Green Lantern/Superman: Legend of the Green Flame (2000)

We open at the entrance to the afterlife… I think, where our heroes are met by another ACW Alum, Deadman!  He informs the big fellas that at the moment they are, in fact, dead.  Hal ain’t buyin’ none of it… and so, Boston decides not to belabor or argue the point.  Instead, he bids them both adieu…

… well, he tries to, anyway.  Superman calls him back in hopes of getting some better answers.  I suppose the quality of answers you receive is subjective, even if you’re Superman.  Boston then suggests the heroes that they’re “probably dead”… so, ya know, all hope ain’t quite lost.  He tells them about a bright light they can head toward… that same bright light he has been unable to cross into all these years.  Hal has another idea, he can just use his ring to send their spirits back to their bodies.  It’s as good a plan as any, so he gives it a go!

We then arrive at the first of our “Strange Interludes”.  Our favorite Stranger walks around a room, admiring the knick-knacks and tchotchkes… he knows his time here is coming to an end.  There’s another place he needs to be.  The Lords of Order require an explanation for his “vacation”…

… even threatening to deprive him of his powers should he act outside their interests, but still… he ain’t about to stick around.

The Lords of Order assure him that if he does decide to leave this room… or whatever this room symbolizes, he will face their wrath.  He leaves anyway.

—

Kind of a transitional chapter, wunnit?


Well, before we get into it, I wanted to share a little bit more from Neil’s introduction piece that kicked this Prestige Format special off.  Regarding Action Comics Weekly as a concept, “ACTION COMICS WEEKLY had been an experimental anthology comic.  It asked the question ‘Would readers want an anthology series of individual serialized stories featuring Green Lantern, Catwoman, Deadman, the Phantom Stranger, the Demon, Blackhawks and, of course, Superman?’.”


He continues, “The answer was, ‘No.’  They didn’t want it.  At DC it was felt that ACTION COMICS WEEKLY was much more trouble than it was worth.”  Well, there ya have it!  I wish I had sales figures to corroborate that… but I don’t!  All we have at this juncture is the (mostly) overwhelmingly positive feedback featuring in the letters pages.  You’d never know this was as unpopular an endeavor as Neil’s making it out to be.  Then again, my own numbers here at this silly blog nosedived when I took on this direction, so there might just be something to it!


Anyhoo, onto the story!  In a way, it’s not all that different from the Maggin fill-in that would actually wrap up Action Comics Weekly back in 1989.  In both stories, Hal Jordan “dies”… runs into Deadman… and is faced with a decision.  I wonder if Maggin wrote from Neil’s plot/script, or if this was just a cosmic-level coincidence?  Perhaps the Ross Andru ACW #642 cover had already been completed, and necessitated Hal’s “death” in both stories?  I dunno.


So far though… I’d have to say the Neil Gaiman story is better.  We aren’t wasting pages (upon pages) introducing the New-New Guardians, so that’s a definite point in the favor of this take.  Really, the primary difference is… and stop me if you heard this one before… Hal Jordan and Clark Kent are close pals in this story, where they weren’t in the other.  Stands to reason, as that’s the entire reason why we have two endings for this run… but still, that’s the only thing that stands out.


I’m liking the cameos from the ACW Alumnus… however, as the “all or nothing” sorta goofball that I am, I wish there were a way to include every character from the original run.  Get the Hero Hotline in there!  Give us an aside with Human Target!  I mean, we’re playing fast and loose with the timeline as it is… just cram everyone in there!


On that line of thought, something that might be lost on folks discovering this story in more recent years is… Hal Jordan appearing at all and what a novelty that was at the time!  Ya see, this was published back in the year 2000.  Hal Jordan wasn’t Green Lantern at that point in time… and we were often told, in no uncertain terms that… Hal Jordan will never be coming back as Green Lantern!  Kyle Rayner was our guy… and that was the end of the discussion!  So, to get a “brand new” story featuring Hal in the togs was a pretty big deal.  I guess that speaks to the power and influence of post-Sandman Neil Gaiman.  More on that next chapter!

Chapter Three opens with Superman waking up to the sound of pained and horrible screams.  Tears well up in his eyes as he comes to realize that the place Green Lantern managed to send them to with his Power Ring was… Hell (or at the very least, some incredibly unpleasant region of the Underworld).  It almost seems as though he’s not even struggling with the situation.  Hal, on the other hand, is pretty much panicked… and is trying to pull his fellow hero out of his daze, while desperately holding on to his floating pal as to not fall into whatever fiery end lays below.

