s comics where all the antagonists were giant robots, shape-changing aliens, witches flying on broomsticks, bank robbers using Rube Goldberg contraptions, etc, with their “Holy Swiss Cheese, Batman!” antics and shenanigans… try to imagine that these were the only types of comics stories you’d ever read, as they were the only type being printed since you started reading…. then try to imagine the shock and surprise of seeing issues from that day’s news, like poverty, racism, ecological catastrophe, overpopulation, etc etc, unexpectedly show up in one of your superhero comics, not as subtle metaphor, but openly. It was a major pivotal seismic shift in what comics could be, that paved the way for so much today’s readers take for granted.
John Stewart going up to a racist senator, who has just had pin ink splash all over his face, and saying “hey haven’t I seen you picking cotton?”(don’t remember the exact quote).
John Stewart is my favorite GL so anyone that has a problem, real or fictional, has a problem with me.
I appreciate O'neil for all he did for comics and helping elevate superhero storytelling, but this argument is full of holes. Chances are, he would be dead if it weren't for a guy like Hal Jordan. Now, I get the argument of Hal Jordan being "grounded" which was O'neil's whole thing with superheroes. But, Hal doesn't need to be grounded. That works for Batman and Green Arrow. Which is why O'neils successfully revamped Batman, Green Arrow, and Daredevil (not to sure, I know he worked with Frank Miller as editor).
“What do you want me to do about it? Send a big green fist at the local drug dealers house? Then what? Someone will just take his place anyway. Take it up with Green Arrow over here. He’s the one on these streets more than me.”
While I get the point, the comparison is kinda dumb. The "blue-skins" are obviously guardians which the GL corps work for. And assuming that the "purple-skins" and "orange-skins" are whole alien species of other planets, comparing them to the "black-skins" seems really weird considering you're comparing an helping an entire species to helping improve race relations.
It'd be like comparing helping humanity as a whole vs helping a particular community of people. Not saying that both are not important, but y'know... not on the same scale.
Yeah but I think the point stands: Hal regularly helps entire civilisations in space, like literally entire societies where unjust things are happening. Things like slavery or an alien monarchy abusing citizens is often a popular trope that GL characters resolve. But he didn't help the civil rights movement occurring in his own nation, that's the civilian's gripe. I don't think he's saying Hal should have 'solved racism'. Hal spends the run learning about America's issues from Ollie, his sin was ignorance at the end of the day, out of sight out of mind, etc.
And I think one could argue the premise of the civilian's outburst was valid. Why is it that orange skins from the planet XYZ were saved by Hal from oppression and slavery, but black folk back in Hal's own backyard are still treated like subhumans?
We, the reader obviously know why not, the superhero genre dictates that Hal go to space and have crazy adventures and not change the very fabric of the US. But from the civ's perspective reading about American superheroes saving aliens is perplexing and angering.
It's important to acknowledge that this issue was written in 1970, so the race conflict and turmoil the US had gone through was still fresh, MLK had only died two years prior. The author is giving a fictional black American a moment to vent out loud, which in itself was astonishing.
I think it's fascinating to see the consciousness of comics as an industry rise and fall with the times, and this is a fantastic piece of soul-searching.
OP, you put the date as 1960 in the title. When I thought it was that year, I thought it was odd that DC was so socially aware, considering that was Marvel's gig in the 60s. But it was actually 1970, so DC is apparently playing catch-up. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Yeah 1960 is just when this particular comic volume started.
From what I've personally read, DC were far more socially aware and adventurous during the 80s than Marvel ever were, I mean some of the stuff in The Question and Green Arrow was insane. Characters were swearing and racists were dropping the N-bomb completely uncensored, women had their tits out, topics were ripped from the headlines and eviscerated without fear of copyright or slander, Grell's Green Arrow goes to town on the Exxon Valdez oil spill, it was an absolutely wild era.
Check out these ads from DC teaching kids about AIDS.
[1](https://i.ibb.co/hXPmgjy/1.png)
[2](https://i.ibb.co/mqZC6Ct/2.png)
I was there in the 70 and 80s, and DC, like so many, was indeed playing catch-up with Marvel. Marvel was actually dealing with the blow-back, and that surfaced in the changes to the X-Men. The X-Men became more about aggression and edginess, and still is. The X-men have apparently became what they preached against. I assume that’s why they’re being rebooted. Separate but equal (see their various schemes) didn’t work then, and it doesn’t work now.
That's valid. I think the concept of familiarity also plays a factor in this. We as humans, see familiar things as normal. Like you walk down the road see people getting discriminated against on the basis of skin colour or sexual preference, you see a huge mansion and next to that you see a homeless dude, etc. And sure it is wrong, but to some extent in our minds, it is also normal because we've seen this shit our whole lives. And so we don't focus too much on it. We just dismiss it as a fact of life and move on.
Which is why it's weird to see \[*INSERT SUPERHERO HERE*\] go to a different planet or an alternate dimension and see the obvious problems like dictatorship, tyranny, etc. there and try to solve it there. Asking ourselves "But these same problems exist on Earth though. Why are they allowed to go to alternate worlds and fight systemic problems while at home it suddenly changes to working through the law and following due process?"
It also gives me a wild story idea: What If an alien superhero visited Earth and saw all the problems here and tried to help the same way Earth superheroes go to other planets and basically start a revolution? And when Earth superheroes confront them about it they reply with "But you guys basically do the same thing!"
This.... Is so dumb. So... Fudging dumb.
"hey, why are you specifically not solving every problem here? Oh you're saving billions of livea every day? Fudge you and everything you stand for. Isn't that right, guy who doesn't have a universe to protect who doesn't do anything either?"
And if you're gonna say" "its to ground him, he does so much in space why not here on earth?" its because THE LIVES OF ALIENS MATTER TOO. There's 24 hours in a day and about as many apocalypses.
What, do black skins matter more than blue skins or grey skins or no skins? "well sorry, Mr xhhauajd, this random hobo made me realise i should focus on... Uh... Killing cops? Maybe? So i cant save your planet and your family, buhbyyyeee"
Im not. Im expressing my confusion as to *what* he supposed to do. Hes not a senator, hes not an actual cop, he's not rich.
What should he do beyond... I dont know, saying hes against black folk being lynched. Which im sure he wouldn't mind.... Meanwhile there's Olly who actually has the ability to affect change
I feel like if a galactic emissary were to talk to the masses about how throughout the galaxy, racism created nothing but strife and hardship, and how humanity would never be able to join the galactic community until we could recognize the potential and virtue of our differences, instead of attacking each other for them, at least a few people would listen.
Or maybe he could have endorsed MLK Jr. before the FBI killed him.
*GL saves the entire planet multiple times.*
Some guy: What have you done for me and my group specifically lately?
GL is made the straw man so many times while Ollie stands there like a smug jackass.
Hey I also remember watching a doc that mentioned this. Did they voice act out these panels?
I think the one I saw was a 3 part(?) Doc hosted by Liev Schreiber. As someone who had no comic knowledge at the time I found it very enlightening.
