Duty To The Corps - 75 YEARS OF GREEN LANTERN

As the Green Lantern 75th anniversary celebrations continue I felt it was high time to pay our respects to the rank and file of the Green Lantern Corps.  These are the men and woman (and sentient beings of all descriptions) who you spot in the background of panels.  They put their lives on the line in the defence of universal peace day after day and year after year without aplomb or accolade.  There was never a more true example of this than the second Green Lantern of Earth.  A man who struggled to find his way in a universe that seemed very different to the world he grew up in.  A man who did his duty and served his Corps faithfully at all times.

 

 

Let me guess.  You’re thinking, “That doesn’t sound much like the Guy Gardner I know!”  And you’d be right.  The hero I’m writing about, the second Green Lantern of Earth, was a man called Charlie Vicker.  Charlie first appeared in Green Lantern, vol. 2 #55 (1967) and faced down evil for almost 30 years until his death at the hands of Darksied’s son in Green Lantern, vol. 3 #75 (1996).  If I were to liken him to a character in Star Trek, Charlie would be a ‘red shirt’ who served under Kirk in the 60’s TV series and in all of the 80s movies, and then continued to man the Enterprise throughout Captain Picard’s tenure in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

 

 

Charlie’s story is touched with tragedy throughout.  When we first came across him he was an actor who had landed a role playing Green Lantern in a TV programme.  He was a bit of a playboy who preferred the party life to old fashioned hard work.  Although he looked every inch the hero physically, he was the last person you’d expect to step up and be counted in a crunch.  In fact, on an occasion that he couldn’t even be bothered to turn up to record the GL TV show, he sent his brother to take his place for the day.  No-one could ever have guessed that would be the fateful day when enemies of the Green Lantern Corps would mistake Charlie’s brother for the true Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, and strike him down with a deadly energy beam fired from a spaceship floating hundreds of miles above the Earth.

It was to be the turning point in the guilt laden actor’s life.  He joined Hal on a mission to avenge his brother and when the real Green Lantern gave him a copy of his own power ring to protect him in the fight, it didn’t take Charlie long to realise he had found his new calling.

Not that it was an easy ride being a member of the GLC.  Fans have often wondered why there can be 3, 4 or even 5 Green Lanterns all born on Earth and simultaneously serving the Corps, and seemingly assigned to protect their local sector 2814.  No such luck for our Charlie.  In their infinite wisdom (in the days when there was only one Green Lantern assigned to each space sector) the Guardians of the Universe decided to assign Charlie to sector 3319.  For much of the time he served there he never came into contact with a single humanoid, much less an actual human being.  He found life tough and in his numerous dark moments he wanted to jack it all in and hand back his power ring.  But he never did.  The duty came first.  Eventually Vicker learnt to look beyond the surface and realised that some of the giant bugs and odd looking furballs he worked so hard to protect shared the same moral values he did, even if they didn’t have recognisable facial features to show it.

 

 

Charlie Vicker lived through many of the major touchstones in the Corps’ modern history.  When the Central Power Battery on Oa was destroyed after the trial of Sinestro, Charlie lost his powers along with the rest of Corps.  Unlike the majority of his brethren, however, he never even knew what had occurred.  He had been entrenched in a battle protecting the inhabitants of 3319 and was unable to heed a summons to Oa for the trial.  To all intents and purposes he was abandoned in space without explanation.  Even then, Charlie Vicker rose above his predicament and drew on his previous skills as an actor to inspire the local population to victory against their oppressors with tales from the works of Shakespere and other noble plays.

 

Much of Charlie’s life happened off panel, of course.  Comic Vine puts him as appearing in eleven original comics (and several reprinted collections) throughout his entire tenure.  Of those eleven issues he is the featured character in only five.  Truth be told, I have read the issues and I’m not even certain I can find him in them all.  He’s the superhero equivalent of Where’s Wally? (or Where’s Waldo to my transatlantic pals!).  But continuity tells you Charlie Vicker was right there, representing all the Green clad warriors whose time served didn’t involve tossing in their ring every five minutes or socking a Guardian in the jaw before breakfast.

Even after the Corps tragically fell to a crazed Hal Jordan who internalised their power source and took the supervillain name of Parallax, Charlie refused to throw in the towel.  Together with a handful of former Lanterns led by John Stewart, he joined the Darkstars, a sort of cousin of the GL Corps whose abilities came from an advanced exoskeleton suit instead of a power ring.