Suddenly a large bird flies overhead… curious as to the identities and motivations of this pair of virtuous visitors.  It informs Hal that they are at the Stygean Pits… and assures Hal that he will eventually eat his soul.  Hal ain’t buyin’ it… he’s sure he’s just having some sort of delusion.

Suddenly, a ship full’a souls enters the scene.  Superman is still kayoed… well, catatonic might be more accurate… he can still hear the cries of the damned and whatnot.

Then, Big Bird swoops back around and goes to take a big ol’ bite out of Superman’s leg… which manages to finally wake the Big Fella up!  He freaks out so much, however, that Hal loses his grip… and proceeds to plummet toward the lava pits!

Lucky (?) for Hal, he happens to get impaled on a sort of meat hook before hitting the drink.  He engages his ring, and the pair’a heroes blink out once more.  Once they’re gone, the Big Bad Bird dines on the ship of souls.

From here, we enter our second “Strange Interlude” wherein the Phantom Stranger arrives at the Metropolis Museum.  He, unlike the mere mortals in presence, is able to see past Hal’s “mental block” construct… and so, he wanders right into that hallway.

—

Not too long a chapter today… but, before we get into it, let’s hop back into the behind-the-scenes stuff for just a minute.  Why, in the year 2000… over a decade after this story was intended to run… was this finally green-lit?


Well, duh… probably because Sandman happened, right?


From Neil’s Introduction, “Years passed, SANDMAN was written and one day it was finished.  Karen Berger [Vertigo Editor] asked me if she could publish the tryout story I had written for her in the planned MIDNIGHT DAYS collection, if I still had a copy of the script.  I did, and I sent it off to her.  And then I had an idea for something else we could put into MIDNIGHT DAYS.”


Now, Neil Gaiman’s Midnight Days (1999) was a collection of new-to-us Neil Gaiman stories published through Vertigo.  Stories that were previously unpublished… and some new stuff.  It included features starring John Constantine, Swamp Thing, Floronic Man, and the Golden-Age Sandman.  Ya know, Vertigo-y type characters.


Neil continues, “I phoned Mike Carlin.”


He asked Mike if he remembered the Action Comics Weekly script he had written… and asked if “that continuity stuff was still a problem.”  Naturally, being as though this is a Neil Gaiman request, post-Sandman… “that continuity stuff” was no longer quite the sticking point it was back in ye old 1989 (you’ll notice there’s no Elseworlds branding on this… so, this is “the real life”).  The project was shifted over to Bob Schreck’s purview… and once Neil was finally able to track down the original script (which had been given to a pal of Neil’s) everything was good to go!


So, with that out of the way… what’d we think about Chapter III?


Ehh.  It was alright.  The dialogue was perhaps a tad too purple for me… but, whattayagonnado?  I can’t believe I’m asking this, but… we’re in Hell right?  Or, at the very least a Hell-adjacent realm… Where was Etrigan?  I mean, even just a quick cameo from yet another ACW Alum in the Demon would’ve been appreciated.  Not that I’m a big Etrigan fan, and in fact thought his ACW feature was all sorts of bad… but, c’mon… his showing up would’a been a no-brainer!


Not much more to say about this one.  It served its purpose in shifting the pieces across the board… and, with them “in position”, we’ll be able to put this bugger to bed!

Chapter Four opens with Superman and Green Lantern waking up… this time, it looks like they’ve arrived inside a Power Battery!  Hal helps his pal to his feet, and the Big and Small Fellas find themselves stood before… the Green Flame!

The Flame proceeds to speak to them… retelling some Oan history to explain its origin… and its reason for nabbing the heroes at this juncture.  Ya see, some forty-million years ago the Guardians created the power battery… and in so doing, chose science over magic, banishing the latter from the structure.  The Flame then achieved sentience… and in the time of Kai Lung, a lamp-maker named Chang created the ring and lantern.  Hal recognizes the lamp as once belonging to Alan Scott… the Flame, however, doesn’t take kindly to the inference that it was ever “owned” by anyone.  Instead, it refers to Alan Scott as having been a “slave” to the Flame.

It then offers Hal a similar “slavedom”… If he is willing to cast aside his current (science-y) ring and embrace magic, it will endow upon him the greatest power.  Hal ain’t diggin’ the idea so much, but the Flame continues it’s sales pitch… well, actually, the Flame makes it clear that this wasn’t so much an “offer”, but a “demand”.  Just then, the Phantom Stranger arrives on the scene.