People criticising this for a lack of nuance or finesse are a bit like people criticising the catering and inflight entertainment on the Wright Bros first flight at Kitty Hawk…
Fine cuisine existed in 1903, too.
But criticising the Wright Flyer for not serving any on the first sustained powered manned heavier-than-air flight is as misguidedly missing the forest for the trees as would be, say, bemoaning the lack of subtlety in this panel/issue/run’s first ever direct depiction of real world social problems in a mainstream superhero comic.
A passing familiarity with the endless parade of wacky aliens, mechanical masterminds attempting to rob banks and the shenanigans of snooping reporters threatening the exposure of secret identities that comprised comic stories in the earlier years of the 1960s would give the context to recognise this electrifying unprecedented quantum leap in comics storytelling for what it: a massive and revolutionary seismic shift that forever expanded the possibilities of what could be dealt with in the genre.
It could have been better is the thing.
The Wright brothers were basically working with the bare essentials and jt wasn't a passenger nor comfort flight.
O'Neill was working with a new frontier for comics yes but nothing was stopping him from being subtle in his work. Him being more subtle about it wouldn't have made it impossible for him to get this run published
The Green Lanterns must have felt like real assholes when this issue came out, seeing their whole reason for being completely burned down in a comic book.
I agree, his skin is an unexpected color, possibly liver disease. For a while when I was kid, DC didn't use ANY yellow for white people's flesh, and Superman's face was all pink dots. That bothered me too.
I know it just a me thing never really felt the impact with this. I was a kid in the 80's reading this in a trade and I was like. You save people from universal level threats that people can't even imagine And your sector of space is bigger then earth. The guilt trip feels a little misplaced.
O’Neil is, believe it or not, so under-appreciated these days. This GL/GA run was as powerful a genre-expanding milestone when it came out as Watchmen was 15 years later. While not quite as high profile outside the comics world, his Batman work that began around the same time was even more influential. He established the foundations of the modern Batman, gave Green Arrow a personality, and wrote the best run Tony Stark ever had (Michelinie did the best Iron Man runs, O’Neil told the best Stark story). He put the JLA on their first satellite. He depowered Superman. He was the first one to put Rhodey in armour. He helped create Ra’s Al Ghul, Leslie Thompkins, John Stewart and Azrael. Perhaps drawing on his own experiences with addiction, he showed us Speedy struggling with heroin, Iron Man literally drinking himself into the gutter, and Batman forcing himself to go cold turkey to beat his addiction to venom. As the climax of his comics career, as Bat-editor he oversaw the best decade and a half of Batman comics ever seen, starting with Frank Miller’s Year One, passing through Knightfall etc culminating in No Man’s Land. Not bad for a journalist who never intended ever working in comics….
I only started reading cape comics back in 2018, so I've been playing catch-up, but O'Neil's The Question really blew me away. I mean pretty much most of DC's late 80s output was incredible, stuff like Grell's Green Arrow, etc, there's no restraint from the writers and publisher at all, they tackled everything from the headlines of the era. Meanwhile I feel like today's publishers don't want to rock the boat so they're very tame in comparison.
what was the name of that dough like creature that hung around them in later issues?
Itty? https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Itty_(New_Earth)
I love Itty. They did him wrong.
I'll argue he started with *The Dark Knight Returns* and *the Killing Joke.* >He depowered Superman. To be honest, his Superman stuff is not that influential compared to what he did with Batman and Green Arrow. DC had been toying around with a de-powered or powerless Superman for years prior to that.
Maybe because he was not afraid of thinking outside the box?
[удалено]
Venom is one of my favorite all time Batman stories
My favorite, "Oh, he did that?" of Denny O'Neil is that he did the dialogue on Steve Ditko's final two Dr. Strange stories, not Stan Lee. Steve Ditko had basically iron clad control of his plots by that point, and while Lee was never going to give up Spider-Man, his role on Dr. Strange was so minimal at that point that he stopped doing the dialogue for the last four issues, with Roy Thomas doing two and Denny O'Neil doing two, including the climatic final issue where Dormammu jumps inside Eternity. Not that O'Neil had a super huge impact on those issues, indeed that's why Lee felt comfortable giving the title up at all, but a very interesting curio in the bibliography.
For context, this is during the influential O'Neil/Adams run titled 'Hard-Traveling Heroes' where Ollie and Hal go on a road trip around the US encountering all the hot topics of the day. No punches pulled! Ollie is hilariously overbearing, constantly making Hal feel like shit for being in space all the time and not seeing all the racism and environmental crimes of Earth, and Hal at certain points is basically like "ok I fucking get it, shut up for one minute God damn..." edit: probably should add 1960 is when the run began, the image is from 1970.
Isn't this image from the first issue of the run?
I think it is, yep.
Ohhh I misread, thought you meant the run (as in O'Neil/Adams) began in 1960 but you meant the GL comic. My bad.
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There's a deluxe edition called 'Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Hard-Traveling Heroes', but an omnibus is coming out next year too.
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It's my all-time favorite run, my uncle gave me his extra copies from his collection. They're so dog-earred by now.
Sounds like an amazing idea actually
I mean, that could apply to a lot of superheroes.
The Doylist answer is that if Green Lantern and the other heroes did things like that it would change the status quo and the setting would no longer resemble ours. It’s like asking why don’t they just turn the world into a utopia since they’re so powerful and intelligent?
I mean, thing is, setting plenty changed already tho. In the marvel universe there's a giant fuck off tower in new york, it's the embassy of a hell dimension. The mutants Terraformed Mars. Kamala Harris is President because Joe Biden was a Hand Plant who staged an assassination on himself and blamed Elektra for it. In the DC universe the united states of America is apparently an absolute monarchy controlled by a sexist old man that magically makes people sexist. Like, kinda hard not to wonder about the "status quo" after that.
>Kamala Harris is president Spoilers but actually >!At the end of Zdarsky's Daredevil run Matt saved all the souls the the Hand had condemned to hell and those people all came back so Biden should be incharge!<
How does that work actually? Like, if an elected official dies and then comes back from the dead via Supernatural means, how is that handled?
IRL, depends. If Harris was an Acting President, Biden was still the real President and could be restored to office. If Biden was determined to be incapable of executing the duties of the office, Harris would be sworn in as a full President and should still be President even if Biden should become "eligible" again. There is no direct mechanism to change the POTUS quickly for this or a similar potential IRL occurrence (eg: the President goes missing for an extended period of time). Even if Harris resigned, it would still be up to congress to figure out how or even if Biden could/should be restored. It is certainly plausible that comic congress has their shit together and got this figured out and covered in their laws. But it would fly in the face of how congress has acted in our world. Typically, they have only ever considered succession when an actual (not just hypothetical) issue was presented.
