Green Lantern (1960) 86

Green Lantern (1960) 86

Nov 1971

They Say It'll Kill Me... But They Won't Say When!

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

Green Arrow yells at Roy, hits him, and then kicks him out of his apartment. Green Arrow departs soon afterwards and heads back to the airfield where he and Green Lantern looked for the source of the drugs in the previous issue.

Roy’s friends see Green Arrow leave and break into the apartment. They find some drugs that Roy left behind. One of them shoots up with the drugs and immediately collapses. The other one gets scared and runs off leaving his friend’s dead body in Ollie’s apartment.

Green Lantern goes looking for Green Arrow. He stops by the apartment and finds the body. He leaves it behind and goes looking for Green Arrow and Speedy.

Green Arrow looks around the airfield. The night watchman tries to stop him but Green Arrow, despite having a broken arm, beats him up and interrogates him. Arrow learns that the man he is looking for can probably be found aboard a boat at the South Shore Marina.

Green Lantern finds Roy and takes him to Dinah’s place. He leaves Roy with Dinah and takes off in search of Green Arrow.

Green Arrow finds the marina but gets overpowered by a couple drug dealers who work for the man for whom he is looking. They toss him into the water with an anchor tied around his neck. He frees himself using one of his trick arrows and gets back to the surface before he drowns. Green Lantern shows up and deals with the drug dealers who tried to kill his friend.

Green Lantern and Green Arrow catch up to the rich man who has been bankrolling and supplying the drug dealers. Green Lantern beats him up.

Hal and Ollie run into Roy and Dinah at the funeral for Roy’s friend. Roy is still angry and slugs Ollie. He also lets him know how he feels about everything that has gone down.

Thoughts

This is an overloaded issue and an overloaded story. Here are way too many moving parts. The visuals by Neal Adams are beautifully handled but the story moves at a breakneck pace. I had a hard time following everything that was happening on the first read through. Re-examining and re-reading the story did not increase my appreciation for it. It feels preachy in places which isn’t too surprising considering how some of the other stories in this run of comic books have struck me.