BHOC: GREEN LANTERN #120

Brevoort History of Comics

This was another comic book that my younger brother Ken also picked up a copy of after I had bought one. To this day, i really don’t quite understand why he would do that, but it was a pattern that repeated again and again. Sadly, what he got was a bit of a dud–Green Lantern was a favorite character of mine based on my earliest encounters with him, but his ongoing series had become downright tedious to follow. It just wasn’t good. Some of that was down to the fact that regular writer Denny O’Neil was more comfortable with earthbound scenarios, and so he tended to favor the activities of co-star Green Arrow and his lady love Black Canary more than the interplanetary scale of GL’s exploits. Some of it, too, was that Denny himself wasn’t at his best at this moment in his life, and his overall apathy for this assignment shines through.

This time out, regular but raw artist Alex Saviuk had been relieved of his duties, and the artistic reins passed over to Don Heck, a reliable warhorse of an artist. Heck developed a bad reputation in fandom past a certain point, in part due to some unkind comments that surfaced in a provocative interview between the Comic Journal’s Gary Groth and outspoken author Harlan Ellison. But even without that, Heck’s star had been falling for a while by this point. He legitimately had some strong chops as an artist, but super heroes weren’t his natural idiom, and he continued to struggle to deliver the sort of slick, kinetic artwork that his peers were generating–whether those peers were named Kirby, Buscema, Perez, Byrne or whatever. Heck was also saddled with a number of inkers who didn’t capture the best of his pencils–John Celardo here is a good example of that. The work seems sketchy and impressionistic and a bit unfinished or unrefined. It certainly wasn’t slick.

The story opens in Florida, where an approaching hurricane winds up toppling a tree and dislodging a wooden coffin that had been buried underneath at some point. To the shock of a passerby, the lid to the box suddenly opens and a figure in full conquistador armor steps out of it, fully alive. The passerby bolts from the scene, inadvertently naming the cause of his distress El Espectro, and as he runs for his life, he darts out in front of Hal Jordan’s eighteen wheeler, which is on a run. Hal becomes Green Lantern in order to save the man from being crushed by his truck, but he’s perplexed by the victim’s insistence that he’s being pursued by a ghost.

In the sort of coincidence that would be pretty unforgivable today, Oliver Queen, Dinah Lance and Hal’s girlfriend Kari Limbo are all vacationing in Florida (right in the middle of this hurricane, mind you) and have stopped into a cafe to sample the local chili. But El Espectro has made his way to this location, and he literally grabs the bowl of chili from out of Ollie’s hands. This of course leads to a scuffle, but the silent stranger is able to get away unmolested, though he topples a palm tree towards Ollie that the just-arriving Green Lantern has to stop. The figure left his helmet behind, though, lost in the melee, and Kari Limbo uses her ESP powers to hone in on it, getting some backstory: the figure is Jamie Sanchez, who was Ponce De Leon’s right-hand man on his quest to locate the Fountain of Youth. Sanchez splits off from De Leon and actually finds the mystical waters, drinking from them–just before his men clock him and proceed to bury him alive for no reason that is ever articulated. Rendered immortal by the Fountain’s waters, Sanchez has lain in his makeshift grave for centuries, going increasingly mad.

At this point, with a greater understanding of what they’re dealing with, Green Lantern and Green Arrow decide to split up in their efforts to locate El Espectro. This is done, of course, so that O’Neil can focus on Ollie and Dinah carrying the action rather than being burdened with his much more powerful headliner, Hal. This kind of thing happened again and again in these stories and drove me nuts. I was buying the book for Green Lantern, and while I didn’t have anything against Green Arrow or Black Canary, it was the Emerald Crusader that I was paying my money to see. Anyway, Ollie and Dinah waste no time in tracking down El Espectro and beginning to battle him, but their efforts are ultimately futile, as the immortal figure continues to manifest new powers whenever he needs them, a convenient trait to possess.

