The first Green Lantern's magic ring was useless against anything wooden
The original Green Lantern, in 1940, was a railroad engineer whose magic ring needed recharging every 24 hours and could not touch wood. Nineteen years later DC reinvented the hero as a space cop. The name has since passed to at least eight characters, from a test pilot to a struggling artist.
Martin Nodell, writing under the pen name Mart Dellon, created Alan Scott with Bill Finger for All-American Comics number 16 in July 1940. After a railway crash, Scott found a talking lantern and forged a ring from it that gave him a wide range of powers, with those two famous weaknesses. He mostly battled ordinary crooks, plus the odd immortal or zombie, and joined the Justice Society of America. When superheroes faded after the war his own title was cancelled in 1949.
In 1959 editor Julius Schwartz relaunched the concept as science fiction. Test pilot Hal Jordan, drawn by Gil Kane and written by John Broome, received his ring from the dying alien Abin Sur and joined the Green Lantern Corps, an interstellar police force answering to the Guardians of the Universe. Kane said he modelled Jordan's looks on his one-time neighbour Paul Newman. The rings now drew on willpower rather than magic.
From issue 76 in April 1970, Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams paired the hero with Green Arrow and sent them across America confronting real social problems, winning Shazam Awards along the way. Later, Jordan turned villain as Parallax and was replaced by Kyle Rayner, a struggling artist whose ring constructs were unusually intricate. Geoff Johns restored Jordan in Green Lantern: Rebirth in 2004 and 2005 and expanded the mythology into a spectrum of coloured lantern corps. Judd Winick's 2001 storyline about a homophobic attack on Rayner's assistant earned two GLAAD Media Awards.
Other wearers include the abrasive Guy Gardner; John Stewart, one of the most prominent African-American superheroes; Simon Baz, a Lebanese-American former mechanic with rare precognitive powers; Jessica Cruz, who overcame crippling anxiety; and Jo Mullein, posted to the Far Sector. Alan Scott himself was revamped in 2011, his powers now drawn from nature.
Source: Green Lantern
