Green Lantern's Dates With Carol Ferris

One of the oddities about the Green Lantern series in the Silver Age was the romantic triangle between Hal Jordan, Carol Ferris, and Green Lantern. Carol did not appear in the Green Lantern origin story in Showcase #22, but she popped up in the second story in that issue, and it was immediately clear that she and Hal were more than employer and employee:



But Hal's plans for romance take a downturn later in the story, as Carol's father announces that he and his wife are going on a tour around the world, and that she will be in charge of the plant during his absence. This results in a definite cooling of their relationship (as she must be responsible and not fall in love), and when she discovers that there's a new superhero in town he's permanently demoted to the "B" list:



And at the ball:



But inevitably danger arises, and GL has to run out on Carol in mid-kiss, putting him (temporarily) in her doghouse.

In the next issue, GL purposely dates quite a few women, making sure that the gossip columnists report it prominently. But rather than getting him in dutch with Carol (and helping Hal's chances), his trick only makes him more appealing, and when Hal mentions that he's struck up a friendship with GL, she puts him on the spot suggesting that they go out for dinner as a threesome. Hal realizes:



Well, Hal, it's your own stupid fault for dancing every dance with her and giving her that big kiss at the end as Green Lantern. But do you think he learned from his mistake? Nope, at the end of the story:



And so for the next few years, periodically we'd see scenes like this:



Perhaps the most embarrassing moment comes in Showcase #24, when Carol reveals that she had a dream where she married Hal, but was bitterly disappointed that GL didn't show up to stop the ceremony and sweep her away. But as she and Hal started on their honeymoon an emergency occurred requiring GL's presence and as Hal changed into the Emerald Gladiator Carol realized that she had married both Hal and GL at the same time. And this dream made her waking self wonder if perhaps they were the same man:



Now that's pretty cold. "I had this nightmare where I married you and Green Lantern didn't rescue me, but it turned out okay because you were Green Lantern yourself, so tell me, are you GL?"

More about →

Goodbye, Green Lantern!

The late 1960s were a time of change for DC Comics. This became startlingly obvious in Green Lantern #49, the December 1966 issue. GL's main cast of characters had stayed steady since his introduction in 1959--sidekick Pieface (Tom Kalmaku), love interest Carol Ferris, and secret identity, test pilot Hal Jordan. But that all got shook up quite a bit in this issue, starting with the girlfriend:



I can't think of another DC comic where a hero had been thrown over permanently by a long-standing girlfriend in favor of another man. Oh, sure, Bruce Wayne's gals had a habit of dropping off the face of the earth every few years. Aquaman had gotten married, as had the Flash (mentioned briefly in this issue). So this was really something different. But that was not all the goodbyes in store for us in this issue.

Hal decides that he cannot stay in Coast City with Carol married to another man, and so he strikes out on his own, resulting in this poignant farewell:



I'll have to do a full post on Pieface sometime, but he was a pretty unique character in the DC universe. Although his name suggests the buffoonish sidekicks of the Golden Age, like Doiby Dickles or Winky, Blinky and Noddy, Pie was played straight, as a serious character.

And even this was not the end of goodbyes. An even more startling departure came at the end of Green Lantern #61 (June 1968). It wasn't announced other than with this small note at the end of the story:

Gil Kane, who had drawn every panel of every Silver Age Green Lantern story, was now out of the picture. This was part of great DC reshuffling of artistic duties in mid-1968 that I will have to cover in depth at some later date. Apparently, DC's artists and writers had been pressuring the company for health and pension benefits, and in an effort to head that off, DC decided to switch around the assignments, probably feeling that the long-term association of artists with characters gave the former too much clout.

Many of the switches worked, but this one appears to have been a failure, as Kane was back at the old stand by mid-1969, although he only got one more year with the character before the advent of the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams.

More about →