"Major" DC Character To Be Revealed As Gay Is... Um, The Original Green Lantern From the 1940s

Alan Scott?

Alan Scott isn't the Green Lantern that anyone thinks of. Alan Scott is the original Green Lantern from the 1940s, when the Green Lantern's powers were magic, not sci-fi super-power, and when the power of the Green Lantern would work on anything that was not...

Yellow, you say.

No, Yellow came later, with the real Green Lantern.

The original Green Lantern's power didn't work on anything... made of wood.

Made of wood?

Made of wood, yes.

If a Giant Robot showed up, and was made of wood, well, that would be a very exciting Green Lantern adventure.

The Green Lantern was a character rebooted by DC with a whole new Lantern (Hal Jordan) and a whole new mythos/backstory (Guardians of the Galaxy created a galactic police force of Green Lanterns) and a new costume (the original Green Lantern had no green in his costume -- he was like orange and purple. Explain that.)

This old grandpa Green Lantern does still exist in the DC universe, but as sort of like a legacy figure.

You ever see that Greatest American Hero were Bill & Ralph met the people who had the Greatest American Hero super-suit before them? Couple of old guys. Anyway, Alan Scott's like that. You would call him a Green Lantern, but never the Green Lantern.

This really is not "major" at all. There are three other Green Lanterns besides Hal Jordan who are more important than Alan Scott -- Kyle Rayner (the young one), John Stewart (the black one), and Guy Gardner (the hot-headed comic relief one).

This is DC taking a character who doesn't have his own book (and hasn't, for sixty years) and making a splash with him, because, really, who cares about Alan Scott?

I mean, I think it's a marginally interesting thing (marginally), but then, I can recite the Green Lantern oath and tell you what Sector of the Galaxy Earth is located in.

Anyway, you're bein' played for a chump, buddy!

I’m hearing that it’s Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern.

Created by Martin Nodell, and first written with Bill Finger in 1940, Green Lantern was originally a mysticaly-based superhero, whose powers were derived from the flame of a magic lamp and he became an original member of the Justice Society Of America.

I thought I saw on Twitter it would be Kyle Rayner, which made sense, except it was too... um, stereotypical. Rayner is a slender, single young graphic artist with a whimsical imagination, living in New York City.

They'd be crucified for that.

Kyle Rayner is the one person in the DC Universe who can never be gay.

Anyway, if you know comics, you know they are shameless hucksters. All day long they plot ways to trick people into getting into the news.

They're not malicious. But they are shameless hucksters. Always have been. How many covers have read "The Day Superman Died"? Like twenty. They ran that every third month in the fifties.

And how many times did he actually die?

Like, one time. Sort of. For four months. Every other time it was Jimmy Olson's imagination or some weak crap.

This is on the level of revealing that Mr. Mxypltzyk is bi.

posted by Ace at 09:52 PM

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