 

 

This was to prove to be his final undoing.  The Darkstars themselves suffered one setback after another until their numbers were whittled down to just eighteen recruits. They were to unable to mount a credible defence when they were attacked by Darksied’s son, Grayven, and his murderous horde.  Ironically even the death of Charlie Vicker, violently and bloody though it was, merely played as background art to the dialogue captions of two more prominent characters from the story.  Regardless, he died a hero’s death doing the job he signed up to do – saving a world that was not his own from certain destruction.

 

 

So charge your tankard with sector 3319’s famous Hwagaagaaian scrumble and join me in a toast.  To a man who came from simpler times.  A man who turned his back on fame and fortune to do what he knew was right.  A man who journeyed far from home, upholding this self-same mission on planets far away from his native Earth.  Protecting people that were inconceivably different in appearance and culture to the friends and family he left behind.  A man who found new family in the Corpsmen of every species who shared his righteous mission. And a man who ultimately gave his life for that mission.  This man was Charlie Vicker.  This man was Green Lantern.

 

 

 

 

 

Construct of the Week #34

Construct: Travel Pants

Generated by: John Stewart

Appeared in: Green Lantern #14 (vol.3), 1991

Inebriated Ramblings From Sector 875 (Unedited)

First up, don’t give intoxicating liquids to a gaseous life form… it screws our pharmacology right up!

So here it is.  News flash.  While your world continues to turn, any Green Lantern obsessive will tell you the biggest change in comics since DC’s Flashpoint has just occurred.  March 2015 solicitations are out.  I don’t normally read the solicits but Twitter hooked me up and this is one that I couldn’t ignore….

I buy most of my books in digital these days but print still holds a special, respectful place in my life.  Amongst the few titles that I still collect from my LCS are of course the Lantern books.  The GLU.  Of which there are currently 5.

But come March Green Lantern Corps, Red Lanterns and Green Lantern: New Guardians are all being hailed as final issues.  Gutted to say the least!

I love Green Lantern and Sinestro.  Robert Venditti and Cullen Bunn are both veritable geniuses.  But I ain’t about to enjoy my favourite comic book franchise being compressed by 60%.

In the last year Justin Jordan and Charles Soule have both been legends on GL:NG and RLs.  9 issues out of 10 they have taken the outer extremities of the Lantern universe to new heights and uncharted territories.  Told stories that have never been told before without spitting on the mythos that spawned them.

But for me the biggest loss is Green Lantern Corps.  Van Jensen has been irrepressible on this book.  He is obviously very close to Venditti, the writer on the main Green Lantern title, and the books tie in heavily together and are best read as a cohesive unit.  But they are not the same book.  Van Jensen has done his research.  He knows his main character, John Stewart.  He knows his own created characters, the new Green Lantern recruits.  And he knows the history of the GLC and pulls out character after character that we haven’t seen or heard of in a very long time. He writes action, politic, romance and intrigue with equal clarity. 

At the heart of his writing, whether consciously or not, he swears Corps up and down.

In short folks, DC Comics are going to have to think of something very clever to do to replace this book.  I will not accept that this is just going to be a gap in my life.

'Convergence' is coming.  Another apocalyptical event from publishers that will “change comics forever”.  And I am not being cynical when add the inverted commas because, to be fair, it might.  I just bemoan a little because I hate my favourite books being cancelled.

I have been touting on the interwebs that they might replace the book with something from the past, like an original Golden-Age Alan Scott book.  They might also bring out the long anticipated anthology book that deals with stories from all of the coloured Corps in the style of the much loved Green Lantern Corps Quarterly.  In my heart of hearts I think it is all a publicity stunt and at the very least Green Lantern Corps will return in some form or other.

The GL franchise was never going to sustain 5 books forever.  And I get that.  But it would be a travesty if we had to view everything through the eyes of the main players, Hal and Sinestro, from now on at the expense of the rich story-telling that can be derived from the rest of the expansive Lantern universe.

So cheers to the writers and artists who may (or may not) be leaving our GL family before long.  You will be missed and remembered.  Cheers to all the Fanterns because we know we care.  And I am going to go out on a limb and say cheers to DC Comics too, because I'm superbly confident they are not going to sell us short when it comes to Green Lantern (hint, hint...)  

