Green Lantern (1960) 83

Green Lantern (1960) 83

May 1971

…and a Child Shall Destroy Them!

by Denny O’Neill, Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, John Costanza, Julius Schwartz

Dinah takes a job at Meadowhill School. She senses that something isn’t right at the school. Jason Belmore, the headmaster, is frightened of the cook, Mr. Grandy.

Green Lantern and Green Arrow run into Carrol Ferris as they are leaving the school. She is in a wheelchair. They try to give her a lift back into town but their car falls apart on the way there. They decide to return to the school which they suspect is the source of their car problems.

Grandy is the evil mastermind. He lacks superpowers but he orders Sybil, a child with supernatural abilities, to do his bidding. Sybil is the one who injured Carrol and caused the car to come apart. Sybil uses her powers to knock Black Canary out.

Green Lantern and Green Arrow return to rescue Black Canary but they almost get killed themselves. Grandy pushes Sybil a little too far and she decides she’s had enough. She brings the roof down on Grandy and herself. The others escape without major injuries.

Hal declares that he wants another shot at a relationship with Carrol.

Thoughts

This story feels disjointed. Things are just thrown together, like Carrol’s injury. There are birds and wasps that attack Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Black Canary which seem to come out of nowhere. Grandy feels a bit like a villain from a horror movie. Where did Carrol come from? She’s in a wheelchair. How did she get out to the school?

There is a panel, where Green Lantern and Green Arrow are down on the ground surrounded by kids from the school who look ready to do them harm. There is a similar image on the cover to Green Lantern/Green Arrow 4, in which this story was reprinted. The children have knives in their hands on that cover but they aren’t holding anything in their hands in the panel from the story. My guess is that they were supposed to be holding knives in the story but Julie Schwartz wouldn’t let Neal Adams draw them that way.

This isn’t quite as bad as the previous story with the harpies but it isn’t much better. It feels very forced. 

Grandy's appearance reminds me of Mr. Whipple.

Have I mentioned how I wince every time Green Arrow calls Black Canary Pretty Bird? If he did it every now and then it would be one thing but that's the only thing he seems to call her. Never Black Canary or Dinah, just Pretty Bird. Ugh!

This is the last story in the first Hard Traveling Heroes collected edition. I’m going to pause here and come back later for the second collected edition. I’m not really enjoying reading this run of Green Lantern. It was ground breaking at the time and I can see why but it hasn’t aged well in some respects. I like the way the stories are drawn but the stories themselves are way too loose for me.