The end of an era doesn’t always feel like the end of an era. Sometimes, it feels like a lost Rin Tin Tin movie? Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of Green Lantern #38 awaits!

GREEN LANTERN #38

Writer: Robert Kanigher
Penciler: Irwin Hasen/Alex Toth
Inker: Bob Oksner/Alex Toth/Frank Giacoia
Colorist: Uncredited
Letterer: Uncredited
Editor: Julius Schwartz
Publisher: DC Comics 
Cover Price: 10 Cents
Current Near-Mint Pricing: $1650.00
Release Date: March 14, 1949

Previously in Green Lantern: Having miraculously survived a train wreck thanks to a magical green lantern, Alan Scott carved a ring from its metal, using it to become the protector of Gotham City. Not only was he one of the first superhumans in existence, he was a founding member of the first ever super-team, the Justice Society of America, shedding his light over dark evil with the help of a Brooklyn cabbie, his secretly-a-supervillain secretary/girlfriend, and eventually, a super-smart dog named Streak. This particular issue starts off business as usual, at least in Green Lantern’s world: A chair, stabbed through by a dagger!

But what can it mean?

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this issue for me is the opening of The Green Lantern Program on WXYZ, with Green Lantern reciting his oath. (As a WXYZ is actually a real broadcast call sign, albeit for a TV station in Detroit, even at the time this issue was printed.) The oath seen here to open the show is the one most associated with Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern, but upon investigation, I found that it originated with Alan Scott! Not only that, Alan had used it since 1943, even though modern retcons make it seem that the original Green Lantern always used his original oath. The office chair turns out to have been a clue to an upcoming murder! Upon returning to his office, Green Lantern interrupts a group of criminals in the process of leaving a second clue, a copy of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

A second murder follows, the captain of the sailing ship Stormy Weather, hence The Tempest. Another clue follows, a pair of lanterns, one blue and one green, each strung up by a hangman’s noose. That’s when Alan puts two and two (and green and blue) together.

I’m also amused to see the “giant props” routine more associated with Batman as part of Kanigher’s script here. It’s an interesting touch, especially given how little Alan uses his ring in this story. He doesn’t really fly, though he does create an energy parachute, which almost implies that he CAN’T. He also takes down the villain with fisticuffs, and not a single power ring creation.

A second Green Lantern story in the issue features a battle with the villain, Mister Paradox, equally bare of ring-play, while the middle story features the hero who gets the cover of this final issue: Streak, The Wonder Dog!

These panels from 1949 are the final appearance of Streak until… Umm… Last summer?

That’s not a joke, actually. And moreover, that appearance was an unfinished story in the DC Round Robin tournament, which means it barely counts as a cameo, meaning that the Wonder Dog was actually buried deeper than The Chinatown Kid, Wing How, and the endless parade of horrible minstrel show stereotypes. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Green Lantern #38 is how run-of-the-mill and mundane it all seems, with three pretty okay stories showing no indication of it being the last issue at all, earning 3 out of 5 stars overall. Flash Comics had been canceled just a few months earlier, while both All-Star Comics and All-American Comics transitioned to Western content as the 1950s ended, as DC editorial abandoned all but their top-tier heroes (and Johnny Quick) for most of the 1950s.

The cancellation of Green Lantern was apparently a surprise to everyone, as a completed story for the nonexistent #39 was eventually pulled out of mothballs and printed in Hal Jordan’s book nearly 25 years later.

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GREEN LANTERN #38

67%

67%

This Is The End

The titular hero doesn't even appear on the cover of this, his last issue, and while nothing much happens, that lack of incidence ends up being strange in itself.

• Writing

  6
• Art

  7
• Coloring

  7
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