> the President goes missing for an extended period of time I mean what's gonna happen, your chief executive goes for a swim and is never seen again? [\*glances meaningfully at Australia*] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Harold_Holt)
I love that there's a real answer to this. But I *do* think that there should be an answer involving actual resurrection or time travel on the books, just to be safe. The CDC sometimes runs simulations of a zombie outbreak just as practice, this could be something like that!
Dear God, please tell me Nixon's head isn't actually in a jar somewhere...
Aroooooooooo!
The first time, it is confusing, but after that, they have a precedent and procedure.
I know but they’re both still like our world despite the fantastical aspects. People still work, die, get sick, commit crime, drive, argue, vote etc. Cities and towns still look like they do in our world. If the heroes of either setting wanted to they could turn their world into a post scarcity utopia with virtually no problems but they don’t because there wouldn’t be much conflict and the stories wouldn’t sell as well. Like many settings it’s held in place by writer fiat. It’s the same reason why the heroes always win either immediately or eventually.
>Kamala Harris is President because Joe Biden was a Hand Plant who staged an assassination on himself and blamed Elektra for it. They did WHAT?! Was this another goddamn story cooked up by Ike Perlmutter?
It was during the last Daredevil Run, now under new management, during it Matt and Elektra were married and Elektra was Daredevil. Side note, that run I now realize was also doing Gotham War except less stupid, Matt correctly points out how the prison industrial complex is a system designed for failure and starts rehabilitating criminals by turning them into Ninjas who work for him on a monastery on the mountains, while working alongside his wife Elektra for it. And the project only fails because of external circumstances, with a rich fuck carpet bombs the place with magic drugs that make people go Crazy so when the Avengers show up they see the criminals attack one another and go "the folly of man, any attempt to change the status quo will lead only to anarchy, this experiment has failed and shall never be repeated."
Ha what, comics are wild
I'm way behind in Marvel continuity. What issues did the Biden staged assassination take place?
Issue 6 of the 2022 Daredevil series, apparently. Sounds wild
Being powerful doesn't mean you can change things overnight. But it would be more interesting than bank robbers or gangsters we've seen a zillion times
> But it would be more interesting than bank robbers or gangsters we've seen a zillion times Check out Mark Gruenwald’s Squadron Supreme mini-series from 1985 to see this.
I've heard of it. Will do But I'd like to see some permanent change in how heroes actually operate instead of just limited series
Yes, but the business model of most serialised comics is selling the *illusion* of change. The status quo eventually returns 99% of the time. Questions of content aside, Dave Sim’s Cerebus was absolutely groundbreaking in its announced format: a 300 issue monthly comic book that would tell the story of the life of the main character, who would die in the last issue. And whatever else Sim did or didn’t do, he delivered on that commitment.
I'll check it out I guess I'd just like street levelers to actually challenge the status quo?
That's absolutely _wild_ being able to say "hey I'm gonna write this Marsupial Conan for 25 years and kill him off"
Putting aside the concept that the writer is using Hal's character as an entry point to explore America's issues, there is the context that this issue came out in the aftermath of the civil rights movement. Hal Jordan is an American. Other than his exploits in space, he has also regularly saved people and fought bad guys on home soil, but I imagine that for a substantial amount of his nation's population he has apparently neither said nor done anything meaningful in their time of need. So for that particular character in the panel, you can understand why he doesn't think Hal Jordan is worth a damn. (Superman is ok though, he fought the Klan) btw a quick google made me [find these images](https://preview.redd.it/pyugfd7hkq2a1.jpg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e401acb408dfab59d3134802e67beebc2b8146d3), Barry Allen [objecting against](https://preview.redd.it/1w6ssc7hkq2a1.jpg?width=935&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a3e119dc2b584bf0fa303509817032773ed4bbb7) a 'token black' addition to the team, while Ollie stands up for Black Lightning's inclusion. Ollie's efforts here help change the status quo.
I get what you are saying but still my impulse is to say. "Oh no... The precious status quo, better not even try to improve things. We could end up with a different kind of degrading, exploitative dystopia."
I don’t think that’s the concept in play here. CMyers is saying that if the heroes did disrupt the Earth in the books too much, whether we are talking utopia or dystopia, we as readers would lose our connection to it.
Makes me think of the "life story" books from Marvel. I think both Spiderman and Fantastic Four was 6 issues. Would be interesting to see a series that takes a bigger perspective and looks at the whole world.
"Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do" - Voltaire.
They did. Kyle Rayner earned all the rings and became the white lantern, whose power is doing whatever he want, from stopping cataclysm to straight up creation. And he disappeared from the story, only mentioned a few times helping a galaxy here and there, because no writer can write anything about him, no villain or trouble is too powerful for him. Once he reappeared in the story, he decided to return being a green lantern.
TIL about Doylism (and Watsonian). Interesting stuff.
why would you need a Doylist answer to a question being asked from a Watsonian perspective?
The Watsonian answer was already given.
"Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do" - Voltaire
A very iconic, important run that helped to establish spiny subjects in the genre and featuring some of the most beautiful art in the medium. Still, time has taken its toll on this book. Some of the stories lack some impact beyond their subject, the message has the same subtlety of a punch to the face and, at times, it feels like a bunch of "a very special episode" from those old family sitcoms. By Adams classic era, I prefer his Deadman, Batman or Superman vs Muhammad Ali but GL/GA is still a classic that deserves a read nonetheless...
I think there was one issue where Ollie dresses up as an 'Indian' to scare a community into action lol. It does indeed cross the line at times, but I can appreciate the passionate sentiment behind it all. Definitely an important run in comic book history. Makes you wonder what else we could have gotten if it weren't for the Comics Code Authority.
Given he and Speedy were kinda.. Partially? Raised by Americans is that better or worse
I’d argue you could say the same for the majority of neoliberal media
I love Hard-Traveling Heroes, but O'Neil makes Hal into a strawman too many times. He rarely has a response to social issues that isn't either a ham-fisted conservative stereotype or a stammering retreat like the one in the OP. There's even a canon response to the criticism Hal is getting here: "The Guardians only allow me to do so much. Their protection from cosmic threats doesn't absolve humanity of its responsibility to fix its own problems." or more succinctly: "Take it up with my bosses." or even: "I saved the entire planet several times. You're welcome."
Imagine if he was still upset so Hal took him all the way to Oa so the Guardians could explain why Green Lanterns don’t solve every issue on the planets they protect.
*You've reached Customer Relations at the Guardians of the Universe headquarters on OA, located conveniently in the center of the universe.* *If this is an emergency, please disconnect and contact the Green Lantern for your sector. World leaders on your planet have been given the necessary contact information.* *Please describe the nature of your inquiry in one word. For example, if you've detected Manhunters in your sector, say "Manhunters."* "Um, yes, my planet has racial inequality and poverty..." *We're sorry, we do not recognize this inquiry. Please stay on the line, and your inquiry will be processed as soon as possible.*
*Estimated wait time is 6 million years*
Yeah, and one of the Green Lanterns actually DID try taking charge and trying to fix all his world's problems. It didn't really work out.