Green Lantern, meanwhile, has headed out to sea, where the hurricane is growing in intensity, and a huge tidal wave is forming that GL isn’t certain even his ring can stop. I don’t know what he expected to find there, given that he was searching for a land-bound Spaniard, but there you go. This does give Denny the opportunity to set up the issue’s deus ex machina climax. Anyway, as El Espectro mops up on Green Arrow and Black Canary, Green Lantern finally decides to show up in his own series and enters the fight himself. But wouldn’t you know it, El Espectro whips out another attribute: his sword, having absorbed the properties of the Fountain of Youth, which was described as having a golden hue, can now effortlessly cut through Hal’s ring-constructs.

So Hal’s on the ropes as well, until the aforementioned tidal wave hits. In the aftermath, Hal is able to scoop up Green Arrow and Black Canary before they drown. But El Espectro has vanished, leaving his clothing behind (though not his magic sword.) And that’s the note on which this story is To Be Continued! It’s an embarrassingly poor climax to a haphazard story, a reflection of just how in his cups Denny was during this time. The real question in all of this is where was editor Jack C. Harris? My guess is that Denny was respected enough and his situation dire enough that Harris figured that the easiest thing was to just help him out as much as was possible. But nobody covered themselves in glory with this issue, and it’s no wonder that my attention was beginning to wander from the book.

The one bright spot in the issue was the week’s new edition of the promotional Daily Planet page. It had a particular groaner of a gag strip from cartoonist Fred Hembeck that I nonetheless still chuckle over, plus more answers from Bob Rozakis to queries posed by the audience.

Published

43 thoughts on “BHOC: GREEN LANTERN #120”

  1. His sword, having absorbed the properties of the Fountain of Youth: El Spectro drinks from the Fountain of Youth and yet somehow his sword absorbs properties from the Fountain, that’s some powerful magics ( Like Loki’s mystical potion that Carl “Crusher” Creel drank that passed is ability to absorb the properties of anything he touched to his ball and chain ). I picked this up in back issue boxes in a city I was living in at the time.

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    1. The El Espectro ( The Spectrum, Specter ( or Spectre ) and Ghost ) name gives you a character with either light based powers or ghost based powers.

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    2. Funny how his helmet and chest armour were unaffected by him drinking from the Fountain of Youth. Plus his men must have really hated him to want to bury him alive. Did they even bother to drink from the same water? Are they still alive? Were they non-believers in the Fountain of Youth?

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  2. Rough day for Bronze Age DC! First we have Alan Stewart sharing a rough, rough day for the JLA and their other assorted “super friends.” (Justice League of America #136 (November, 1976) | Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books) Now we have this dismal comic that – paraphrasing Tom – is no one’s finest hour.

    Can I just say that Green Arrow and Green Lantern do not make the best of teams? Sure, I absolutely respect the issues that Denny O’Neil did with Neil Adams where Oliver opens Hal’s eyes to the world around him. Groundbreaking and wonderful work! But like the brief period in the early 00’s where I drove a big green pickup truck and listened to country music, that team up wasn’t meant to last. Green Lantern needs to be in space or at least dealing with “ginormous” threats and Green Arrow needs to be dealing with more street level action.

    On a more somber note, I appreciate Tom sharing Denny O’Neil’s struggles. I’m also pleased that he emerged on the other side of that addiction with much improved work. (While I did not particularly enjoy his tenure on Iron Man, I deeply respect what he sought out to do on that title.) As for Don Heck, unfortunately, this issue reminded me too much of his work at Marvel that did not appeal to me. Once again, I appreciate Tom’s comments on this artist. In lieu of further criticism, perhaps I can just say superheroes were to Don Heck what state fairs are to me. Something life requires me to experience as much as they clearly are not my cup of tea.

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    1. I’m likely in the minority on here about this, but I liked many issues of Denny’s early 1980’s “Iron-Man”, especially the issues drawn by Luke McDonnell and inked by Ian Akin & Brian Garvey.