Happy Rebirthday! (The First Day of the Rest of my Life)

27 October 2004.  Although I didn’t realise it at the time, this date heralded the biggest world changing event in my life outside of my wedding day and the births of my children.  For it was on this day that DC Comics released Green Lantern: Rebirth #1, the first issue in a six issue story recounting Hal Jordan’s return to the role of Green Lantern. My life and the long-suffering patience of my family can be divided into two parts – ‘Before Rebirth’ and ‘After Rebirth’.  Before Rebirth I was a young twenty something with a wide range of hobbies and interests, one of which happened to be reading comics.  In fact, I enjoying reading standard text novels far more and I got a lot of my superhero fix from reading novelizations of comic book stories such as Death of Superman.  If anyone asked, my favourite heroes where Batman and Punisher “because those guys were dark and they didn’t need superpowers to get the job done”.  Then Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver came along and nonchalantly tossed a phenomenon right there in my lap.  From that moment forwards I have been an obsessive.  Obsessed with comic books in general, and more importantly, obsessed with all things Green Lantern.  Check out some of the other posts on this blog if you don’t believe me!

The funny thing is, Hal Jordan isn’t even my favourite Green Lantern.   He isn’t even my favourite Green Lantern from Earth (that honour goes to John Stewart), or indeed my second favourite (Kyle Rayner).  But the book itself unleashed something within me that cannot be quelled or sedated.  I’m not going to try and tell you the story contained with the pages of Green Lantern: Rebirth.  I know my fellow GL blogger Myron Rumsey of The Blog of Oa intends to publish a celebratory post today as well.  Myron is a die-hard Hal fan and I admire his writing and his blog very much and expect he has provided an exceptional recap of the book that I can piggyback on.  So stop, go read his post and make sure you come back here when you are finished.  Ok then… welcome back.

What I do want to tell you about is why Rebirth lit the touch paper within me that quickly became an everlasting green flame.  First I have to tackle the art.  When it comes to getting under the skin of Green Lantern, Ethan Van Sciver is untouchable.  There are actually a few artists out there who I probably like more, Ivan Reis being one of them.  But Reis nor anybody else could have done justice to this book like Van Sciver did.  I can imagine Geoff Johns’ receiving his artist’s pages through the mail and thinking “Wow, I kind of thought I knew what I was trying to say here but Ethan just nailed it better than I had even imagined possible”.  Let me home in on one specific concept to demonstrate what I mean.   With Hal back in the green there are now four Green Lanterns from Earth.  In another creative team’s hands they could all be said to wield the same power – ring energy is ring energy, right?  No.  As Johns tells us, each Lantern’s power is influenced and enhanced by his own personality.  It is all very well to write this in a script but Van Sciver went to town on the concept and brought it to life in a way that I think has not been replicated since.  John Stewart is an architect, a designer, he builds his constructs in minute detail.  Guy Gardner is a wild force and his constructs burn and flare just as he does.  Without even reading the narrative textboxes we already know from the art alone how each GL thinks.  What fuels them.  How they look at the world.  To capture that emotion in such a unique way is, I think, one reason why Rebirth should be considered some of the best art that comic books have to offer.

And if that weren’t enough there is always this…

…and this…

…and this…

…and this.

So that’s the art.  But, let’s face it, Green Lantern: Rebirth would not exist at all if it were not for the brilliant and unusual mind of Geoff Johns.  My obsession is entirely borne out this writer’s own obsession.  He opened me up to a history that I had never really considered before.  I started reading Green Lantern on and off through the Kyle Rayner era.  Kyle was my guy, he was young and essentially cool but with a touch of the Peter Parkers about him.  I was well aware that he was the latest in a long legacy but I didn’t really give it much thought.  With Johns arrival on the book I could think of nothing else.  I know it has been said elsewhere but it should not be underestimated the risk that Geoff Johns took when he brought Hal back.  He could have gone down the traditional comic book route of retconning all that came before out of existence.  He didn’t.  Johns took every bit of mythology from every era of GL.  Golden-Age, Silver-Age, Bronze-Age, Modern-Age.  He took them all and threw them all into the mixing pot.  He gave it a stir, blended the ingredients together a little, and poured out the glorious creation that is Green Lantern: Rebirth.  And not only did he manage to hold on to the essence of the last 60 odd years of the character’s portrayal in comics and bring back the most famous iteration of said character in a move that many thought was impossible; hindsight shows that he also sewed the seeds for the next ten years of his unrivalled story-telling.  Wonderful stories like The Sinestro Corps War and Blackest Night have their origins right here in Rebirth.