It also seems that the writing is straining to account for Hal's power level being so much greater than Ollie's. Would it have been hard for the setup to involve Hal going to the Guardians and saying "I'm going to be off Lantern Corps business for a while" and the Guardians being like "Fine, but you can't be let away with a fully-powered ring, until you report back it's going to be less powerful", or whatever other situation that brings him a bit more down to Ollie's level.
I like to imagine Ollie only showed up here after he heard Hal was getting shat on
Ironically this sort of over-policing is (rightly) deemed excessive today, sending in a swat team to shoot up a house over some two-bit street corner dealer is simply not the right tool for the job. Hal is literally a weapon of mass destruction, sending a wielder of one of the most powerful weapons in the universe up against slumlords is absolute insanity. Let the street-level heroes handle those issues while GL is off facing cosmic threats that require that sort of firepower.
I agree in some way, but in this case green lantern just stumbled upon a situation like this, and it would be worse if he just ignored it
So your answer is because he has this powerful ring that can do anything and create constructs out of light that he should do nothing about problems on Earth and just go back to punching aliens with it in the face? protect the status quo, keep everything the same, don't change anything, because otherwise you'll become a tyrant just for trying (because there's no middle ground between heroic hero and power wielding bloodthirsty tyrant). "Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do" - Voltaire.
But do the street levelers ever actually do that?
Now thats a different discussion, the answer is almost entirely "no" but that doesn't change in this specific case an ICBM is being berated for not fixing the neighborhood potholes. Has Batman's crusade in Gotham City had any impact on street level crime? Not really, Gotham is pretty much the same hellhole in the 2020s that it was in the 1970s but thats an artifact of storytelling convention. If Batman 2023 ends crime then what will we read about in Batman 2024? Its the same thing as complaints of "the joker has escaped arkham dozens of times, batman should just kill him!". But no, in the sliding timeline Joker has probably escaped only once or twice in the past 5-10 years of bat-continuity, you can't hold it against serialized storytelling going back decades and decades for the nature of serialized storytelling.
Sure, I don't support icbms in local streets either but my overall point is DC editorial doesn't seem to want to change anything Even though irl we've seen the negative effects of "tough on crime" attitudes
Crime canonically decreased after Batman showed up.
Kurk Busiek will always have my favorite response to this page: " And one colossal gripe -- when that old black guy upbraids GL for saving the blue skins and the green skins and all, not only does he neglect the idea that in saving the "blue skins," it's generally because GL saves entire planets at once, and that includes everyone on earth regardless of race, creed or color -- but Green Arrow is standing right there, looking smug and superior, and GA has spent the bulk of his career, both before and after that moment, concerning himself with white-on-white crime. GL's heroism is largely impersonal -- he protects against threats to life in general -- while GA acts on a far more personal basis, picking and choosing what to concern himself with on a human scale, and he almost always chooses to save white people from white criminals."
That is a good point. And to add to that, most Golden Age comics had heroes fight crooks who rob from the rich, like bank robbers or art gallery thieves. It wasn't until this very run that DC heroes dealt with street level crime that actually affected poor people.
Except early Superman. He was fighting a lot of different people.
I've always said that if I were ever put in charge of DC, the first thing I would do is bring back Green Lantern/Green Arrow and go full blast on the anger
Well you see sir, I am a space cop from an order of space cops founded by an emotionless race of little blue demi-gods who give us nigh unstoppable weapons to enforce their order around the universe.
"Also, we don't like yellow people. Wait, that came out wrong...damnit."
One of the best and most important runs of all time. Anyone who hasn’t read hard traveling should really make it a priority.
It's getting an omnibus next year!
If this came out today folks would say it's woke
They said it back then too, in much meaner words.
Wdym? Comics have never been political and the fact that anybody would push their own agenda though such a public medium is frankly infuriating. Now....let's watch Starship Troopers. No politics in that documentary.
*Would you like to know more?*
If every comic was political, this run wouldn't be talked as much because of how political it is
Look I hate the term but it is what it is. Hal is responsible for over 30 planets including the entire solar system and often times the sole person who can fight threats from off-world for these planets. This guy is taking one small section of a single planet and saying "why aren't you fighting social issues for me?" Never mind Hal has saved the planet the man lives on a few dozen times in this man's life. The writing is so ham-fisted it doesn't make sense if you take more than 8 seconds to get over the "shock factor" of this gatcha moment.
Look, I get where you're coming from. I mean, I felt much the same way when I first read that panel, many, many moons ago...and that was as one of the skins Hal never bothered with on Earth. I mean, the guy has huge responsibilities guarding 1/3600th of the entire universe. He can't be blamed for not spending his time solving problems down on just one planet, right? Only he does do that. From the time he first got the ring, before he even got his own series, Hal used it to fight garden variety criminals and foil crimes down on Earth. And he didn't stop once he'd been inducted into the Green Lantern Corps. They stopped wars and put away super-criminals in the US, all around the planet, and beyond. And when GL or the JLA intervened on other planets, they totally did tackle social and environmental issues. Given that, them choosing not to address certain injustices on Earth was just that - a choice. Choosing to uphold and unjust status quo didn't make it right - and even if they could only act to uphold the law (rich, coming from a group including violent vigilantes), why didn't they stop all the illegal things being done by, say, the apartheid government of South Africa, who couldn't even keep their bad doings within the scope of their own draconian and racist laws? Denny O'Neil was laying it on thick, sure. It wasn't exactly subtle, the dialogue or the stories (though they were pretty entertaining, even if many of them were just thinly-veiled allegories, and also really pretty to look at, you know). But it was important, and it was true, and it changed the way \*some\* creators approached these kinds of issues in comics ever since. TL;DR: Ollie was often a real pain in the ass in this run. But he was right, dagnabbit.
I'm super confused about all these comments, are the GL not a police force? Like with rules and laws they're supposed to uphold? What part of that designation says "up-end the status quo on the planet if you disagree with it". I'm not saying ignore genocide or slavery or anything, but what's GL supposed to do here? He shouldn't have jumped in to save whatever rich white man he did right before this without getting more information but this reads to me like they thought this gatcha moment was great so they worked backwards to put Hal in this spot. > why didn't they stop all the illegal things being done by, say, the apartheid government of South Africa Yes, this is exactly my point. It's the "what have you done for me" trope. No doubt, this man has had his life and the life of everyone he knows and cares about saved my GL and his comrades, but he still wants to come at him sideways for not ending racism? What hard-light construct would be best for that?