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      2. There are several reasons that Denny O’Neil’s Iron Man run didn’t work for me. One, as much as I respected his having Tony Stark experience the full impact of alcoholism, I truly don’t believe that his falling off the wagon would have played out in the manner shown in the series. I’ve no doubt that it would have been bad, but I couldn’t buy someone like Obadiah Stane taking over a world-wide corporation or Tony Stark ending up on the streets.

        The other issue was Luke McDonnell’s darker, more brooding art. While it may have worked for Tony’s life on the streets, I found it ill-suited to Iron Man and his more colorful world. Now had McDonnell been drawing Daredevil or Bat Man, that style would have fit to a “T.”

        Lastly, I didn’t not care for the new characters O’Neil added. I found the Irwin twins too cliched and most certainly, all of us could have lived without either Vibro or Termite! 🙂

        Again, those are my points of view. I definitely appreciate your thoughts as well as everyone else’s.

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      3. Going back to, I think, before “billionaires” were talked about as frequently as they are today, to roughly around the same time as Tony’s alcoholism helped sink his fortune. There was Leonard Tose, the millionaire owner of the Philadelphia Eagles American football team. I think he was initially rich from his trucking company. He eventually sold the team to help pay off gambling debts. A man who, by many accounts, was doing very well by the standards of the times. And he lost most of it to an addiction.

        That can’t be the only example. But I’m off from work today, so I’ve no strong incentive to spend time into further research on how many cases may ring similarly true to what happened to Tony Stark, as written by Denny. I’m not a medical doctor or a mental health professional. I can only guess that alcoholism probably risks more immediate physical health risks due to its ingestion into the human body, and causes an actual chemical reaction. It would seem to an undereducated person like me, that Tony was more at risk to more adverse life effects from alcohol than Mr. Tose was from his gambling addiction.

        As for Luke McDonnel’s art, It’s in my top 10 for Iron Man. (My top spot likely goes to Adi Granov, who visually rejuvenated the character, even if his Tony resembled Tom Cruise, which may have influenced Marvel Studio’s asking Cruise to portray Tony in a then-proposed movie.) A lot of the appeal of Luke’s drawing the IM armor has to do with the slick metallic finish given by the inks of Ian Akin and Brian Garvey. That wasn’t the case under initial inker Steve Mitchell’s harsher, scratchier inking style. But I liked a lot of the “post-impact” shots of Luke’s Iron Man after getting his armor rattled by an oncoming wallop. And plenty of cool flying poses. Also his version of the stoic faceplate.

        Was it Denny who put James Rhodes into the armor for his first extensive stint as the Armored Avenger, during Stark’s road to recovery? Maybe the credit goes more to the editorial team at that time? I don’t know. But in my opinion, neither Tony or Rhodey suffered with bad haircuts while Denny wrote the book. Which alone puts his run above Layton and Michiline’s, for me. 😉 Bad hair-do’s leave lasting bad impressions. JRJr sadly continued the trend in his otherwise stellar but short lived return run in 1990.

        Peace out.

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      4. I’ve liked everything I’ve read drawn by McDonnel, especially Iron Man. It’s Tony himself I didn’t like.

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      5. @Steve (who’s always right!) good point. Tony can be frustrating. And some of his writers can be, too. Hard to stick with a character we’ve liked when they’re set in a direction that we don’t.

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      6. @Rick Moore. I do always look forward to your comments on here. Pretty insightful and always with a thoughtful, well considered perspective. They help me stay enthusiastic about these old stories and comics overall.

        And thanks! Back to the grind today. 😉

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      7. “much as I respected his having Tony Stark experience the full impact of alcoholism, I truly don’t believe that his falling off the wagon would have played out in the manner shown in the series” In the small number of stories dealing with alcoholics, the creators rarely show them as high-functioning — it’s always a rapid collapse.

