GREEN LANTERN OATH SERIES

Like the reinterpretation of the Flash in Barry Allen, Green Lantern was about to go from having a magic ring to being part of an entire space age police force. It had been eight years since Green Lantern had flown and now it was time for a new Green Lantern to rise from the ashes of the old.

Three years later in 1959, while Flash became the first new superhero solo title for DC since 1941, Schwartz unleashed the second Golden Age revival in Showcase #22. It would take some time for sales numbers to be determined, so while DC waited to see if the children of the day were ready for a new superhero the pages of Showcase were filled with tales of Lois Lane and repeat appearances by the Flash to keep him in the memory of the audience. With that notion writer Bob Kanigher and artist Carmine Infantino created a new Flash who leaped off the cover of Showcase #4 in the summer of 1956. Jay Garrick hadn’t been seen since 1949 and, long before anyone had heard of the term reboot, Julie’s radical idea was to keep the base idea of the character and re-invent the rest based on the country’s fascination with the Space Race and the idea that science now trumped mysticism and would appeal more to the audience of the 1950s. The Flash had been perhaps the most successful title not featuring the Trinity, so Schwartz thought that if there was going to be a revival of sorts it might be best to lead with their strongest character.

Julie loved science fiction above everything and was ready for a change from editing DC’s stable of western and media tie-in books. Irwin rotated editors and with the title’s fourth issue he assigned the next round to Julius “Julie” Schwartz.

GREEN LANTERN OATH SERIES

The younger Donenfeld decided to try an experiment and suggested that DC try a new title, Showcase, that would present new ideas and characters to readers as a way to test the waters in a market where retailers were less than willing to put a new, untested series on the rack. Irwin studied the sales patterns of DC’s books and the types of covers, noting that for the young target audience for whom comics was an impulse purchase, the cover seemed to matter more than anything else. Irwin Donenfeld, son of DC’s owner Harry Donenfeld, became DC’s editorial director, and with his new position came a new approach that forever changed comics. DC Comics began acquiring the properties of other comic book lines that were desperate to stay afloat, bringing characters like Plastic Man and The Blackhawks under the DC Comics banner. The years following the demise of heroic comics were a wasteland with the exception of the Trinity, as Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman lived on by adapting to the changing sensibilities of the era. The Third in a Series Examining Green Lantern History Space Age Revival

Green lantern oath