These 13 issues (and a three-part backup) are some of the most revelatory and important comics published by Marvel or DC. A racist presidential candidate? How about a racist president instead? A broken legal system that argues the letter of the law until it hits someone it favors? Tragically, this is even more prevalent today. Drugs and abuse among the worse-off populations, no matter the race? Still, an issue, though the problem seems more skewed to legal drugs than illegal. Corporations taking advantage of rules and regulations to profit off pollution? That’s only increased since the days of 1971. Racism and bias? The rise of the alt-right and Nazis have made it more than relevant for this day and age.
It is completely depressing to think that nearly all of these messages that O’Neill and Adams worked into their tales are still 100% relevant. One of the Guardians of the Universe would go in disguise as a human, tagging along with Green Lantern and Green Arrow as the two of them hopped a truck and began to travel the United States. This anchored Hal in the middle, preventing him from becoming the villain in his own comic.Īs the book evolved, the book would gain another cast member. Instead, they would threaten to remove Hal from the Corps or make him perform grunt work that would keep him away from Earth. After all, the greedy landlord did nothing wrong in the case of the tenement. The Guardians, the head of the Green Lanterns themselves, would object to Hal Jordan questioning power. Instead, O’Neill and Adams would use the Guardians of the Universe as an overall representation of “the man.” While Hal did represent the power, “the man,” he was still just a normal man who could learn from his mistakes and grow from them. Those who were fans of Green Lantern still got to see Hal grow as a character and a human being, rounding off the sharp edges with humanity and compassion. Fans of Green Arrow and those who thought DC needed to adapt got to see truth told to the bland and powerful. It was the first time in over a decade that Hal would show change, and it was ingenious. As he didn’t have a book of his own, Neil Adams and Dennis O’Neill would actually borrow Ollie for the new book they were working on Green Lantern. Meanwhile, writer Dennis O’Neill would strip Oliver of his wealth and turn him to the left politically in the pages of the Justice League. When 1969 came about, however, his character would begin to evolve to meet the times.Īrtist Neil Adams would give Ollie a Van Dyke style beard in the team-up comic The Brave and the Bold, to change up the character’s appearance. Oliver would be one of the rare heroes to escape a then-modern reboot when DC’s heroes would start to re-emerge in 1954, entirely because he never left print. Green Arrow would eventually land a spot in Adventure Comics as a regular backup story to Superboy, thanks to creator Mort Weisinger, also being the editor on the Superman books. Ollie was another billionaire playboy who fought crime at night with themed gadgets and vehicles. Premiering in More Fun Comics #73 in 1941, his concept was not that revolutionary for the time. Green Arrow, aka Oliver Queen, began his life in comics as a Robin Hood crossed with Batman. Green Lantern’s sidekick of the era, an Inuit aerospace engineer, named Thomas Kalmaku… was nicknamed Pieface. Thanks to the politics of the day they were created, non-White characters were often given racist or unfortunate nicknames and awkward sidekick status. To make matters worse, the entire pantheon of DC characters tended to be white, unless they were a sidekick. DC focused entirely on the problems of the superheroic, with near-perfect personal lives. Most adventures involved heroes taking on goofy situations, or villains whose worst crimes were making a special kind of fish. In the 1960s, DC was solidly into the Silver Age of comics. However, despite these progressive beginnings with their heroes, DC Comics was actually once accused of being out of touch. This seems to completely ignore the fact that Superman fought wife beaters and corrupt landlords in his earliest adventures, much less how heroes have always fought corruption and the wrong-headedness of any system. These days, many so-called fans of comics will decry that “SJWs” (Social Justice Warriors) are ruining comics and destroying the heroes they grew up with.
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