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      8. I completely agree. In my mind, Tony Stark would be a high functioning alcoholic – much like how his father was depicted. What I would envision as a more likely problem would be some accident occurring while he’s in the Iron Man. Injuring or killing someone – say a hero or villain – in a manner akin to a drunk driver.

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      10. I don’t know statistics but I do know the many alcoholics in my extended family. The first fall can be as easily dealt with as it was initially written. More often than not, the second and subsequent do tend to be more life destroying.

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      11. @Steve who’s always right

        Same. Family members on both sides and several good friends. Once an alcoholic, you’re either drinking or in recovery. You’re never not an alcoholic again. At least that’s what those in AA told me.

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    2. This is why I so enjoy this and Alan Stewart’s sites. You bring out several practical arguments that I had not considered as well as subjective considerations – yes, those haircuts were atrocious! – such as Luke McDonnell’s art. I also agree that Aiken & Garvey’s inks were indeed a nice step up for the art. Enjoy your day off!

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  3. Given the yellow vulnerability, the GL Corps really should have a training class on “Tactics To Deal With Enemies Wielding Yellow Weapons”. Covering approaches such as:

    1) Get the weapon away from them

    2) Throw something at them

    3) Dump something on them to make the weapon not yellow any more.

    I don’t know why GL’s don’t just carry a can of spray-paint for situations like this.

    It’s one thing for yellow stuff to be a threat on a high level, where e.g. yellow blaster-rays are going to be a problem. But if Hal can’t trivially handle a guy with a gold-tinted sword, it makes him seem very incompetent.

    The GL/GA team-up has the same issues as Superman/Batman. The peak human needs to add something to the god-level powerhouse. In Batman’s case, it can be that he’s the World’s Greatest Detective. He can plausibly figure out what’s going on where Superman is stumped. But GA doesn’t have that aspect, and it’s unclear to me how to have him bring something to the table.

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      1. In the DC Challenge maxi-series, Adam Strange mentions that he can travel to Rann constantly because Sardath has been firing off zeta-beams daily so there’s always one to catch. I’m surprised nobody in-continuity thought of that.

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    3. Actually he doesn’t need any of that, all he needed to do was use his Power Ring to put a green filter between the light source and the yellow/gold object to alter its colour. Right?

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  4. This is one of the first handful of comics I ever read. It still packs a punch when I see that cover (which is, even without nostalgia goggles, incredibly well-composed and rendered, even for master Dick Giordano). And I beg to differ on the inks. I love Don Heck, but John Celardo really improves Heck’s work by adding weight and volume to the forms. The story is indeed a little silly, and because of this, coupled with my other three purchases that fateful night in July 1979 — Action Comics #499, Iron Man #126, and Marvel Two-in-One #56 — made me a Marvel fan instead of a DC fan.

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    1. Iron Man #126 and Marvel 2-In-1 #56 were pretty near masterpieces. What occurred for you in July 1979 was the norm at the time. Similar happened with me just a couple months prior

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      1. Late ’70s-early ’80s Marvel was a magical time. Byrne, Perez, Stern, Gruenwald, Claremont, Miller, and Michelinie and Layton on Iron Man … those and so many other talents bringing their best. I feel lucky to have started reading comics then.

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      2. I’ve been reading Gerry Conway’s Iron Man stories recently (the Mr. Kline stuff) and it reminds me of Tom’s observation that part of what made Michelinie/Layton so good was treating Iron Man as a seriously powerful fighter. Because Conway very much does not treat him as such.

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  5. I didn’t even like the original pairing of the two green himbos I’d read in reprints so seeing as I am not the target audience at all for this book, why did I buy enough issues to trigger my completism? I do have to say I liked the inking on this issue much better than Heck’s usual artistic murderers. I even liked the cover and Giordano’s art and inking was always more likely to annoy me than anything else. And yeah, the story is a complete turkey.