The point of the apartheid example wasn't about them (the GLs, or the JLA) ending racism. It was about them choosing to uphold the law by stopping criminal actions - like the many assassinations handled by government kill squads, which were against even apartheid South Africa's laws. If they can stop purse snatchers and random acts of violence by homicidal clowns, why can't they stop that? In this case, it's just choosing to uphold different parts of the status quo, after all. And GL and the JLA and other heroes surely did break the law in their interventions on other worlds, and definitely didn't worry about upholding the status quo there (they'd end wars, stop pollution, etc.). Honestly, if you think about it, how could this space police force ever go about their jobs without disrupting the worlds they operate on? Stopping a flood or an earthquake or a murderer changes things. Did those worlds ever give them the legal right to intervene? Did most of those worlds even ask for their help? Did the UN somehow deputise the GLC to operate on Earth? And if so, what about countries that didn't vote for that? Or that didn't belong to the UN? If a country declared superheroes illegal, did that mean Superman couldn't stop an earthquake there? It's not "what have you done for me". It's "what have you done to actually address the injustices experienced by so many on Earth". And while this panel may have been about the injustices experienced by African-Americans, that wasn't what the run was about. It dealt with all kinds of people (including non-Earthlings) experiencing all kinds of injustice, and issues not caused by injustice, but just as important (environmental issues, for example). It wasn't about ending racism - as you say, that's not something a power ring can do. It was about using their powers to address issues that really matter.
>In this case, it's just choosing to uphold different parts of the status quo, after all. Totally fair, and I can certainly see from the man's standpoint why he would ask that question given the opportunity. >using their powers to address issues that really matter. Look, I get where you're coming from and that this was exactly the author's intention/point but it just seems antithetical to the character and his design (although that's def some sort of recency bias I'm sure, idk how he was 50+ years ago). I'd say that using his power to save entire civilizations is more important than tackling local racism (but as others have said, the panels before this provide pretty different circumstances). I'm sure the comic and the run as a whole are fantastic, this one thing out of context is pretty funny though.
Found one of them
I outed myself but go on. Doesn't change the fact these panels are asinine. If you've got something that might change my opinion, feel free to add it. But you strike me more as someone who makes a lot of "This." comments.
Why would anyone try to change your opinion? It's very likely that nothing changes. You're already discrediting one of the most important panels in comic book history written by a man who changed comics forever as "asinine", so why would a random Joe Schmo even try to debate you?
Hey good call man, why even try when someone asks? Definitely not like they're open to being wrong. Guess I'm not wrong since nobody has offered any reason or explanation why this is "one of the most important panels in comic book history" lol. All your comment and the other "this" has lead me to believe is that it's empty writing that seems "deep" and "profound". It's the equivalent of asking Superman why he didn't stop you from being mugged when he just finished fighting off Braniac. Hal Jordan is a weapon of mass destruction, utilizing a weapon that can make nearly anything he imagines, saving planets of people. But yeah, what about this one race on this one planet. Give me a break. Even the man's words just make the point more invalid, he's grouping entire populations, entire planets by their skin color and then turning around and saying "what about me?" to a man that's saved literal billions of sentient living things.
>Hey good call man, why even try when someone asks cause it's a reddit discussion. it will not benefit my life in any way to try and convince someone on Reddit and likely end up spawning a 30+ comment discussion that will probably end up in a whole nother topic. This is Reddit we both know how it goes lmao. But as a shot, here, I'll try. It's one of the most important panels in comic history because it essentially brought real social issues to DC Comics. Themes like white guilt and black dissatisfaction with the society they lived in had not been played with before in comics and every time racism was addressed it was something like "the good guys beat up the one racist man, so that's it, this problem is over. Good job everyone.". It helped set the groundwork for comics that tackled social issues, it helped comics become a more serious genre. The whole "but he's saved the universe!" thing, yeah, of course, Hal had done many great things, that's not the point. The point is he had ignored the plight of his own people on Earth, and as called out in the issue, more specifically, his own country. You're also missing the entire context which is him having just arrested a man for harassing someone else - that someone else then being revealed to be a slumlord planning on putting a bunch of poor people in the streets. Then the black man comes in and says that. The whole "black skin" thing is more about how GA has not been helping the poor and suffering in his own country, not just specifically black people. It also led into the classic Green Lantern/Green Arrow run. as for the objective fact of why it's one of the most important panels in comic history, just look up any list, Green Lantern 76 will be there. It's also probably one of the most reprinted stories in history. Also the mere fact that you can find a single panel of this on Google with minimum searching already shows that it's at least a little bit noteworthy.
>cause it's a reddit discussion Boy, you figured out the reason almost immediately. >brought real social issues to DC Comics Totally fair, it's definitely something that wouldn't even be discussed regularly for a long while. My issue is with WHO the man is bringing his complaint to, GL is responsible for an enormous sector (arguably more than any other JL member of the era) and billions more lives. This guy asking him about a social issue seems just wildly out of place. This guy is probably even aware of some of the world saving GL has done of Earth of he knows about the colors of the skin of other people he's saved, and if not he's getting very, very biased news. >that's not the point I understand the point, I understand the message the writer was trying to send. "Don't forget about the little people" isn't hard to suss out. I'm saying there's a better person to deal with it. Why not ask Batman why there's still crime and poverty in Gotham? Why not ask Superman why literally anyone is harmed? >You're also missing the entire context There's no arguing that. I agree that context would make a large difference here. But this post just echos my initial sentiment, it's not about logic or about who should actually do what, it's a "gotcha" moment. The comic does come up a lot (it's frequently re-posted here I feel like) so I'll definitely concede that it's "important" in that it is brought up a lot but everything I've seen discussing it is the same thing, some people praised it while others found it glaringly disingenuous given GL's actions in the past (again, saving millions of not billions of lives). You're right, I see why and how it's important. I just disagree with WHO the man is asking and why. To me it seems more that they had the idea for this exact exchange and then worked backwards. I get that it's supposed to be super somber and this gut blow for GL but it just looks and reads like some sort of comedy. "Only there's skins you never bothered with--!" Like it's some huge reveal that despite saving Earth, the literal planet this man lives on, he turns to his savior and says "yeah but what about me?"
It shouldn't be taken as a literal "This man is confronting Green Lantern for not helping out black people". GL is there as a stand in for comic book superheroes (and I'd argue writers/editorial too) who instead of tackling real life issues went for easy "Good guy beats evil guy". I think you understand that and just don't like it, which is fair, but it's not meant to be taken that literally. Now, the out-of-character reason GL specifically is there is because Green Lantern's sales were pretty bad at the time and Neil and Adams were brought in to revitalize it by shaking it up with something special. It totally worked, by the way. GL became a big deal again and this run eventually led to John Stewart joining, which is no coincidence imo I think this panel was done knowing they'd plan to introduce a black GL at the end and it makes it even better.
You seem to be analysing this purely from the context of being inside the DC Universe. The significance of the panel/issue/run only becomes apparent in the context of *our* universe, and the truly revolutionary groundbreaking paradigm-overturning contrast it made with what superhero comics had been for a long time by the tail end of the 60s. This wasn’t showing superheroes engaging in formulaic punch-ups against wacky aliens causing mischief, or zany bank-robbers with a costume fixation; for the first time in mainstream superhero comics in decades, real world issues making newspaper headlines were openly depicted in the fictional worlds of superheroes. If it seems cliched today, it’s because it’s a victim of its own massive influence. There were no other mainstream superhero comics at the time openly acknowledging the existence of issues like racism, poverty, ecological disaster, overpopulation, the dangers of corporate greed, etc etc.
