BHOC: GREEN LANTERN #115

I was still regularly following GREEN LANTERN (co-starring GREEN ARROW) but to be honest I was enjoying it less and less. I’d first encountered the character as a back-up strip in THE FLASH where his adventures were galactic in nature. But in this book, it was clear that the writers and editors weren’t entirely comfortable with that arena, so there was a tendency to emphasize Green Arrow’s world and grounded menaces–many of which felt to me like situations that Green Lantern should have been able to deal with easily on his own. In essence, I wanted more space-fantasy in the book, but the focus was on trying to be quasi-relevant and earthbound.

And this approach makes a certain amount of sense. The book had been brought back on the strength of the sales of a pair of Green Lantern reprint specials, but the shadow of the relevancy issues produced at the end of the run by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams still loomed large only a couple of years later. Given that Denny was still the writer of record, it makes sense that his approach would be similar (though not as directly issues-specific as it had been during that time.) But I really did long for more. I still liked the character, and found that I enjoyed him more in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, where he was more often in his natural element. But still, I dutifully kept buying issues of the series as they came out. Ironically, it wasn’t until shortly after Green Arrow was ditched from the cover logo that I’d lapse as a reader.

This issue picks up from where the previous one left off. Last time, our trio of heroes, including Black Canary along for the ride as usual, had encountered a costumed villain with the ability to disintegrate matter, the Crumbler. During that story, Hal Jordan suffered a concussion, so as this issue opens, Ollie and Dinah tell him to stay behind and rest up while they go out in pursuit of the fleeing villain. They catch up to the Crumbler within a few pages, but he destroys the elevated roadway out from under the heroes’ van, sending them careening into the icy waters below.

Black Canary is able to rescue herself and the unconscious Green Arrow from beneath the ice, but now the two of them are just as laid up and injured as Green Lantern himself. While Hal resolves to press on and continue to pursue the Crumbler despite his doctor’s orders, we cut away to the Crumbler going for a session with his psychiatrist. Here, we get the download on him: he was a child prodigy born into a blue collar household that didn’t appreciate his gifts, so when he invented a way to cancel out the bonds holding matter together, he turned it against his own father’s construction company in order to conceal the fact that he’d stolen money from it to finance his invention. When the shrink abruptly ends the session, the Crumbler goes crazy and attacks the man. He clearly has lingering issues with his father, and with authority in general.

By the time that Green Lantern catches up to the Crumbler in Star City, it’s a full-on hostage situation. The Crumbler has disintegrated three of the six load-bearing pillars that keep the building he’s in standing. Should he destroy one more, the entire tottering structure will collapse in on itself, killing everybody inside. GL figures that he can zap the Crumbler from afar with his power ring and end the problem then and there–but his ring-beam fizzles out before reaching its target. Uncertain as to whether this is due to his concussion or if something else is wrong with his ring, the Lantern realizes that he needs to attack this problem in a different fashion. He creates a bullhorn and asks the Crumbler what he’s after.

The villain replies that what he really wants is an apology from his father, an acknowledgement that the Crumbler is worthy of his respect. So Hal goes in search of the man, finding him elsewhere in Star City. But no dice. The burly construction worker doesn’t figure that any of this is his problem, and he’s got nothing but disdain for his worthless son, despite whatever gadgets he may have invented. Green Lantern is pissed at this, but he can’t force the man to do what he needs, so he returns to the scene of the standoff empty-handed.

With no other option available to him, as the building is now swaying so much it’s dislodging people from inside it, Green Lantern ventures into the basement level and positions himself beneath where he believes the Crumbler to be standing. From there, he uses his ring in a frontal assault, grabbing the villain and thrusting him away from the support pillar. And in the end, uncertain of his ring’s functionality, Green Lantern winds up clobbering the Crumbler with his fists. As he reports all of this back to Green Arrow, though, Hal is still uncertain as to the cause of his earlier ring-failure. And the issue closes on an image of Green Lantern’s power battery pulsing with a strange yellow light–an event that indicates that the power ring’s problems weren’t down to Hal’s concussion. But that’s all a story for the following issue.