DC has been promoting its upcoming Rebirth event as a celebration of the history that made the DCU great. I am hoping that means the return of the classic JSA characters with their World War Two era adventures intact. The legacy aspect of these heroes was noticeably lacking in the New 52 relaunch and having the original Alan Scott and the rest come back would go a long way towards winning back some lapsed fans.
I have always loved the Green Lantern characters. At times I have wished they were Marvel characters. I think Alan Scott would have been a good fit with the Avengers, probably Hal Jordan too. I don't know much about Green Lama. What I have heard makes me want to read some of his stories. I think this team up is a good one.
ReplyDeleteOh, you are so right, Ross! What DC did to their books after the increasingly-misnamed "Final Crisis" made my tolerance level finally drop to zero. Same with Marvel (although, to a slightly lesser extent).
ReplyDeleteAs for the Green Lama? I first remember reading about him in Jeff Rovin's now-classic encyclopedias on superheroes and super-villains. And it occurred to me that he was to other mages (like Dr. Fate and Dr. Strange) what the Shadow was to nocturnal avengers like Batman. A criminally under-rated trend setter. Although, I have to admit: the costume drawn by Prize Comics artists made Jethro Dumont resemble the love-child of Superman and Peter Pan!
Mickey said...
ReplyDelete"I have always loved the Green Lantern characters. At times I have wished they were Marvel characters. I think Alan Scott would have been a good fit with the Avengers, probably Hal Jordan too."
But can you really envisage a team successfully containing both Hal Jordan and Tony Stark at the same time? The egos! The trying to "steal" each other's lady-friends...
^_^
I totally agree with you on the Golden Age characters, Ross. To set aside such legacy characters is a nigh-criminal thing. I've even given up on following what's been going on in DC's stories since the New 52 came about; the changes are that bad.
ReplyDeleteAs for Green Lama, I've been hoping to see him grace this blog for a while now. My only exposure to him to date as been through his entry at Public Domain Super Heroes, though I do hope to read the original pulp stories in which he featured (which are not public domain, nor is the character himself; only his comic-book adventures).
A couple of the other comments above make me wonder if those Green Lantern teamings have ever happened on this blog (the Green Lantern tags are too numerous for me to wade through). A conflict between Hal Jordan and Tony Stark as they try to deal with some villain (say a team-up of Sinestro and the Mandarin) would be interesting, and Alan might do well rubbing shoulders with the Invaders (who have teamed up with the JSA twice so far, neither time with the original GL in sight).
I find myself longing for the 70s when DC was publishing their 100 Page Super Spectaculars and reprint books like Wanted and Secret Origins. They reprinted a lot of great golden and silver age material back then. They have such a rich library of not only their own material but the old Quality and Fawcett material as well. Of course I loved reading old Batman and Superman stories, but what really intrigued me were lesser known characters like TNT and Dan the Dyna-Mite, Johnny Quick, Kid Eternity AND the original Robotman. There doesn't seem to be a mass market for this type of material these day....
ReplyDeleteMe too Ross, me too. And restore him to his originally non-gay status.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't so much that he was gay that bothered me, but how they just shoe-horned him with concept for shock value. Plus, didn't they remember they already had a gay GA JSAer in the original Dr. Midnight? Plus Alan's son Obsidian was also gay, so my mind boggled at that forced development. It's like they had to do that to make him seem cool and relatable when he already was.
I agree that Stark and Jordan would have tension, not unlike Quark and Odo in Deep Space 9, or like that depicted in the early X-Men movies between Wolverine and Cyclops, only perhaps somewhat worse. I cannot help wondering, though, if they could put aside their egos for the good of the team. I also like the comment about Alan Scott and the Invaders as well as the Mandarin-Sinestro team-up. Maybe there are some ideas, Ross. I don't know why I didn't think of those myself.
ReplyDeleteI only know the Green Lama from the radio series, but I've enjoyed what I've heard.
ReplyDeleteI only know the Green Lama from the radio series, but I've enjoyed what I've heard.
ReplyDeleteI quit reading DC comics after almost 50 years because they eliminated the JSA, etc after FlashPoint. It will be very hard to get me to go back with current constant event driven events.
ReplyDeleteMeditate, Glen. Meditate!
ReplyDelete"Ommmmmmmmm! Mani padme ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm!"
That, of course, was to the Green Lama what "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?' was to the Shadow. :-)
Dale Bagwell said...
ReplyDeleteAnd restore him to his originally non-gay status.
It wasn't so much that he was gay that bothered me, but how they just shoe-horned him with concept for shock value. Plus, didn't they remember they already had a gay GA JSAer in the original Dr. Midnight? Plus Alan's son Obsidian was also gay, so my mind boggled at that forced development. It's like they had to do that to make him seem cool and relatable when he already was."
I don't recall ever seeing that suggested about Charles McNider before now: Are you sure that you're not getting him confused with the more modern character 'Midnighter'?
As for Obsidian: Remember that because the changes due to Flashpoint included de-ageing the Earth-2 heroes this meant that Alan wouldn't now be old enough to have grown-up children, and so consequently the 'New 52' couldn't include Obsidian (or his sister Jade...). Apparently somebody at DC was concerned that writing one of their more prominent gay characters out of continuity like that would provoke a backlash unless they also provided a replacement for him, so they decided to have post-FP GL sort-of draw details from both characters rather than just from the father alone...
Hmm, upon further research I guess I was mistaken Simreeve. This page confirms where the rumors came from:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cosmicteams.com/jsa/profiles/dr-midnite.htm
Hmm, ok cool.
Dale Bagwell said...
ReplyDelete"Hmm, upon further research I guess I was mistaken Simreeve. This page confirms where the rumors came from:
http://www.cosmicteams.com/jsa/profiles/dr-midnite.htm"
Thank you for the link. I can't remember seeing that page before, but it's gone straight into my bookmarks.
^_^
"S'pose you folks wanna re-touch the Lama, huh? Well, you can retouch the Lama all night 'till Hell freezes over! Ain't no law says you can't... ain't that right, Mikey?"
ReplyDeleteAnd so on and so forth...
That link Dale posted reminded me of Dr. Beth Chapel, aka Doctor Midnight. I'd love to see her teamed with Monica Rambeaux (Captain Marvel/Photon) some time. There's two African-American heroines who are almost-but-not-quite legacy heroines to their male predecessors, but with nearly opposite powers. Personally I think the two would become fast friends and easy partners, much as we've seen in similarly contrasted pairings like Power Man & Iron Fist, Green Lantern & Green Arrow, or Batman & Superman (the latter two mainly Silver Age of course).
ReplyDeleteNot many images of the Chapel Dr. Mid-Nite around - and that costume! Pretty ugly if I remember correctly!
ReplyDeleteNow that I've gotten the MST3K reference out of my system...
ReplyDeleteIt took my awhile to I.D. GL's compadre here, whom I at first thought was Nedor/Better's The Ghost. This was due to him being revised by Alan Moore as the _Green_ Ghost in his TOM STRONG spin-off comic, wherein he was essentially Green Lantern or Quasar but with ectoplasm-formed constructs.
@JRP04f: actually, George "The Ghost" Chance was first renamed "Green Ghost" by the publishers of the Depression-era pulp magazine in which he first debuted! Alan Moore merely revived the tradition.
ReplyDeleteI much prefer the Green Lama's Buddhist hoodie as revived by Alex Ross @ Dynamite's "Project Super Powers" books.
ReplyDelete