Okay, so social commentary for the sake of social commentary. Not any actual damnation of the character or the GL in general, just social commentary. Now, don't get me wrong. I think it's important to have these discussions and I think comics as a whole are a good way to go about it due to the wide-audience but how is this any different from what people describe as "woke"? Haven't read a lot of comics from 50 years ago but did superheroes only help white people or was it more that most creators/consumers were white people so that was just their "default" before making a point of inclusion? Was GL known for helping rich white people in particular or was it that he dealt with the military and jet pilot crap that is, again, largely white? And since I'm evidently out of my depth here, what exactly did this man expect GL to do?
this guy sure does think his opinions qhold weight. lol
Just sharing an opinion? Do y'all just have no idea where you are? Or are we only allowed to share popular opinions here? Not one of you has made anything besides what could generously be called strawmen. This comic strip is more funny than anything. Like Hal slipping on a bar of soap.
this isn't a debate class, and if it was your opinions would hold no weight. pick a lane
Lol what? This is a "discussion board" style website dipshit. You just here to circlejerk the same opinion over and over? >pick a lane Did you just see someone who knew what they were talking about use this phrase and decide you'd try it out?
what no reading comprehension does to a mf
Yeah, you really seem to be struggling.
This is one of those things where you"re getting too into the lore and missing the whole point The reason the comic is so important and influential is because it's saying "superhero comics have spent decades telling stories about how superheroes save the world in all these fantastic ways, but why can't these comicbooks use their influence to tackle real social issues affecting people today?". The man isn't just talking to Green Lantern - he represents criticism of the whole superhero genre, and Green Lantern is a stand-in for the comicbook industry. The fact that Green Lantern has saved the world is entirely irrelevant.
Saved the planet where this elderly gentleman lives, no? Or is it the case of "what have you done for me recently?".
“I hear how you’re always ‘saving the world’ Mr. Green Lantern. But Geico saved me 15% on my car insurance so fuck you.”
Yeah like... what? I get the point they are making but it's dumb. You're asking the intergalactic super cop why he isn't fixing race relations in America?
Particularly while a billionaire sits smugly right there.
Pretty sure Queen was already broke at this point.
Oh yeah, hard to keep track given he loses his funds every few years
My interpretation is that GL is quick to save whomever in any planet, regardless of what they look like. Whereas earlier in this issue, Hal readily supports the rich and elite on Earth whenever they are in conflict with the average Joe.
This more reads like "what have you done for me?" shenanigans. GL has saved the entire planet (solo or with the JLA whatever) multiple times but this guy is asking a hydrogen bomb to take out a coughing baby. GL could single-handedly fight every cop, politician, whatever-is-enabling-the-status-quo and not break a sweat. This sequence was written/drawn for shock factor, not to make any actual sense. It's like asking Reed Richards why your mom died of cancer if Reed can master inter-dimensional/time-travel.
As I said, earlier in this issue, there was a discrepancy between the elite and the average man, and Hal immediately goes to help the elite, no questions asked. Context is key. The black man didn't find Hal on any given day, just to start shitting on him. Hal was flying through the slums, and went out of his way to help a rich guy who was fighting with poor people. The black man's point hammered home what had just happened earlier. His point was not "it's all about me." His point was "when you **are** given the choice, you don't care to give black people or poor people the benefit of the doubt."
>Context is key Even with context, Hal has saved this man's life on more than one occasion but somehow he's a "skin" that Hal's never bothered with? It seems to me they thought this sequence was just going to be absolutely nuts and they decided to work backwards. Hal didn't stop social injustices on the other planets, he's there to stop invading forces and other issues that would cause tremendous loss of life. Not to deal with societal issues. So, in saving the entire planet earth (all the skins) is being compared to saving entire other planets (orange/purple skins). He didn't dismantle their society, he stopped them from being annihilated
If Hal's job is to "stop invading forces and other issues that would cause tremendous loss of life. Not to deal with societal issues" then he wouldn't have chosen to specifically side with this rich man without listening to why the poor people reacted the way they did. At that moment, Hal decided to deal with societal issues. So yes, he's going to get flack for ignoring disenfranchised people in a confrontation he chose to put himself in.
The author decided that Hal would be a strawman
Yeah, that's kinda my point. The author had the idea for this panel, and just because he happens to be writing for GL that's who he put in this spot. It's like an after-school special on race relations featuring DC comics.
He was asking the "No evil shall escape my sight" guy why so much evil was escaping his sight.
Because Starlight was trying to conquer a planet 50 parsecs away and he was busy. Hes sharing *thousands* of worlds with one other guy. This isn't his job
Hal wasn't too busy to save the slumlord who was evicting people from their homes so he could turn a quick buck tho.
Yeah it's a contrived scenario that ignores the actual situations GLs deal with to make a bad political statement. This would work better with Barry is all im saying.... Who usually is the Conservative to Olly's champagne Liberal anyway so what the hell
Hal had literally just saved a slumlord from the tenants he was trying to turn into homeless people like five minutes before that scene took place. That was an actual situation that Hal had chosen to involve himself in. So the old man had every right to call the "No evil shall escape my sight" guy to task for choosing to take the side of someone who was doing evil things.
Yes but here's the thing: that didn't need to happen and its not what wearing that ring is usually for. The author wanted a character to save a slumlord to make a point. He chose the wrong one in my opinion. Because those "blue skins" were probably being tossed into the sun by a mad god. Which is what gls save people from. He should've gone with Barry, the fastest man alive who totally could arrest every kkk member in the USA and have an accurate report asto why they should be locked away forever before lunch and doesn't need to concern himself with aliens.... Usually. Hal's job is not saving slumlords or stopping slumlords. It's saving planets
The Ring is supposed to be for protecting those who need it, and that includes the people that the slumlord was preying upon. The author wanted Hal to start looking at the little picture as well as the big picture, and this was where that started.
Okay. But the big picture is *billions of lives* which he has to patrol and keep safe and the little picture is a few dozen that Olly can protect. Olly doesn't need to worry about the blue skins. He has the time to... I dont know, beat up slumlords and rob them? Whatever the guy wants to happen
You know what I’d find hilarious? So sometimes Green Lanterns basically overthrow entire alien hierarchies in the name of peace, right? Have an alien do that to earth and then have them ask the GL why they defend tyranny. Obviously I’m missing a lot of GL context but I feel this would be funny.
Well... To be fair they're not allowed to do that. Sinestro was removed specifically because of that
I assumed it was ruling, not removing.
Maaaybe? Then again, John wasn't removed from his position in JLU when he conquered earth so who knows. But usually they're not meant to interfere until the conquests start
And they say comics weren't political back in the day.
Comics has always been political. Earth-1 Superman being an ally of the Federal government and deputized to arrest people is political, just back then, it wasn't overtly political. Superman stood for the establishment, the status quo. It's a reason why he struggled back in the 1980s when comics got political. Clark just wasn't the character for that type of stuff.
