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:

Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith by Darko Macan, Ramon F. Bachs, and Raul Fernandez

Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith

Collection published: 2002
Contents originally published: 2001-02
Acquired and previously read: ???
Reread: January 2026

Script: Darko Macan
Pencils: Ramon F. Bachs
Inks: Raul Fernandez
Colors: Chris Blythe
Letters: Steve Dutro

The Star Wars series Knight Errant, which I worked my way through earlier this year, is set during the timespan of the "New Sith Wars," a millennium of on-and-off conflict that came to an end a thousand years before The Phantom Menace. Reading Knight Errant made me think of what (I believe) is the only other piece of narrative Star Wars content to be set during this period, the 2001-02 comics miniseries Jedi vs Sith from Dark Horse—which I remembered as being really quite good, so I decided to give it a quick reread.

The title of the book is pretty cheesy, and I wouldn't be surprised if the title came first, if some enterprising editor didn't come up with "Jedi vs Sith" as highly marketable and then cast about for an appropriate time period to set such a book in. Similarly, the book itself is one of those continuity fix-up stories Star Wars tie-ins love to do: the Phantom Menace novelization established that a millennium earlier, a guy named Darth Bane established the Sith when everyone thought they were dead, and an earlier videogame (Jedi Knight, I think?) established that there had been a big battle where a bunch of Jedi and Sith had died, and what if those were the same thing? (See also The Shadows of Mindor, which has a similar genesis.)

You can't take another Jedi's lightsaber, kid!
from Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith #2

The end result of these two factors could be quite bad, I imagine, but rereading it confirmed my belief that it is surely the best miniseries Dark Horse ever published during its time with the Star Wars license. (As opposed to the best ongoing, which was surely Knights of the Old Republic.) It's a very different Star Wars, but successful nonetheless. There are two parallel stories here: ones about three kids with Force talent who end up essentially drafted by the Jedi for a last stand on the planet Ruusan; the other is about the Sith Lord Darth Bane returning to his fellow Sith after a failed assassination attempt and watching as they all fall, forming his own new ideas about how the Sith should operate as he does.

Lord Farfalla: great Jedi or greatest Jedi?
from Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith #4

The story about the kids is great. It's very dark; it's about the horrors of war, and the difference between being an idealized "great warrior" and the realities of being an actual soldier. There's lots of tragedy and I had forgotten how harsh it was. (I don't exactly know when I read it before, but it's not on my reading log, which begins in September 2003.) Darko Macan does an excellent job with the kids, making them sympathetic even as they make bad choices, and the ending especially is terrific.

No, don't tell him Rain!
from Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith #6

The Darth Bane plotline is more of a subplot, but Bane is great, a droll unstoppable killing machine, yet smarter than everyone around him. You can see how we would get from the many Sith of the Knight Errant period and this comic to Bane concluding there must only ever be two Sith. (Darth Bane would later star in a trilogy of novels picking up from the end of this comic, but they were quite terrible.) 

All Star Wars spaceships should be this awesome.
from Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith #4

Ramon F. Bachs and Raul Fernandez do a great job on art. Some Star Wars comics set in time periods away from the films struggle to make the aesthetics distinct (this problem plagued Knight Errant, for example), but they give a mythological tone to the whole thing, with a Jedi lord who looks like a centaur and spaceships that look like sailing ships. I love Lord Farfalla; he's probably my favorite single-appearance Star Wars tie-in character. Bachs has a cartoony style that I feel like caused him to later be pigeonholed as a YA comics artist (the other work of his I've read is all from teen-focused comics: Legion of Super-Heroes, Monsters Unleashed!, Squirrel Girl & Ms. Marvel, Legends: Black Panther), but it's surprisingly good at evoking the horrors of war here. Overall, this is a great little package, underrated and undeservedly forgotten.