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  6. Two things: first, Ellison misspooke in the interview, and meant to slag Dick Ayers, not Don Heck, but that clarification came afterward and elsewhere. (And for my money, neither man needed to be slagged, but Harlan was never diplomatic in any situation.)

    Second, many of my favorite Marvel comics of the mid-sixties were penciled by Heck. When he had a polished delineator, such as Wood, Giacoia or a few others, the results were quite pleasing. When he inked himself, the clarity super-hero comics needed was lacking, though it was perfectly satisfying on mystery, sf or romance stories. Now, theoretically, John Celardo should’ve been perfect for Heck, as he possessed that dark/light sense that made his TARZAN so appealing, but perhaps this was just a pencil job he couldn’t enhance enough. My memory of the issue was that it was yet another subpar O’Neil story that should never have happened and by this time I don’t even think I read it when it came out. Had I read it, I may have remembered that the Fountain of Youth had been discovered already in a DC comic, and I may never have had Rex the Wonder Dog and Detective Chimp “discover” it again several years later in DC COMICS PRESENTS in my attempt to rejuvenate two ’50s animal heroes. Judging by the “facts” established in this story, of course, it means that Rex and Bobo are not only younger, but immortal! Who knew?

    I too hoped that they’d come to their senses and restore Hal to full star of the book. Instead, their solution was to dump Oliver and Dinah and replace them with the GL Corps, who I could only tolerate in small doses, again shoving Hal out of his own book by the time the Crisis swung around. Sadly, it just happened again in the past couple of years, after a somewhat promising start. There are now two monthly GL books and Hal is only a tiny part of either one. Just as his old buddy Barry Allen is atrophying, powerless, on the sidelines as his old sidekick Wally hogs the spotlight, meaning that my two favorite ’60s heroes (along with Hawkman) are increasingly minor stars in the current DC firmament.

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      2. That page has some very nice Tallarico art to show — mostly, what I saw from him was far inferior. That saddens me, to a degree — that he had the ability to work at an impressive level, but so often didn’t use it.

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      3. Ellison was speaking of a specific Marvel artist, a publisher Tallarico (apart from CRAZY Magazine) never worked for. It was Groth who suggested Heck, reflecting his own taste, but it turns out it wasn’t Ayers (also Groth’s suggestion) either, though Ellison thought it was when Groth couldn’t think of anyone else. It turned out Ellison was thinking of Sal Buscema since he brought up NOVA as his example of crap, which was his work. Taste in art is completely subjective, so any discussion of how bad Tallarico was at least outside Ellison’s meaningless personal assessment of comic-book art. (Besides being an egotistical comics tyro with a mere couple of sales who would have found it impossible to suffer ANY comics editor for longer than a month or two before quitting in a fit of rage, denigrating his intelligence and paternity as he slammed the door behind him, Ellison was famously rumored to be a habitual procrastinator who could never have met the deadlines necessary for either comic-book writers or artists, so, in my opinion, was actually in no legitimate position to assess anyone’s level of ability to create them.)

        In fact, I’ve found that while Tallarirco’s work can in fact objectively be adjudged to be widely unpopular (notably his work at Dell (LOBO, DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN and WEREWOLF) and Charlton (GERONIMO JONES, BOBBY SHERMAN and SURF ‘N’ WHEELS), most people, when slagging his work, are thinking of BLUE BEETLE and SON OF VULCAN, each of which he only inked with Bill Fraccio penciling. (And yes, for the record, I don’t think he was ever good enough to draw superhero comics for Marvel OR DC, but that’s only my opinion. He sold a lot more stories to professional comic publishers than I ever did, so he clearly met somebody’s standards.)

        In the fewer than half dozen times I spoke to him, I actually heard Harlan speak far more often about comics he liked rather than those he didn’t, so I think it wise to consider who was interviewing him. Now, when it came to his opinion of TV producers, the reverse was true and his anecdotes were far more convincing (and entertaining).