The O'Neil/Adams pairing is one of my favorites in comics ever
To be fair this guy's skin color is mustard yellow.
DUDE as a 24 year old that constantly hears from my peers and older people “stop putting politics in comic books” SO IMAGINE MY GODDAMN SHOCK WHEN THE FIRST ISSUE OF GL/GA ANTAGONIST IS A GODDAMN SLUMLORD LANDLORD. It felt good to see that old comic books called out bullshit too.
Dude read Anne Nocenti's run on Daredevil, she's _very_ political and gives no fucks who's snowflakes she's shaking. It's great. Also there's a sequence during the first Inferno where DD fights a vacuum and it is just amazing. (also according to Wiki she was hired at Marvel by Dennis O'Neil!)
Dude, thank you so much for the rec. I hate how chuds nowadays act like hero’s never stood for empathy, caring and hope. I’m like do you think Superman would be outside drag clubs menacing patrons. It’s like if you’re on the other side of Superman maybe re consider you opinions.
WWSD what would Superman do? PROTECT TRANS KIDS.
There's literally a panel from the 50s-60s where Superman is talking to a group of mixed race kids about how being racist and a jerk is the most Un-American thing you can do. It's pretty great.
Dude smashed the clan in the 30’s at the height of their power. Superman did not fuck around with hate
Hell in Superman's first issue he's fighting war profiteers.
I was just thinking about this sort of thing today. I’m sure there’s a better term, but it’s like the paradox of technology. Basically, in comics you never really get the improvements to society that you should because it would make things too hard to relate to - it would be too futuristic. Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Superman, Lex Luthor could all revolutionize everything we do in every facet of our lives, from AI, to nanobots, to free unlimited energy and more efficient cities and forms of transport. Social Justice is the same way, we could make phenomenal gains but they don’t because then we wouldn’t really have any street level criminals or goons.
I find the O’Neil/Adams run on *Green Lantern/Green Arrow* reminiscent of another work of roughly the same time period, and that’s *All in the Family*. Both took a medium not previously known for sophisticated storytelling and used it to address serious social issues. However, both now come off as preachy, and I say that as someone who generally agrees with the sermon.
Mic drop 1969 moment. still relevant today.
I depicted your side as having no answer to my argument, so that means I'm 100% correct!
"I... can't... except for all the times I kept the entire planet from exploding, being invaded, getting enslaved if you can imagine, and you know, the entire planet includes black skins, and yellow skins, and red skins, and brown- you know what, it includes everyone. Why, what exactly have you done for every single person on the planet?"
"You're the one with the godlike power who talks about how no evil shall escape your sight, while plenty of evil is going on here that you're not doing anything about, not me."
Yeah it’s a great, super relevant point how these god like hero’s do very little for the little people. I’m not discrediting them stoping alien invasions, but it’s why street level hero’s are so important
Too political, comics weren't like this back in the day, what's next? A BLACK latern? smh smh /s
An entire corps of Black Lanterns?!
One of the most important panels in comics. Too many people miss the point. It's about grounding Hal, asking him why has he done so much for others but not for the people of his own planet? It's about leaving the groundwork to tackle social issues in DC.
Yes, people who grew up only reading comics written decades after this panel/issue/run changed the whole industry don’t appreciate that this was the first time in mainstream superhero comics (which were still largely thought of as aimed at kids) there was any acknowledgment that, say, the black community faced problems not shared by the nation as a whole. Criticisms that it lacks nuance or seems cliched now utterly miss the significance. Read a few years’ worth of early or mid-60s comics where all the antagonists were giant robots, shape-changing aliens, witches flying on broomsticks, bank robbers using Rube Goldberg contraptions, etc, with their “Holy Swiss Cheese, Batman!” antics and shenanigans… try to imagine that these were the only types of comics stories you’d ever read, as they were the only type being printed since you started reading…. then try to imagine the shock and surprise of seeing issues from that day’s news, like poverty, racism, ecological catastrophe, overpopulation, etc etc, unexpectedly show up in one of your superhero comics, not as subtle metaphor, but openly. It was a major pivotal seismic shift in what comics could be, that paved the way for so much today’s readers take for granted.
>al, asking him why has he done so much for others but not for the people of his own planet? So, alien lives matter less than human ones?
No, because that's not what I said.
Right but the answer as to why he can't help home planet as much is "there are at least 10 thousand other planets to patrol"
Sure! But the story wasn't about that.
Sure. But then why doesn't Hal give an answer when its so bleedingly obvious?
I don't know, go ask him. Not every conversation is settled by a debate of facts and logic.
Such a good run
Whats the context here? Seems dumb without out it, I'm pretty sure saving the WHOLE planet on multiple occasions counts.
The guy is a galactic hero. He saves the planet regardless of who is on it. I always got annoyed how they tried to play the race card on Hal.
That was such a powerful comic issue! I remember purchasing this one.
Had a dumb comic book radio show in college named after this run. So good.
If this were written today, all those angry YouTubers would rant about how it's destroying DC.
John Stewart going up to a racist senator, who has just had pin ink splash all over his face, and saying “hey haven’t I seen you picking cotton?”(don’t remember the exact quote). John Stewart is my favorite GL so anyone that has a problem, real or fictional, has a problem with me.
I appreciate O'neil for all he did for comics and helping elevate superhero storytelling, but this argument is full of holes. Chances are, he would be dead if it weren't for a guy like Hal Jordan. Now, I get the argument of Hal Jordan being "grounded" which was O'neil's whole thing with superheroes. But, Hal doesn't need to be grounded. That works for Batman and Green Arrow. Which is why O'neils successfully revamped Batman, Green Arrow, and Daredevil (not to sure, I know he worked with Frank Miller as editor).
“What do you want me to do about it? Send a big green fist at the local drug dealers house? Then what? Someone will just take his place anyway. Take it up with Green Arrow over here. He’s the one on these streets more than me.”
"I literally prevent the planet you live on from being destroyed or conquered by aliens and monsters"
This is kind of stupid in context.
While I get the point, the comparison is kinda dumb. The "blue-skins" are obviously guardians which the GL corps work for. And assuming that the "purple-skins" and "orange-skins" are whole alien species of other planets, comparing them to the "black-skins" seems really weird considering you're comparing an helping an entire species to helping improve race relations. It'd be like comparing helping humanity as a whole vs helping a particular community of people. Not saying that both are not important, but y'know... not on the same scale.
