Morrison's Green Lantern 1 Annotations

[Rikdad]

I loved this book! Little (and big) hints to Silver Age stories and a lot of pure heroism with foreshadowing where this run is going. I expect this title to make my 2019.

http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2018/11/green-lantern-1.html

[j9ac9k]

Awesome insights as always! Thanks for posting this.

[Mutatis_Mutandis]

Yay Rikdad! I used to love following your blog during Morrison's Batman run. Glad to see you're doing the same for GL.

[Anthony Shaw]

Rikdad....thank you.

[vartox]

Great annotations, thank you! Couple things that might be interesting: Sharp called Trilla-Tru a Xudarian and referred to the Spider pirate as a female.

[K. Jones]

Thanks for doing this. I was into this book enough to start doing one but realized right after Luck Lords of Ventura, World's Finest Comics and "Mark Waid Connection" that I don't have the time or energy to devote to crawling through online wikis anymore. Can't wait to read it!

[BatmanJones]

YES! I was hoping you'd do one for this series! Can't wait to read it later today.

[Batgrayson]

Thank you. I wasn't sure if you were going to make annotations for this series. I'll comment on the blog.

[j9ac9k]

We know that the villains of this story arc are trying to assemble five powerful artifacts and they already have two. We know that they are seeking to acquire control over reality itself, changing the predestined facts in the Book of Oa, and inevitably changing the rules of luck in their favor.

I believe it's almost certainly Dr Manhattan who's changed the Book of Oa, who most likely isn't the main villain of this story.

[Thor-Ul]

You are great Rikdad.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Fantastic work, as always, Rikdad.

I have a minor correction, though. You mention that Hal's hitchhiking days were from the late 70s/early 80s. I'm not sure if that's right. It started even earlier, and returned a couple times.

If I am remembering correctly, Hal's beatnik days started in the mid-1960s when Carol dumped Hal to marry another man, prompting Hal to leave Coast City and start hopping around from job to job and woman to woman in various cities. When O'Neil took over in 1970, Hal was a toy salesman, but he had became a trucker by the end of his run in the early 1980s, at which point Wolfman returned him to Coast City and Ferris Aircraft as their resident test pilot. Hal got exiled to space for a few years, then Wein returned Hal to being a test pilot until Ferris Aircraft collapsed following Carol's transformation into Star Sapphire by The Predator. After the GLCorps collapsed in 1988 with the end of Englehart's run, Hal was back to couch surfing with John, Ollie and others, and then went full "mid-life crisis" mode in 1990 and started hitchhiking around America again under Jones.

Sorry to quibble. It's a minor thing, obviously, but my continuity nerd brain tends to go off when I see stuff like that.

Your annotations are always appreciated. Glad you enjoyed Morrison's latest opus as much as I did. With Sharp, he's really found a perfect partner to visualize his ideas.

[Rikdad]

Great annotations, thank you! Couple things that might be interesting: Sharp called Trilla-Tru a Xudarian and referred to the Spider pirate as a female.

Great catches. I thought of Trilla-Tru as Xudarian, but the "buck-buckKAW!" was too much fun not to focus upon.

The spider set off my spider-sense (wrong company) as something Morrison also brought into the beginning of Seven Soldiers.

[Rikdad]

I believe it's almost certainly Dr Manhattan who's changed the Book of Oa, who most likely isn't the main villain of this story.

That makes all the sense in the world and then some. A variable with Morrison stories is how much he is, or isn't, making note of other events in the DCU, but this is a big vote for Yes in this case, and as Dr. M is at the center of a Johns plot, that may make it more expected that Morrison would be plugged in with it, since Morrison and Johns have often worked together.

[Rikdad]

Thanks for doing this. I was into this book enough to start doing one but realized right after Luck Lords of Ventura, World's Finest Comics and "Mark Waid Connection" that I don't have the time or energy to devote to crawling through online wikis anymore. Can't wait to read it!

Coming into this series, I was wondering how much prep work and digging might pay off. That has yet to be seen, but certainly there is less Hal Jordan lore than Batman lore, for what that's worth.

My big discovery so far from reading past stories is that Hal's first adventure borrowed the story template extremely closely from Alan Scott's first adventure! Some of those panels are clearly direct matches. I'll try to get deeper into the run before issue #2.

[Rikdad]

Bored at 3AM:

Thanks for the quibble. As I noted, I have some catch-up to do with Hal's old stories, and it is wayyyy more manageable than reading all of Batman's old stories, but I haven't caught up yet. In fact, I have a gap of only about 30 issues between the last "old" one I read and the first "newer" one, but the events you describe fall right into that gap.

Hal's journey east started in 1967. Your other notes on his bio seem right on the money. When I first tuned in, Hal had lost his own/shared-with-GA title and was a backup feature in Flash #217-243 (perhaps other issues?). And as Hal's publication status was in limbo, so was his life inside the stories.

I'm glad you mentioned the art. I was wondering if anyone else thought that in a few panels, the art seemed to channel Neal Adams.