Nascent Drama

[The Dork Lord]

This Green Lantern was Alan Scott, an engineer who had come into possession of a magic lantern.

 

[The Dork Lord]

From this, he crafted a magic ring which gave him a wide variety of powers.

 

[The Dork Lord]

The limitations of the ring were that it had to be "charged" every 24 hours by touching it to the lantern for a time, and that it did not work on wood.

 

[The Dork Lord]

Nodell had originally planned to give Green Lantern the alter ego "Alan Ladd," this being a linguistic twist on Aladdin, who had a magic lamp and magic ring of his own.

 

[The Dork Lord]

DC considered the wordplay distracting and foolish, and the character's name was changed before publication to "Alan Scott."

 

[The Dork Lord]

In May 1942, the film This Gun for Hire suddenly made the journeyman actor of the same name a movie star.

 

[The Dork Lord]

Nodell would always joke that they'd missed a great opportunity.[2]

 

[The Dork Lord]

Green Lantern was a popular character in the 1940s, featured in both All-American Comics and in his own title and co-starring in Comic Cavalcade along with Flash and Wonder Woman.

 

[The Dork Lord]

He was a charter member of the Justice Society of America, whose adventures ran in All Star Comics.

 

[The Dork Lord]

After World War II, the popularity of superheroes declined.

 

[The Dork Lord]

The Green Lantern comic book was cancelled with issue #40 (October 1949).

 

[The Dork Lord]

All Star Comics #57 (1951) was the character's last Golden Age appearance.

 

[The Dork Lord]

 

[The Dork Lord]

Silver Age revival

 

[The Dork Lord]

In the late 1950s, DC Comics successfully revived superheroes, ushering in what became known as the Silver Age of comic books.

 

[The Dork Lord]

Rather than bringing back the same Golden Age heroes — as Atlas Comics, the 1950s precursor of Marvel Comics, unsuccessfully attempted — DC reimagined them as new characters for the modern age.

 

[The Dork Lord]

Following the successful revival of the Flash in Showcase #4 (Oct. 1956), a new Green Lantern was introduced in Showcase #22 (September-October 1959).

 

[The Dork Lord]

This Green Lantern was Hal Jordan, a test pilot who was given a power ring by a dying alien, Abin Sur, and who became a member of the Green Lantern Corps, an interstellar organization of police overseen by the Guardians of the Universe.

 

[The Dork Lord]

The Corps' rings were powerless against anything colored yellow, due to a necessary impurity in the ring.

 

[The Dork Lord]

Jordan's creation was motivated by a desire to make him more of a science fiction hero, editor Julius Schwartz having been a longtime fan of that genre and literary agent who saw pop-culture tastes turning in that direction.