Wardrobe Dysfunction: Alan Scott, Green Lantern of Earth-2

With all the Alan Scott news and commentary, this installment of Wardrobe Dysfunction looks at the original Green Lantern. The character was created by Martin Nodell and debuted in All-American Comics #16. Would you believe that in 82 years of comic book appearances, this Green Lantern really hasn’t any costume changes?

For the most part, he’s how he’s picture above from the cover of his first appearance. He wore a red collared shirt and green slacks. Depending on the fashion trends and the artist drawing him at the time, sometimes the outfit was more form-fitting. His boots are always red, with some sort of gold accents. As for his cape, it’s usually two toned; the interior light green and the outside a dark grey, sometimes purple-ish. That was mostly to avoid having a whole black patch due to the printing at the time.

As far as his age, Alan Scott would get aged and de-aged from time to time, going back and forth from being a late 30s something to being an old man.

During the mid 1990s, Alan Scott started using the codename Sentinel and got a more modern look. It was a green and red body suit. The logo in the center changed from time to time, as he used the Green Lantern Corps insignia (as he was an honorary member), his classic old lantern, and even a star design (it turned out his power ring drew power from a cosmic force known as the Starheart and not the Oan Power Battery). He kept this look until the Justice Society had a revamp shortly after, and went back to his classic costume.

And as a trivia note, the woman in the background of the picture is Harlequin, a villain who based her life on Alan’s then wife Molly. Ultimately it was her goal to kill Molly and take her place as Alan’s wife.

The next new look for Alan was designed by Jim Ross for the alternate future story Kingdom Come. It was emerald knight armor.

Which brings us to his new look, which combines elements of the emerald armor with the standard Green Lantern costume. The color scheme is a lot simpler, just black and green. Alan looks now closer to being a member of the Green Lantern Corps then ever before.

DC Reveals That Green Lantern Is Gay–well, kind of…

DC Comics has had comic readers–and the mainstream media–on a bit of a gay witch hunt to find out which of the newly relaunched characters was going to be revealed as gay. It turns out that it is Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern.

In some ways, changing his sexual preference was a safe choice.

They made Green Lantern, a franchise character, gay.

But not the Green Lantern that you know. They took  the one in the book Earth-2, which brings back DC’s old concept of multiple earths, this one which features the revamped Golden Age DC characters. It’s a big fish in a smaller tank in the aquarium basically.

Publicity wise, the only way to get attention for introducing a new LGBT character is to redefine an existing one’s orientation. If it’s a new character, unfortunately, it is much harder to get attention. Did you hear about Bunker and the other new LGBT characters in DC’s New 52 relaunch?

I didn’t think so either.

But then there’s also more confusion to the casual/non-comics reading audience. Which is the Green Lantern? There was a similar problem with last summer’s Green Lantern movie. Thanks to the awesome use of John Stewart in the Dini/Timm Justice League, there’s a whole generation that is predominately aware of him and were confused by the white guy playing Hal Jordan in the movie. Now everyone is re-aware of Hal, and on the news they see that Green Lantern is now a blonde dude named Alan.

There’s also another ripple effect with this character change for Alan Scott, partly also effected by the changed of the New 52 relaunch. Scott was married at least twice to women; one of these unions producing two children–the super heroes Jade and Obsidian,  who was gay. Before this revelation, they didn’t exist and I wonder if this will be addressed.

Personally, I think this is a great idea. This is the most relevant the character has been since his original hay-day–the 1940s. I hope writer James Robinson goes all out with the character…have him be a bigger part of the Justice Society than any of the Big Three (Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman). Allan Scott has always been an interesting character and I’m glad they’re finally doing something with him again. Earth-2 #1 debuts on comic book stands on June 6.