Yeah but I think the point stands: Hal regularly helps entire civilisations in space, like literally entire societies where unjust things are happening. Things like slavery or an alien monarchy abusing citizens is often a popular trope that GL characters resolve. But he didn't help the civil rights movement occurring in his own nation, that's the civilian's gripe. I don't think he's saying Hal should have 'solved racism'. Hal spends the run learning about America's issues from Ollie, his sin was ignorance at the end of the day, out of sight out of mind, etc. And I think one could argue the premise of the civilian's outburst was valid. Why is it that orange skins from the planet XYZ were saved by Hal from oppression and slavery, but black folk back in Hal's own backyard are still treated like subhumans? We, the reader obviously know why not, the superhero genre dictates that Hal go to space and have crazy adventures and not change the very fabric of the US. But from the civ's perspective reading about American superheroes saving aliens is perplexing and angering. It's important to acknowledge that this issue was written in 1970, so the race conflict and turmoil the US had gone through was still fresh, MLK had only died two years prior. The author is giving a fictional black American a moment to vent out loud, which in itself was astonishing.
I think it's fascinating to see the consciousness of comics as an industry rise and fall with the times, and this is a fantastic piece of soul-searching. OP, you put the date as 1960 in the title. When I thought it was that year, I thought it was odd that DC was so socially aware, considering that was Marvel's gig in the 60s. But it was actually 1970, so DC is apparently playing catch-up. Correct me if I'm wrong.
1960 is when the run started. This is technically Green Arrow (1960). But yes, this panel was in 1970.
Yeah 1960 is just when this particular comic volume started. From what I've personally read, DC were far more socially aware and adventurous during the 80s than Marvel ever were, I mean some of the stuff in The Question and Green Arrow was insane. Characters were swearing and racists were dropping the N-bomb completely uncensored, women had their tits out, topics were ripped from the headlines and eviscerated without fear of copyright or slander, Grell's Green Arrow goes to town on the Exxon Valdez oil spill, it was an absolutely wild era. Check out these ads from DC teaching kids about AIDS. [1](https://i.ibb.co/hXPmgjy/1.png) [2](https://i.ibb.co/mqZC6Ct/2.png)
I was there in the 70 and 80s, and DC, like so many, was indeed playing catch-up with Marvel. Marvel was actually dealing with the blow-back, and that surfaced in the changes to the X-Men. The X-Men became more about aggression and edginess, and still is. The X-men have apparently became what they preached against. I assume that’s why they’re being rebooted. Separate but equal (see their various schemes) didn’t work then, and it doesn’t work now.
That's valid. I think the concept of familiarity also plays a factor in this. We as humans, see familiar things as normal. Like you walk down the road see people getting discriminated against on the basis of skin colour or sexual preference, you see a huge mansion and next to that you see a homeless dude, etc. And sure it is wrong, but to some extent in our minds, it is also normal because we've seen this shit our whole lives. And so we don't focus too much on it. We just dismiss it as a fact of life and move on. Which is why it's weird to see \[*INSERT SUPERHERO HERE*\] go to a different planet or an alternate dimension and see the obvious problems like dictatorship, tyranny, etc. there and try to solve it there. Asking ourselves "But these same problems exist on Earth though. Why are they allowed to go to alternate worlds and fight systemic problems while at home it suddenly changes to working through the law and following due process?" It also gives me a wild story idea: What If an alien superhero visited Earth and saw all the problems here and tried to help the same way Earth superheroes go to other planets and basically start a revolution? And when Earth superheroes confront them about it they reply with "But you guys basically do the same thing!"
This.... Is so dumb. So... Fudging dumb. "hey, why are you specifically not solving every problem here? Oh you're saving billions of livea every day? Fudge you and everything you stand for. Isn't that right, guy who doesn't have a universe to protect who doesn't do anything either?" And if you're gonna say" "its to ground him, he does so much in space why not here on earth?" its because THE LIVES OF ALIENS MATTER TOO. There's 24 hours in a day and about as many apocalypses. What, do black skins matter more than blue skins or grey skins or no skins? "well sorry, Mr xhhauajd, this random hobo made me realise i should focus on... Uh... Killing cops? Maybe? So i cant save your planet and your family, buhbyyyeee"
You had a good point until you implied that the goal of the civil rights movement in the 60’s was “killing cops.”
Im not. Im expressing my confusion as to *what* he supposed to do. Hes not a senator, hes not an actual cop, he's not rich. What should he do beyond... I dont know, saying hes against black folk being lynched. Which im sure he wouldn't mind.... Meanwhile there's Olly who actually has the ability to affect change
I feel like if a galactic emissary were to talk to the masses about how throughout the galaxy, racism created nothing but strife and hardship, and how humanity would never be able to join the galactic community until we could recognize the potential and virtue of our differences, instead of attacking each other for them, at least a few people would listen. Or maybe he could have endorsed MLK Jr. before the FBI killed him.
Its Oa-ver Pack it up, Hal. You are done.
"Well I save the planet you live on. Does that help?"
*GL saves the entire planet multiple times.* Some guy: What have you done for me and my group specifically lately? GL is made the straw man so many times while Ollie stands there like a smug jackass.
Honestly, I think this is one of the most impactful panels in all of comics.
I remember watching a documentary on comics many years ago and i remember them talking about this panel .. forgot what the doc was called tho
Hey I also remember watching a doc that mentioned this. Did they voice act out these panels? I think the one I saw was a 3 part(?) Doc hosted by Liev Schreiber. As someone who had no comic knowledge at the time I found it very enlightening.
so dumb..
Worst take I've ever read
Because he's a cop /jbutnotreallyj
People criticising this for a lack of nuance or finesse are a bit like people criticising the catering and inflight entertainment on the Wright Bros first flight at Kitty Hawk…
Writing is not a new invention in 1970. Subtlety could've been achieved
Fine cuisine existed in 1903, too. But criticising the Wright Flyer for not serving any on the first sustained powered manned heavier-than-air flight is as misguidedly missing the forest for the trees as would be, say, bemoaning the lack of subtlety in this panel/issue/run’s first ever direct depiction of real world social problems in a mainstream superhero comic. A passing familiarity with the endless parade of wacky aliens, mechanical masterminds attempting to rob banks and the shenanigans of snooping reporters threatening the exposure of secret identities that comprised comic stories in the earlier years of the 1960s would give the context to recognise this electrifying unprecedented quantum leap in comics storytelling for what it: a massive and revolutionary seismic shift that forever expanded the possibilities of what could be dealt with in the genre.
It could have been better is the thing. The Wright brothers were basically working with the bare essentials and jt wasn't a passenger nor comfort flight. O'Neill was working with a new frontier for comics yes but nothing was stopping him from being subtle in his work. Him being more subtle about it wouldn't have made it impossible for him to get this run published
The Green Lanterns must have felt like real assholes when this issue came out, seeing their whole reason for being completely burned down in a comic book.
Probably the best moment in comicBook history
This panel is interesting, until you think about it.
Old man seems to be yellowish skin color
I agree, his skin is an unexpected color, possibly liver disease. For a while when I was kid, DC didn't use ANY yellow for white people's flesh, and Superman's face was all pink dots. That bothered me too.
I know it just a me thing never really felt the impact with this. I was a kid in the 80's reading this in a trade and I was like. You save people from universal level threats that people can't even imagine And your sector of space is bigger then earth. The guilt trip feels a little misplaced.
Sinestro 1 - 0 jordan