I’ve written other blogs about how much I like to scrutinise both the real and imagined history of Green Lantern.  It appeals to the geek in me.  Is there a hardcore comic book fan that doesn’t spend hours deliberating over continuity and who begat who, killed who and brought who and who back to life?  It was Johns that opened my eyes to the endless possibilities that Green Lantern mythos contained for just this activity.  Sure I’d read quite a bit of Kyle’s run and had come across Hal and the rest here and there, mostly via Justice League but I hadn’t sat down and blown my mind with a billion years of continuity.  And I hadn’t respected how much ground Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps had covered, even in the last twenty or thirty years, until Geoff Johns tied it all up in to one neat little package for me.

So that’s the history bit.  Green Lantern: Rebirth has it in spades and I love it.  But that’s not the main attraction.  The real reason I hold Rebirth as one of the finest comic books ever written is the feeling it gives me every time I read it.  The characters contained within these pages are the very definition of ‘superhero’.  In the face of the untold adversity they stand tall.  In the shadow of evil they burn brightly.  In the space of these six issues the Green Lanterns come together to combat two of the greatest enemies they have ever had to contend with, namely Parallax and Sinestro.  They show valour akin to knights of old.  Strength worthy of ancient Greek titans.  Ferocity reminiscent of Viking warriors.  And an unswayable determination matched only by mighty modern champion himself, Superman.  In short, the heroes of GL:Rebirth  are truly the stuff of legend.  And let me assure you, as if there was any doubt, the bad guys get well and truly beaten!

There are a dozens of scenes I could point to illustrate my meaning more clearly.  Hal Jordan battling for his soul against Parallax and Spectre at the same time as both entities fought to possess him will always stick out in my mind.  Green Arrow donning a power ring and mustering all of his will to construct a single arrow of green energy and drive it into the chest of Sinestro is another.  And if my respect for Green Arrow was raised measurably through this act, my respect for Green Lanterns and the effort it takes to use the ring every day was raised a thousand fold.  Guy Gardner purging his Vuldarian DNA.  John Stewart standing up for his beliefs against a disapproving Justice League and taking down the aforementioned Superman with a pinpoint accurate beam of energy.  The list goes on and on.

As well as establishing the individual traits that make each character remarkable, all of these vignettes share a common subtext which can be boiled down to two words, ‘The Corps’.  This was a concept that had been essentially missing from all the Green Lantern titles I had read in recent years.  I’d read team books like Justice League, or the more nurturing Teen Titans.  I’d followed team-ups and crossovers were allies band together against a mutual foe.  But I had never read a book that stirred within me a sense of unity like I experienced reading Rebirth.  This was something I wanted to be a part of and to read more of.  Geoff Johns understood that Green Lanterns aren’t just a legacy of characters sharing the same name.  For all of their differences they are bound as closely as any blood-tie.  And together they will face down anybody.  His Lanterns don’t reel off their oath in secret, charging their rings in some hidden broom cupboard.  They roar it proudly in the field of battle, standing side by side with their fellow Corpsmen and revelling in the association.  “Beware our power…”

Frankly, I’ll never look back.  Hundreds of unwritten issues awaited me.  Hours of trawling back-issue bins.  Literally thousands of pounds of hardcovers, trade papers backs, variant covers, T-Shirts, prints, cups, caps, figures, belt buckles and DVDs featured in my newly discovered life. …And one crazy little blog that I am pretty damn proud of!   On 27 October 2004 a bright green light was switched on and it has been shining over my universe ever since.

Oh, and that guy Batman I professed to love so much, the dark shadow of superhero comics?  Well…

Beware their power, Green Lantern's light!

Green Lantern and the Little Green Man

Welcome back to another round of the legendary Super-Blog Team-Up.  By now I'm sure you all know the drill but just in case we have any newbies jumping on, here's the low down.  Every three months the marvellous Super-Bloggers come together to geek out over a shared theme, each blogger exploring the chosen subject in their own .,,  inimitable style. This time around we are diving into the world of 'team-ups'.  How did it take us so long to think of that one?!

So here's what I've got for you.  Green Lantern #87, volume 3.  On the face of it this is the most boring comic that was ever written.  99.9% of the real action takes place between the panels.  Yawn!  I'm going to race through the plot at Flash speed to give you some idea of what I mean.  Try to stay awake...

