ACW #605 – Green Lantern

Action Comics Weekly #605 (Green Lantern)
“Golgotha”
Writer – James Owsley
Pencils – Gil Kane
Inks – Don Simpson w/Dick Giordano
Letters – Albert DeGuzman
Colors – Anthony Tollin
Editor – Denny O’Neal

It’s Week Five of #ActionComicsDaily!  Welcome to it… and get used to seeing Deadman pawing at a pane of glass for the next several days!


Last time out, we didn’t get a whole lot of Hal… and, if I’m being honest, the chapter was much stronger for that fact!  This time, however, he’s back…


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We open with Carol Ferris… who’s hanging out at the graveyard, like ya do.  She is accompanied by her Sapphire Gem, and is pleased as punch that she was able to fake her own death, and condemn John Stewart to some jail time.  She’s also pretty happy that she “took care” of Hal Jordan… she doesn’t get long to celebrate, however, before she is joined by a yellow insectoid alien!

We shift scenes and join Hal… who is on the barren planetoid known as Golgotha.  How biblical!  Anyhoo, he doesn’t have the foggiest idea just how long he’s been here… and every time he tries to get to his feet, he’s struck by a bolt of lightning.  After being knocked down this time, he notices that his Power Ring has returned to him.

Back on Earth, the Yellow Bug is able to usurp Carol’s control over the Sapphire Gem… and after muttering a few words, it zaps her with it!

On Golgotha, Hal struggles to free himself from his chains.  He’s, uh, chained to the planet… not sure if I mentioned that yet.  It isn’t long before he is able to deduce that his ring is only half-effective in this current predicament.

He’s finally able to weaken the chain just enough to where he can physically pull himself free.  Once out of his shackles, he summons his Power Battery, recharges, and heads back toward Earth…

… where he finds Star Sapphire konked out in the graveyard.  She wakes up to see him sitting on her own tombstone, bobbling her Sapphire Gem.  She warns him that there’s something behind him… there’s a flicker of black, and then… she vanishes!

—

Ya know, it hasn’t been all that long since I last read through this feature.  We covered Hal’s run in Action Comics Weekly for the entire month of November, 2018 over on the Cosmic Treadmill Podcast… and I’m sitting here now… racking my brain about where this Star Sapphire and Yellow Bug-Alien thing comes up again.


I really don’t think it ever does.


Such a weird ending to this little “arc”.  Star Sapphire has a run-in with (what the DC Wikia identifies as) “an unidentified alien”, who disappears before Hal returns… before she herself vanishes as well.  She next shows up like four years later!  Maybe they were trying to avoid addressing the fact that she murdered Katma Tui in cold blood?  I dunno.


We’ve also got the deal with Hal attempting to free himself from Golgotha.  Ya see, Star Sapphire left him at the “Pole” of the planetoid… which, for whatever reason, attracted lightning like nobody’s business.  Seems like such a waste of effort though, dunnit?  Hal’s got the Power Ring… stands to reason he’d be able to free himself, right?


Maybe something weird happened in editorial around this time… I dunno.  The whole feature seems to lose its focus right about here.  Contributing to that feeling, Dick Giordano is given an “ink assist” credit here… which makes this Gil Kane art look very un-Gil Kane-like, in my opinion.


Not sure if they were doing a bit of creative “shifting” here… which was kind of the name of the game during these early issues.  Mark Waid had introduced the concept of the Green Lantern feature appearing in Action Comics Weekly back in the farewell letters page of Green Lantern Corps #224.  There, he announced the incoming creative team as Peter David and Tod Smith… who will eventually take over (we’ll actually be seeing Smith next week).  Just makes me wonder how much of this was supposed to happen… and how much of it we were supposed to ever see?


Oh well, this wasn’t an incredibly strong chapter… and it wasn’t even really an effective one.  I mean, it rids us of Carol, but in such a way where it’s wildly unsatisfying.


Tomorrow: Deadman… under glass!