The Stranger reminds Hal that the Flame can be controlled… and, in fact, was controlled by Alan Scott before.  The Flame pleads with Hal to ignore that trenchcoated interloper…

… but, he doesn’t!  Hal then recites Alan Scott’s old Green Lantern Oath… which, uh, doesn’t so much roll off the tongue like Hal’s.

Bada-bing, bada-boom… the Green Flame has vacated the room, and the heroes find themselves back down that hallway in the Museum… looking right at their physical bodies!  The Phantom Stranger proceeds to take Alan Scott’s Lantern… and tells the Fellas that they’ll be returned to their bodies (and to the normal flow of time) pretty quickly.

We shift ahead a little bit, and rejoin Hal and Superman sitting atop the Museum continuing their chat from before.  This recent situation helped Hal put all of his woes into perspective… and he realizes there’s more to life than complaining about everything.  He decides he’s going to drop in on Mogo just to say hi.  Since this is Hal, and wherever he goes… tragedy follows, I suppose we should say a little preemptive prayer for Mogo’s health and happiness now.

The heroes drop to the street level where… heyyy, there’s a theater marquee getting its sign swapped out!  Looks like Fatal Attraction is about ready to head to VHS.  Now, where have we seen this before?  Waitasec, a “Fatal Attraction Retrospective”?  I thought this was supposed to be happening in the late-80’s?  Oh well, whatever the case…

… you likely already know where this scene is headed.  “ACTION” is left on the marquee as Hal symbolically hands Action Comics back to the “big guy”… he then delivers a Kentian wink in our direction.

—

Welp, that’s a wrap… in more ways than one.  All of the stories of Action Comics Weekly have now been told.  We’ll save the comparison between the Maggin and Gaiman stories for the compilation post, and just look at this one as a chapter… and a complete story.


As a chapter it’s… I dunno, kinda rushed.  Maybe that’s telling of my tolerance for magic-based stories… maybe that’s why I’ve never really able to glom onto stories featuring the Phantom Stranger or the Spectre… they always seem so “with one snap of my fingers, the bad stuff goes away” for my liking.  That’s kind of what we get here.  The Phantom Stranger shows up… tells Hal to control the Flame, and so… he does.  Bingo-bango, all’s good in the hood.


Resolutions like that make me feel sort of like I’ve wasted a whole bunch of time reading the story up to that point, ya know?  It’s like… why bother building tension and conflict, when some cosmically-powered side character can just show up and fix the problem without any actual effort?  What I’m trying to say is, it’s hard for me to truly invest in stuff like this.


Now, as a whole story… Green Lantern/Superman: Legend of the Green Flame was… okay.  Nothing really socks-rocking, but a decent little buddy-story between Kal ‘n Hal.  It’s cool as a novelty and an oddity, but… I feel like if you go into this expecting NEIL GAIMAN’S Superman and Green Lantern epic, you might come out of it a bit disappointed.  It’s not a bad story… it’s just a story.


I enjoyed seeing Kal ‘n Hal chatting… though, it was mostly Hal kvetching and Clark kinda just trying to get a word in edgewise.  That’s the kind of dynamic I see them having though, so it worked for me.  In a lot of my personal interactions, I kinda feel like the “Hal” of the conversation… just muddling through whatever’s going on in my head, while a calmer other-person kinda just absorbs it all… while probably repeatedly asking themselves why they’re still hanging around me!


The ending here, just like in the Maggin script, was pretty clever.  Makes me wonder who came up with it first.  In the Afterword of this book, DC Editor from back in the long ago, Mark Waid confirms that DC did buy Gaiman’s script: “We paid Neil for the script and then, with deep regret, simply filed it away.”  I gotta wonder: Did Neil’s original script included the Fatal Attraction bit?  Did Maggin come up with it first?  Did an editor just think it was clever and ask each writer to use it?  I tells ya what, we axe the important questions here at Chris is on Infinite Earths!


Whatever the case, it feels more “right” with Hal being the one to symbolically “hand” Action Comics back to “the Big Guy”.  For all intents and purposes (and for better or worse), Action Comics Weekly was Hal Jordan’s book.  He was the headliner, and probably the main draw for the casual comics fan.  I understand why they made it Deadman in the Maggin script… but, it works so much better (on so many levels) with Hal being the guy.


Overall… a good enough story, which kinda jives with my feelings on Action Comics Weekly as a whole.  It was “Good Enough”.  Not going to blow anybody away… and there will be bits and pieces you won’t care about… but, there’s enough about it to like that I can say it was good enough.

Afterword by Mark Waid: