Alan Scott: The Green Lantern by Tim Sheridan, Cian Tormey, et al.

Alan Scott: The Green Lantern

Collection published: 2024
Contents originally published: 2023-24
Acquired: January 2026
Read: February 2026

Writer: Tim Sheridan

Penciller: Cian Tormey
Inkers: Cian Tormey, Jordi Tarragona, Raúl Fernandez, John Livesay

Colorists: Matt Herms, Chris Sotomayor

Letterer: Lucas Gattoni

Part of the whole point of my long, long comics reading projects like this one is to see how a concept changes over time as the world changes around it. When the Justice Society originally debuted, it was of course set in the present; it was set during World War II because WWII was happening. When the JSA was revived in the 1960s and '70s, it became a vestige of the past: the debuts of the JSA heroes were kept rooted in WWII. This meant the JSA heroes could age and grow, unlike the new heroes of the Silver Age, who would always have their origins updated as time marched on. Roy Thomas exploited this to good effect in the 1980s, giving us both JSA as period piece (in All-Star Squadron; see item #3 in the list below) and JSA as a saga that had evolved in a way the JLA never could (in Infinity, Inc.; see items #4, 5, and 10). But as time went on, this became—if you were literal-minded—increasingly untenable. The JSA went from being the generation before the JLA to two generations before to even more. By the 2010s, did it make any sense that people who'd fought in World War II could still be active superheroes?

This is one of the reasons, I suspect, that in the "New 52," DC totally retooled the JSA, setting the series in the present but on an alternate Earth. They took the opportunity to update many of the characters; in particular relevance to this post, they made Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, into a gay man. Later, this updating of the JSA got undone. I don't know the details of this (I largely stopped reading DC Comics after Convergence), but the JSA is back on the same Earth as the JLA and back to originating during World War II. But DC did not undo changes like making Alan Scott gay, so now the original Green Lantern was a gay man during a time where society was much less accepting of homosexuality. My understanding is that this was tackled briefly in a couple one-shots I haven't read yet, but the first full exploration of this is in Alan Scott: The Green Lantern, one of three "Dawn of DC" miniseries focusing on JSA members (see also #55 below). Framed by Alan talking to his son Todd (himself gay), the story delves into Alan's origin, but also the tale of his first love, including a stay in an asylum where Alan is subjected to conversion therapy.

We're here, we're queer?
from Alan Scott: The Green Lantern #6 (art by Cian Tormey)

Overall, I found this really effectively done; I don't know if writer Tim Sheridan is gay, but the details of what it would be like for Alan in this time overall rang true to me. The conversion therapy stuff is harrowing, the emphasis on learning to live as you are works well. I don't know if I like the idea the whole JSA was immediately accepting of Alan (seems anachronistic), but I suppose DC would never want to tackle making some of its heroes homophobic in a mainstream book in the 2020s. I found Cian Tormey's art strong overall, and the story has some good twists and turns. Although... why are the bad guys in this World War II story Russians, given they were our allies? Not that Russians couldn't have been up to some skulduggery, but literally no one even comments on the fact that they're supposed to all be on the same side! Not quite as strong as the nostalgic glow I got from Wesley Dodds: The Sandman, but it still shows off the strength and continuing relevance of these characters.

This post is the fifty-sixth in an improbably long series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Green Lantern 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular and Infinite Frontier. Previous installments are listed below:

Review: Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Volume 9 by James Roberts, et al.

Comic PDF eBook, n.pag.
Published 2016 (contents: 2015-16)
Acquired October 2016
Read December 2017

Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Volume 9

Written by James Roberts
Art by Alex Milne, Brendan Cahill, and Hayato Sakamoto
Inks by Brian Shearer, Alex Milne, John Livesay, John Wycough, Brendan Cahill, and Hayato Sakamoto
Colors by Joana Lafuente
Letters by Tom B. Long and Chris Mowry

The post-Chaos era of IDW's Transformers comics used to be very easy to follow, alternating between collections of More than Meets the Eye and Robots in Disguise. Since Dark Cybertron, though, it's gotten much more complicated, with a proliferation of limited series and one-shots and crossovers and even a new ongoing in Windblade. The gap between volumes 8 and 9 of More than Meets the Eye was the longest yet, with a full six different collections stuffed into it, taking four months at my own personal Transformers pace.

It's almost like he knew I was away, because James Roberts brought me back with the More than Meets the Eyeest bit of More than Meets the Eye thus far on the very first page, a recap of what the group of Decepticons called the Scavengers have been up to since we last saw them way back in volume 2:

Incredible!
from Transformers: More than Meets the Eye #47 (art by Alex Milne & Brian Shearer, photography by Maziar Shahsafdari)

This launches us into a story of the Scavengers meeting Fortress Maximus, who became the duly appointed enforcer of the Tyrest Accords in volume 5. I do really like the Scavengers in principle, and the story is a good one, but in practice I struggle with reading about this many unfamiliar robot characters. I just can't keep five guys I haven't seen in literally a year straight, and this undermines a lot of the story's effectiveness. Heck, I didn't recognize Fortress Maximus at first, and he used to be a main character in MtMtE!

Thankfully, we're back on more familiar ground with the volume's second story, a big development in the lives of Cyclonus and Tailgate, who have perhaps faded into the background in the Megatron-focused post-Dark Cybertron era of More than Meets the Eye. Well, this story more than makes up for it, as it's another heartrender from the pen of James Roberts, as you plead and plead with Tailgate not to do something that seems like a grand romantic gesture from the naïve Transformer's perspective, but will in fact lead to ruination, and plead with Cyclonus to not bottle himself up so much-- and to not finally let out his feelings to the exact wrong person. It's a perfect demonstration of how much Roberts has succeeded in making the reader emotionally connected to these robots.

Some really effective use of silent panels here.
from Transformers: More than Meets the Eye #47 (art by Brendan Cahill)

The only complaint I have is in how its intense cliffhanger is resolved, almost off-handedly in the book's final story, one which delves into the past of Rung, everyone's favorite nondescript psychiatrist. It's a clever, well-plotted story, with a lot of cool twists and clever reveals, punctuated by a last-page revelation that promises a lot for the next... and final... volume of this still-excellent series. Would be that all ongoing comics could move me as often as this one does.

Also: would be that they had as many jokes.
from Transformers: More than Meets the Eye #49 (art by Hayato Sakamoto)

Next Week: Meanwhile, on Cybertron... the Dinobots head into the wilderness looking for Redemption!

Faster than a DC Bullet: All-New All-Different DC, Part XII: Manhunter: Forgotten

Comic trade paperback, 189 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 2008-09)
Borrowed from the library
Read March 2017

Manhunter: Forgotten

Writer: Marc Andreyko

Artist: Michael Gaydos
Additional Artists: Carlos Magno, Dennis Calero, Fernando Blanco, Brad Walker, & Livesay
Colorists: Jose Villarrubia, Dennis Calero
Letterers: Sal Cipriano, Travis Lanham

In my first review of the series, I compared Manhunter to Alias. Well, for the final volume of Manhunter, the art is by none other than Michael Gaydos, the principal artist of Alias. But far from making Manhunter feel derivative, hiring Gaydos reveals the differences between Manhunter and Alias... though sort of in a bad way. What I mean by this is that superhero action doesn't really play to Gaydos's strengths as an artist, and Manhunter is much more action-packed than Alias ever was.

Gaydos drawing what Gaydos draws best: people having conversations. I would argue that he's one of few comics artists who can draw someone in a bra and not sexualize it.
from Manhunter vol. 3 #32 (art by Michael Gaydos)

In this volume, Kate ends up in El Paso when she hears about a lot of women going missing. To my immense pleasure, this means she ends up encountering Blue Beetle and La Dama! I was going to complain that Andreyko gets things slightly wrong in having Jaime's suit speak in English, but I think I'm slightly out of sequence here, so maybe this reflects events to come in future issues of Blue Beetle I haven't read yet. Jaime doesn't play a big role in the story, though, which sees Kate encounter the Birds of Prey and the Suicide Squad as she battles the evils of medical experimentation. It's a decent story, displaying Kate's stick-to-itivness and no-bullshit attitude, as she refuses to accept platitudes and non-explanations, and the way she handles things in the end nicely melds her two roles.

Return to the Threeboot: A Review of Legion of Super-Heroes: Enemy Manifest

Yours truly has a commentary up on the Torchwood 10th anniversary special over at USF this weekend. Every Torchwood character you loved, plus ones you didn't even remember!

Comic hardcover, 141 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 2008-09) 
Acquired and read September 2016

Legion of Super-Heroes: Enemy Manifest

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Writer: Jim Shooter

Pencillers: Francis Manapul with Rick Leonardi and Ramon Bachs
Inkers: Livesay with Dan Green and Mark McKenna
Colorists: JD Smith
Letterer: Steve Wands

It's not like the Legion of Super-Heroes run of Jim Shooter, Francis Manapul, and Livesay is terrible or anything. It's a competently made superhero comic book. But it just doesn't hold a candle to what Mark Waid and Barry Kitson did before it. Waid and Kitson's run felt like it was bursting with ideas-- too many ideas, sometimes, because the title often felt like it wasn't giving all the ideas the focus they deserved. Shooter and company don't really capitalize on any of these ideas (the backstories ascribed to Sun Boy, Element Lad, Triplicate Girl, and Phantom Girl are never brought up), and many of them they outright contradict (Brainiac 5 says time travel isn't possible even though he arranged for Supergirl to travel to the past in The Quest For Cosmic Boy, and he gave her a message designed to save the life of his ancestor according to R.E.B.E.L.S.; the massive camp of Legion followers that defined the tone of the Waid/Kitson stories never turn up in this story, and then all of a sudden tons of superpowered underagers are auditioning for the United Planets Young Heroes, which doesn't really make any sense to me at all*). Shooter does at least remember that the Legion used to read 20th-century DC comics in this volume; Phantom Girl reads Princess Projectra an issue of Action Comics about the original Brainiac.

I wasn't always won over by the Legion's new uniforms either, especially given they were supposedly designed by some twelve-year-old kid. Apparently a twelve year old who loves cleavage and side panels.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #46 (art by Francis Manapul and Livesay & Mark McKenna)

As I read more superhero comics, my growing hypothesis is that you can get away with this kind of thing if what you do is the same level of interesting (or, even better, more interesting) than what you supplant, but Shooter and co. fail this test. This volume sees Princess Projectra suddenly become a villain, and then moves into weird freaky-deaky incomprehensible mind stuff as she battles Brainiac inside his own mind-- the plotline alternates between farfetched and banal. The big overarching story that's driven this whole run, about mysterious aliens being deposited from across the universe, who are then followed by a whole planet, never really has the hooks to be interesting. It's a bunch of faceless goons, which is one of the least interesting kind of comic book villains. There's also some relationship melodrama, but because these characters don't really feel like the Waid/Kitson characters, it's difficult for me to invest in who Saturn Girl should be in love with. (Plus, Saturn Girl is portrayed as a bit of a sad sack, not the strong version of her I loved in the classic days of the Legion or in Abnett and Lanning's Legion Lost.) And I don't really care for M'rissey, the Legion's "business manager" who solves all the main characters' problems for them.†

Shooter's version of Saturn Girl sort of rapidly alternates between unlikable hard-as-nails invasive telepath, and unlikable spineless sobber.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #46 (art by Francis Manapul and Livesay & Mark McKenna)

Francis Manapul is a decent artist, but still developing-- I like the later work I've seen from him on The Flash a lot more than this very anime style. And the way the script but especially the art insists on sexualizing these underage characters is a little uncomfortable. Like, there's nothing wrong with the Legionnaires being sexy, but here it mostly comes across as crude.

I know Invisible Kid was one of the younger Legionnaires, but I didn't think he was meant to be eight.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #50 (art by Ramon Bachs & Livesay)

Shooter's run was curtailed; the last issue here resolves many things far too easily (the massive threat of the past dozen issues is defeated with nine seconds of hacking from Brainiac) and leaves others entirely unaddressed (we never learn what happened to Cosmic Boy or the other Legionnaires who traveled through the time portals to the 41st century). If I had invested in the ongoing stories of this era, I'd be angry, but as it was, I was just kind of relieved. I am angry that the "threeboot" was dumped in favor of the "deboot," however, probably the most retrograde and harmful move in the long history of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and one that I would argue that leads directly to the fact that it's no longer published today, for the first time in five decades.

* Like, wouldn't people like this already be in the Legion? And surely they wouldn't want to work for the man!
† Actually, isn't a bit weird that Shooter introduces a slew of new Legionnaires here but ignores the new ones introduced by Waid and Kitson, like Dream Boy? I never really got the point of Gazelle.

Return to the Threeboot: A Review of Legion of Super-Heroes: Enemy Rising

Comic hardcover, 192 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 2008) 
Acquired and read August 2016

Legion of Super-Heroes: Enemy Rising

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Writer: Jim Shooter

Pencillers: Francis Manapul with Aaron Lopresti, Sanford Greene
Inkers: Livesay with Matt Ryan, Nathan Massengill
Colorists: JD Smith with Nathan Eyring
Letterer: Steve Wands

With Supergirl gone, the "threeboot" Legion returns to its original title, though it gains a new (less attractive) logo in the process. It's always odd when a new creative team takes over a title with a very distinctive voice, especially if that new creative team doesn't have any interest in aping what came before. Jim Shooter's writing is not really like Mark Waid's at all, nor is Francis Manapul and Livesay's art anything like Barry Kitson's. Though you might argue that the Waid/Kitson Legion never lived up to its potential-- the revolutionary idea was downplayed more and more as the series went on, and they seeded so much character stuff in the first twelve issues that they never came back to as Supergirl and the Dominator plot took over the focus-- I'm not convinced the solution was to basically throw all that out. The idea of the Legion as an inspiration to the youth of the galaxy, and the face of a wider moment, is completely gone here: we never see the crowds outside Legion H.Q. anymore. Even the DC Comics spinner racks are gone from H.Q.; when we do briefly see Phantom Girl with some comics, they're drawn as generic books, not as recognizable issues of DC Comics as they would have been during the Waid/Kitson run.

Ah, yes, I too really enjoyed the classic book Comics.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #43 (art by Francis Manapul & Livesay)

Plus Shooter introduces future space cursing to the title, which is... terrible, to put it mildly. I don't remember anyone using any of that stuff during the Waid/Kitson run, other than "grife," which works because it's basically "grief." But under Shooter, suddenly everyone is saying "florg." People are "florged" and bad guys are "florgging." It's a desperately terrible word that needs to go; it throws me out of the story every time I read it. Florg florg florg florg florg. It's not real! It doesn't even sound like it could be real!

Like, how can I take dialogue like this seriously?
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #38 (art by Francis Manapul & Livesay)

Putting aside all my change-of-creative-team kvetching, how was Enemy Rising, which collects the first half of Jim Shooter's run, before the "threeboot" was inceremoniously dumped for the "deboot"? Basically, it's okay. Shooter has the Legion being overstressed with crises popping up across the solar system and the galaxy, while Lightning Lad-- the new leader-- struggles with United Planets bureaucracy. The bureaucracy was fun at first, but the longer it goes on, the more irritating it gets, because it's the same thing again and again, as Lightning Lad gets more calls than he can handle, pisses someone off, and the Legion gets a new restriction slapped on it, repeat ad nauseam. I kinda felt like he deserved a better portrayal of his leadership than he got, and based on the way this subplot is seemingly resolved at the end of the book, I don't think it was worth the eight issues spent on it. (Plus, does it make sense that the United Planets would be anti-Legion again in the wake of the Dominator War?)

Other than that, the Legion is fighting mindless aliens that are popping up across the galaxy. Brainiac sets up a minor mystery about them, but other than that, they're not very compelling foes. The minor enemies the Legion encounters, like Science Police officers, aren't very interesting either. And was it really necessary to have a group of space pirates turn up to threaten our teenage heroes with sexual coercion? Ick. His Legionnaires seem more bickering than Waid's, too. Not that Waid's didn't argue, but it usually seemed to come from principled beliefs; these guys are just mean to each other a little bit too much.

The whole premise of this series is that she's underage, you know.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #37 (art by Francis Manapul & Livesay)

I liked Francis Manapul's later work on The Flash, but here he doesn't do a ton for me. It's not bad, but the sort of anime-influenced style he uses is a little generic. I really liked Aaron Lopresti's fill-in, on the other hand-- his characters were very expressive, and I loved the playful stuff he did with Chameleon throughout the issue.

If I was a shapeshifter, I'd be making my fingers into miniature people when I was bored, too.
from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #41 (art by Aaron Lopresti & Matt Ryan)

I guess I'll see where this all goes, but for now it comes across as a sort of action-adventure epilogue tacked onto the Waid/Kitson run. Nothing wrong with it on its own, but I felt that Waid and Kitson were reinventing these characters and concepts, whereas Shooter is just using them somewhat generically in a widescreen story.