Green Lantern #87

Green Lantern #87

Originally released in 1972

Written by Dennis O'Neil and Elliot S! Maggin

Art by Neal Adams

Given my frame of reference for DC's writers, this might not come as a surprise, but my main familiarity with the DC universe outside of Batman and Superman is the DC Animated Universe, which ran from Batman: The Animated Series in the early 90's to Justice League Unlimited in the mid-2000s.  In the Justice League series, the main Green Lantern was John Stewart rather than the traditional Hal Jordan, so he's the one that I'm most familiar with.

John's attitude in this issue is very different from the DCAU, since he has a giant chip on his shoulder. (Though as a black man in the 1970s, it seems justified) In the DCAU, he's serious and no-nonsense, while here, he's much more emotional and quick to anger.

Speaking of different attitudes, there's Guy Gardner, who seems like a completely different person between here and his later appearance in Justice League International.  Maybe when Crisis On Infinite Earths rebooted things, the writers decided to change his personality to add conflict among the heroes, or maybe he acts like a completely different person around kids.  Trying to save a scared child in the aftermath of an earthquake leads to him getting hit by a bus, which causes the Guardians of the Universe (short blue aliens that live on the planet Oa and run the Green Lantern Corps.) to choose John Stewart as a secondary replacement.

When it comes to Hal Jordan, I find I'm running into the same problem that I did with Barry Allen, where he doesn't seem to have much of a personality.  He's serious, and heroic, but aside from being accused of being racist by one of the Guardians of the Universe (though it quickly clears up that he isn't) and expressing frustration at John's behaviour, we don't get much insight into who he is as a person.  It likely doesn't help that he doesn't interact with anyone that he knows outside of the anonymous Guardian - Guy is unconscious by the time that Hal shows up. (The character had been around for over a decade by this point, so I can't even brush it off as Hal Jordan being new)

The plot culminates in the two Green Lanterns stopping a faked assassination plot by a politician who is so racist that I don't feel comfortable with posting any panels that contain his remarks in here. (In the screenshot above, Hal seems wildly optimistic about the idea that politicians would punish one of their own)

The second story, a Green Arrow-focused one written by Elliot S! Maggin, deals with Oliver Queen deciding if he should run for mayor or not as Star City seems to be falling apart around him thanks to poverty, drugs, and air pollution. Unlike Hal, Ollie has a clear personality here, being someone who stands up for the little guy while being a social crusader.

Ollie doesn't feel sure about jumping into politics, but witnessing a child die in a riot hardens his resolve.  Neal Adams's art shines here, with a sequence without dialogue putting the focus on the art and showing Ollie's anguish. 

These stories definitely have the social justice focus that I thought the O'Neil/Adams era would have, and it handles these topics effectively - they're not very subtle about it, but these are messages that people need to hear, so being subtle about it might lead to people misinterpreting it or willfully ignoring it. The emphasis on real world problems seems like a better fit for Green Arrow than it is for Green Lantern, but both of these stories were well-written.