Green Lantern (1960) 79

Green Lantern (1960) 79

Sep 1970

Ulysses Star Is Still Alive!

by Denny O’Neill, Neal Adams, Dan Adkins, John Costanza, Julius Schwartz

Green Lantern and Green Arrow intervene when a logging company plans to cut down trees on land owned by Native Americans. Green Lantern tries to help by sticking to the straight and narrow. The deed to the land has been lost. Green Lantern goes looking for it. Green Arrow tries to inspire the Indians and scare off the loggers. He disguises himself as a long dead Indian Chief and goes around making it known how he feels about the situation. 

Neither superhero is entirely successful. They wind up getting into a fight. The fight goes from land into a river. It ends when both men are knocked out by a log that comes floating downstream. The story ends with things looking up but the situation has not been resolved.

The Native Americans, like the superheroes, are split over what the best course of action is. One decides to go to Washington, DC to work with their congressman to get the logging situation resolved through legislation. The other decides to stay on the tribal land and do what he can to help his people there. 

Thoughts

The quote that introduces this story in the Hard Traveling Heroes trade paperback is “It’s easy to tell black from white, it was all that easy to tell wrong from right” from Bob Dylan’s Dream by Bob Dylan. 

I think this story works on multiple levels. I’m not comfortable with Green Arrow’s decision to disguise himself as Ulysses Star. 

The most effective part of this story is the fight between Green Lantern and Green Arrow. Quotes from The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer accompany the fight and help to describe the divide between the two superheroes which runs deeper than just them. It’s pretty clear to me that this issue is also an effort to use words and pictures to show what the divide over the war in Vietnam has done to the United States. 

I’m not sure that this is a great story but I can appreciate what O’Neill and Adams did and were striving to do here. It isn’t the sort of story that is going to get a lot of attention like the one in Green Lantern 76 but I think it makes some valuable points.