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    3. For what it’s worth, a subsequent TCJ issue carried Ellison’s answers to readers of the interview issue, and one respondent asserted that Heck’s work had suffered due to a personal tragedy. I don’t remember where I read a Heck interview in which the artist denied that there had been any such trauma. But at the time Ellison did not know that the assertion was untrue, and his response re: Heck’s personal problems was at least more humanitarian than that of many “comic book elitists.”

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  7. Another bronze age title I didn’t read back when it was published, even though I reaad and enjoyed the silver age Green Lantern. It didn’t find this issue on DC Universe Infinite, so I pulled out my Hard-Traveling Heroes Omnibus and read it, along with issues 121-123. Unfortunately, neither the story or the artwork impressed me. I’m sure there are a lot of graet bronze age titles and issues I’ve yet to read, but so far the few I’ve read based on Tom’s posts have left me unimpressed.

    On the other hand, I was surprised to learn that 1) Hal and Carol had a falling out and that 2) Hal was dating, and fell in love with, a gypsy psychic named Kari Limbo, who 3) loved Guy Gardner, who 4) I didn’t know had been around that long.

    I also never really cared for Green Arrow, even if I did buy and read Green Lantern: The Longbow Hunters (it was by Mike Grell, and I really liked The Warlord), at least until the CW Arrow series.

    And even though I read all the different Green Lantern titles in the eighties, Hall Jordan is my Green Lantern.

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    1. While I didn’t read Grell’s long GA run, there’s a great bit where Travis Morgan shows up in the same city (Seattle?) and Ollie’s enemies misidentify him: “Look at that beard! It has to be his secret identity — let’s kill him while he doesn’t have his bow!” Three guesses how well that went, not that you’ll need them.

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      1. Green Arrow 27 & 28. A quick, fun read. Not a lot of dialogue, so the plotting, layouts and artwork really carries the story. I bought and read Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, but I don’t recall picking up this ongoing series. If I had read these 2 issues I’m pretty sure I would have remembered them.

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  8. I’ll chime in to agree with the others who liked the inking here. I’m not sure what Don would have thought of it, since his preference was to ink himself, but Celardo’s got a nice textured, almost Cardy-esque look that I think works really well here. Celardo’s inks could stiffen up some pencilers’ art, but with Heck it adds a lot of solidity and texture without robbing the pencils of their energy.

    I don’t know that Don was an ideal artist for Green Lantern (though his Lantern-generated stuff here looks fine), but the pages look nice as comics pages.

    Rotten story. But I like how it looks.

    This was one of the ink jobs that made me request Celardo as a possible inker on the RED TORNADO mini I did with Carmine Infantino, on which there was some really effective pencil work. But no, they have it to Frank McLaughlin, who wiped all the good stuff out.

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    1. Off topic, but I swear I read your Red Tornado miniseries when it was published, but I didn’t remember anything about it. Therefore, I just read it online and it jogged no memories, other than the title logo. Not that that means I considered it forgettable. When I read the Miracleman Omnibus last year it also jogged no memories and I know I rad that as each issue was published.

      Getting slightly back on topic, I do like DOn Heck’s artwork more than I like Carmine Infantino’s artwork.

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      1. When I met Carmine, years later, he didn’t remember the RED TORNADO mini-series either.

        But he drew it very well. And much as I like Don Heck’s work, I’d have had to write a very different story if he was the artist; it’s full of stuff that’s really not in Don’s wheelhouse.

        Then again, if he’d inked Carmine on it, that might have looked quite nice. Way better than McLaughlin, at least.

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  9. I’d been a GL fan in the Silver Age. Now that I had money to buy series consistently, I went baack to GL, among others, starting with when the series resumed after those Flash backups. I could tell it wasn’t good stuff but I still loved the characters so I (as Tom puts it) subsidized mediocrity for several years. Eventually we got Barr, Wein, Englehart and things picked up.

    In hindsight I wasted a lot of quarters on these books.

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