Page one opens with not one but two panels showing a steaming coffee mug and very little else. Jade is taking pictures of it. Some dude called Access appears out of nowhere looking for Green Lantern. Jade tells him GL is not around. She conjures up a baseball bat construct but doesn't hit anybody with it.  Access isn't scared but disappears anyway.  The scene shifts to the JLA watchtower on the moon. The JLA have just finished a meeting.  Everybody goes home except Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter.  Manhunter teaches GL how to use the surveillance monitor.  Scintillating stuff I think you'll agree.  And by this time we are already 8 pages into a 22 page comic!

Suddenly (not so suddenly) an alarm goes off and Kyle and J'onn fly out into space to investigate a gigantic vessel utilising a dastardly laser to cover southern California in plants.  GL creates an unnecessarily seductive construct of a lady pirate who launches an old fashioned cannonball at the space ship.  Not surprisingly it has no effect whatsoever.  He spends two pages cutting his way into the ship and discovers the only crew member is dead. J'onn sneaks up on him.  Oh, the tension!  The Martian telepathically links to the ship and concludes that the rest of the crew has bonded with the ship's computer.  He convinces the ship (off panel, mind you) to fly to the dead planet formerly known as Mogo and terraform there instead of southern Cali.  Kyle and J'onn have a moment. Fly away. The end.

So why, I hear you ask, have I bothered to waste your time recounting this sorry tale, especially in the illustrious company of the Super-Blog Team-Up?!  The thing is, as well as being the most boring comic on the planet, it is an absolute classic!  And before I get completely drowned in a sea of 'WTFs' let me put things in context a little.  GL #87 was written in 1997.  Kyle Rayner had only been wearing the ring since issue #50 so at the time he was still very much the new guy on the block.  I'm going to go through the story again but this time I'm going to put on my green tinted glasses and share with you what happens inside the mind of a comic book fan and Green Lantern obsessive reading the same book in 2014.  To forewarn you, I may say "BOOM!" a lot.

Opening page; Jade is camping out in Kyle Rayner's apartment.  BOOM! - Kyle is still going out with Donna Troy but here he is hanging out with the girl we GL fans know is his future one true love. Reinforced by no less than Geoff Johns 20 odd years later in the run-up to Blackest Night.

Access appears.  BOOM! - Access? Access?  He's only the gatekeeper between the DC Universe and the Marvel Universe.  The missing link in the biggest intercompany crossover of all time, DC vs Marvel (or Marvel vs DC as some would have it).

Access tells Jade her power isn't like Green Lantern's, much to the superheroine's protest.  BOOM! - Jade. Daughter of Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern.  Turns out Alan and Jade's power comes from the Starheart, the collected essence of all the magic in the universe.  Some of the biggest stories in the DCU tie in to this little throwaway nugget.

Kyle sits in on Justice League meeting. BOOM! - Following a brief stint in the Teen Titans GL had been inducted into the JLA a few months previously when the self-titled team comic went back to basics and called on the heavyweights of the DCU to represent.  But this was the first time that Green Lantern readers got a chance to see their hero take his place on the A team.   Did I say BOOM! already?

Wally West invites Kyle for dinner.  BOOM! - The Brave and The Bold, people.  It's a thing! Go look it up.

Kyle stays behind to learn the ropes from J'onn J'onzz.  Maybe not a BOOM! moment in itself but massive nevertheless.  Martian Manhunter IS the Justice League of America.  He's the glue that holds it together, showing up in nearly every iteration of the team since it was created in 1960.  Learning from J'onn means our ring-slinger is learning from the very best, bar none!  Ron Marz and guest penciler Tom Grindberg come together to create an exchange between the two heroes that has 1990s buddy-cop nostalgia written all over it.

The villain's spaceship is revealed. BOOM! - Any double page spread that draws a vehicle so big that it blocks out the earth and the moon in one go deserves a BOOM!

In a sense it is the team-up up with J'onn that makes this such an action-lacking adventure. He is so powerful that dangers are effectivley evaded before they ever present themselves.  Kyle is, by comparison, unsure of himself and generally immature.  When I read his nervous inner monologue I remember how much I loved following the character's growth over the years.  This was the first faltering footsteps of an exceptional journey.  Did I mention the dude is a godlike White Lantern these days?

