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This is a very different type of Chronicles than the others we’ve seen before. For one thing, it only collects one title (in this case Green Lantern). The Batman and Superman chronicles shuffled between their solo book and the bigger anthology book they appeared in and this is the first one that is just a single title being collected. Here we have Green Lantern #’s 4-9. Another thing that is different is that we are moving away from two stories per book to only one “book-length” tale that would really separate the Golden Age from the Silver Age. All of these stories were written by John Broome and illustrated by Gil Kane.
-Green Lantern #4- We have two stories here. The first finds those damn Qwardians sending a missile after Green Lantern and Pieface taking some radiation from that. So GL heads to their world to get the antidote. He must stop a super-robot the Qwardians built and luckily he does (with the help of the now cognizant robot). Pieface is saved! The pushing of the Qwardians are evil theme was funny here; almost childlike in the way they were getting it across. It’s the charm of the Early Silver Age. Our second story sees the Green Lantern being invited to Carol’s party, Hal showing up, and the waiters impersonating GL to steal jewels and stuff from the rich people attending. Well, Hal is there so you know what that means! Two pretty good stories start off this collection.
-Green Lantern #5- This is a full-length tale that features Hector Hammond. Hector invites some people over to his house (including Carol) to see his new technical marvels. Green Lantern investigates the mysterious disappearance of some scientists and Hector seems to be involved. He also gives a ring to Pieface who gets captured by Hector and de-evolved into a monkey. It seems that Hector had kidnapped these scientists and used a meteorite to evolve the scientists into super-intelligent beings who are captured by him to create his wonders. Hector takes the ring of Pieface and battles Green Lantern with it. However, he never charges it so Green Lantern defeats him and throws him in jail. This was pretty cool, even if some things seemed hokey (GL as a monkey?).
-Green Lantern #6- Tomar Re has a big problem. Huge monsters are attacking his home planet while some mental beings from sleeping hosts are turning on their hosts and are ready to take over that world. It’s too much for him to handle! So he calls on Green Lantern to help him stop the mental beings. He finds them only to get caught in a gravitational pull thanks to their advanced weapons. So GL figures he can send a mental image of himself to stop the other mental images and it works. He then makes like a million other mental versions of himself to free himself. That sentence sounded weird. GL then flies off to help Tomar-Re ward off the monsters that are bothering him. I really liked how the beginning was paid off at the end with GL helping Tomar after dealing with his whole issue. I don’t know if the idea of people sleeping and having their mental clones wondering around was original to GL but I know it was swiped by a movie that came out recently.
-Green Lantern #7- This is a very momentous issue for Green Lantern. Green Lantern finds out that 100,000 people have just vanished from a village and it was a village that GL was supposed to have visited! Who was behind this? It was Sinestro, the fallen Green Lantern, working with the Qwardians (the place where he was banished) to defeat the Green Lantern. We get the origin of Sinestro (was a GL, used his powers for evil, was banished) as well as an early appearance by the Guardians who explains all this to Hal. So Green Lantern encounters Sinestro and gives himself up to free the 100,000. He uses his wits to stop Sinestro (sped up the clock that Sinestro was using to wait until Hal’s 24 hours of energy gave out) and tricked him into capture. This was Sinestro’s first appearance so it is a very important moment for the character. The back-up story was a shorter story featuring Hal dreaming Pieface was a bird, Pieface actually becoming a bird, and helping Green Lantern save his girlfriend. It was definitely an interesting one in an unbelievable sort of way.
-Green Lantern #8- This is a very interesting full-length tale. Hal is ready to stop a monster in his time when the people of 5700 bring Hal to their time to help stop some advanced lizards on their world. Hal manages to find out where the lizards were sending their troops, where their powers came from AND how to defeat them. Of course, he does this in only 23 hours because if it took even an hour longer, his ring would run out of power. Hal returns to his time with no memory of this and he stops the monster from the opening pages before heading home confused as to why he needs to recharge his ring so soon after he last did it.
-Green Lantern #7- Sinestro returns with his yellow ring! The yellow ring begins by siphoning power from the green rings. He imprisons Hal and heads to a GLC summit meeting. He steals more power before deciding to head to the Guardians and take them out. Luckily Hal has escaped and he overloads the yellow ring as the rest of the Lanterns show up. They send Sinestro away in a green casket of sorts to circle the universe forever. Well, thankfully we’ve seen the last of Sinestro! The second tale was funny one of a reporter thinking she’s discovered the identity of the Green Lantern. She got the family right, but she thought it was Hal’s younger brother. She tries getting definitive proof but fail. It was a fun story!
-The Bottom Line- Wow, this is quite a wide range of stories here. Some go from completely ridiculous and inane (lots of alien monsters and crazy plot points) but Sinestro first appeared here and the stories were definitely fun and it didn’t feel as hokey as you may think from a book coming out in 1961. I was never a big Green Lantern fan but I really enjoyed this collection. Recommended.
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