When Green Lantern's long-running comic was cancelled, the series did not come to a screeching halt. The team of Green Lantern and Green Arrow made some appearances in the sturdy DC series The Flash for several issues, many of those stories were by the creative team which made the duo famously relevant, Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams and Dick Giordano.
The story titled "The Killing of an Archer" in The Flash #217 spills across multiple issues of The Flash and concerns Green Arrow who in a somewhat confusing battle with some street punks accidentally kills one of them.
The archer is so overcome with grief that he disappears from sight leaving Black Canary and Green Lantern to wonder where he's disappeared to.
As they search for Green Arrow in the second part titled "Green Arrow is Dead" in The Flash #218, both GL and Canary get involved with domestic terrorists, some who have a relationship with villains they faced off against before.
Specifically the charismatic sister of Joshua, the cult leader the trio had defeated some issues before in GL's magazine. After some typical conflict the cult is defeated.
The search for Green Arrow takes a surprising turn in "The Fate of an Archer" in The Flash #219 when Black Canary is injured by a car and needs a transfusion.
Green Lantern then must find Green Arrow immediately. The grieving GA has taken up residence in a monastery seeking solace from the guilt he still feels over the man he killed. He reluctantly returns to be at the side of the Canary and the trio are reunited for one final time by the creative team which made them famous.
After this trilogy there is one single story left to tell about Green Lantern by the team of O'Neil, Adams and Giordano. This solo tale from The Flash #236 is one in which GL has to confront his own limitations when his ring becomes unreliable.
The series ends with a whimper and not with a bang, but will be long remembered by comics fans as one of the highest points in the medium's long history.
A little bit more to come.
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Nice page with Green Arrow in the back alley. I wonder what Adams could have produced if he'd decided to create realistic graphic novels from this point on. He really rose to the occasion for the realistic/relevant GL/GA stories--what if he'd gone the Will Eisner route after 1972?
ReplyDeleteNo draws quite like him, though many have tried. There's a feeling of the real world infused in every page, even some of the most outlandish. Some of the horror stories he did for Warren magazines hint I think at what he'd have done with more mundane elements.
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