Even the shamefully stereotyped pirate construct had some value. Every ornately detailed construct Kyle produced in these adventures came with the subtext "No more boxing gloves".  The limitless potential of the Green Lantern's power ring was being explored to the maximum.  You give the most powerful weapon in the universe to an artist and you're going to get some mighty pretty pictures for your efforts.

Just before Green Lantern flies off to try and board the ship J'onn says something that might have little significance to your average reader but has barrels of meaning to Green Lantern fans.  "The last time I trusted a Green Lantern an entire world died.". BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! - A Cosmic Odyssey.  The story that took my favourite Green Lantern, John Stewart, and twisted him inside out.  He kicked Martian Manhunter to the kerb and in his arrogance managed to blow up the planetoid Xanshi, wiping out its millions of inhabitants in the process.  With that weight on his shoulders he spent everyday since making up for his mistake and molding his guilt with humility until it became his greatest strength.  Nice reference! BOOM!

No matter how much of a geek I am I have to admit that the clumsy story jump from J'onn explaining the clear and present danger in one panel to Kyle congratulating him for a job well done in the next is pretty much unforgivable.

Except that I'm a Green Lantern geek and the next page pulls out to reveal... Mogo. (You know what's coming next) B-O-O-M!! The sentient Green Lantern planet was taken off the board when Hal Jordan destroyed the Corps in Emerald Twighlight. This was the first time in Kyle's run that we get an inkling that the big guy might return someday, a prophecy later fulfilled by Kyle himself when he wakens Mogo from his slumber in a future issue.  All is forgiven.

As Green Lantern and the not so little green man fly off into the cosmos looking suitably heroic I suppose you are wondering what the takeaways are here.  Well for me it is this:

Takeaway 1: Given that J'onn J'onzz has the power to enter people's minds and stir up emotions and memories that have been long buried, it is only fitting that a team-up book containing the Martian Manhunter should do the same.  Green Lantern #87 tugged on my heartstrings and resurrected memories of a great many story arcs that I thoroughly enjoyed.  With the extensive history of the Green Lantern Corps and my long association with it, it is not always easy to remember all the twists and turns that took us to where we are today. If an occasional offering from the longbox forgoes traditional action sequences in favour of dropping a marker for future generations to reflect on, then who am I to argue?

Takeaway 2: The Martian Manhunter needs a catchphrase.  What's the point of being able to solve any problem virtually as it happens if your fellow heroes don't even know you did it because you are the strong, silent type?  All the best heroes have them. Some even have whole verses of poetry to make it clear to all and sundry they are taking names and kicking ass.  "Beware our power" ringing bells for anyone?  But the way I see it J'onzz needs something short and to the point. Something that says he has arrived.  Something that says "BOOM!!!"

******************************************* 

NOW YOU'VE READ MY LITTLE CONTRIBUTION TO THE SUPER-BLOG TEAM-UP, MAKE SURE YOU CHECK OUT THESE OTHER SPECTACULAR FEATURES FROM SOME OF THE GREATEST MINDS IN GEEKDOM (Posts go live throughout 24 September and beyond):

Super-Hero Satellite: Superman and The Masters Of the Universe 

LongBox GraveYard: Thing / Thing

Superior Spider-talk: Spider-Man and the Coming of Razorback!?

The Daily Rios: New Teen Titans/DNAgents 

The Middle Spaces:  Super Hegemonic Team-up! Spider-Man, Daredevil & 'The Death of Jean DeWolfe

Chasing Amazing: Spider-man/Spider-man 2099 Across the Spider-Verse: A Once in a Timeline Team-Up 

Vic Sage/Retroist: Doctor Doom/Doctor Strange 

Fantastiverse: Superman vs. Spider-man 

Mystery V-Log: The Avengers #1 

In My Not So Humble Opinion: Conan /Solomon Kane 

The Unspoken Decade: Punisher/Archie!! 

Flodo's Page: Green Lantern and the Little Green Man 

Between The Pages:  World’s Finest Couple: Lois Lane and Bruce Wayne

Bronze Age Babies: When Friends Like These ARE Your Enemies 

Check me out... with Green Lantern!

DC Comics have released a selection of "selfie" variants this month to adorn the covers of some of their mainstream titles.  

And, I have to say, I am enjoying the heck out of them
 a lot more than any self-respecting mid thirty-something family man should probably choose to admit...

Green Lantern Corps #34 by Mike McKone

Green Lantern #34 by Craig Rousseau

Earth 2 #26 by Kevin Maguire