Today an announcement was made that will wake up many weary Trekkies across the planet… James T Kirk has been cast.
Actor Chris Pine (Smokin’ Aces) is officially the young Jim Kirk in what will be the eleventh Star Trek film and the grand hope that Paramount Pictures can turn around their ghostly quiet phenomenon.
The Star Trek franchise, once a giant of the airwaves and silver screen, has become a shadow of its former self. Even its recent 40th anniversary got very little mention in the press or the sci-fi community.
Whereas the feature films were at one time highly anticipated spectaculars, they became little known blips in the cinematic world with the tenth outing, ‘Nemesis,’ a financial and critical failure.
Even the last TV series, Star Trek: Enterprise, was a ho-hum to both TV viewers and lifelong Trek fans.
But all of that is going to change according to Paramount Pictures and ingenious director JJ Abrams (Lost, Alias, Cloverfield). This new film will turn the clock back, showing film viewers a young crew taking the Enterprise on its first missions into space. That’s right… much like the recent Superman, Batman and even Halloween films… it’s a big reset button. As in all these cases, I have no problem with it, so long as it works.
If rumors are correct, this will be more than just a reset, but an opportunity to revisit the entire franchise by creating a parallel timeline. Sure, it will obliterate everything we’ve seen so far, but if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes.
If this works, expect Trek to be big again, maybe resulting in a new TV series and loads of Star Trek merchandise.
In the meantime, standby on phasers and fandango tickets.
While the original Green Lantern debuted in 1940, it is fair to say that the Silver Age Green Lantern of 1959 is an entirely different character. Created by Bill Finger and cartoonist Martin Nodell, the original ring slinger was an engineer who sculpted his ring and power battery from a meteorite that struck a train. Much like the other heroes of the time, he was more of a fantasy character, his ring exhibiting a strange emerald flame as it worked its magic.After the successful revamping of the Flash, word came down from Julius Schwartz that the Silver Age was upon us. In short order, the other former super heroes of WWII were given a modernization. Chief amongst them was Green Lantern.
In comic book history, artist Gil Kane is known for many of his works, but writer John Broome is most commonly known for Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern. The character was designed after Paul Newman and meant to be an homage to EE Doc Smith’s Lenseman novels. The series was a full-on science fiction super hero comic. Test pilot Hal Jordan was given his power ring by a dying red-skinned spaceman named Abin Sur and directed to use its power to uphold justice. The ring was capable of creating anything that the bearer could imagine and was only ineffectual against that which is yellow. As Green Lantern, Jordan fought everything from common thugs to robots to evil from the ant-matter universe of Qward.
Much like The Flash and Hawkman, Green Lantern was a campy comic book series built on thrills and wild storylines that sent the reader through a series of double takes month after month.
In time, GL became a founding member of the Justice League of America alongside The Flash, Batman, Aquaman, Superman, Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman. His series saw many developments, but chief amongst them was the revelation that Jordan was one of a Corps of Green Lanterns that protected the entire galaxy from evil. Headed by the blue-skinned Guardians of the Galaxy, the Corps was made up of bizarre aliens all incredibly designed with the non-stop imagination of Gil Kane.
Hal Jordan appeared in his own cartoon series for a short time in 1966 where his trusty mechanic Pieface was replaced with a Venutian named Kiro… explain that!
Green Lantern was also a member of the Super Friends during their long fight with the Legion of Doom. Voiced by famed actor of the stage Sir Lawrence Olivier (or not), the character was shown to be on the same power level as Superman.
During the 1970’s, the title was altered into a team book by Denny O’Neil, Neal Adams and Dick Giordano.
Dubbed Green Lantern / Green Arrow, the series followed a conservative Hal Jordan on the road with loud-mouthed liberal Green Arrow ‘in search of the American Dream.’
The alteration brought a large and vocal readership to the title and remains a major mark in comic book history.
Stories delved into issues such as racism, over-population and corrupt business practices that the duo encountered while driving across the country in a pickup truck with a humanized Guardian who was just as eager to see every Stuckies on Route 66 that he could.
Two replacement Green Lanterns were also introduced, Guy Gardner and John Stewart (after Gardner fell into a coma).
Guy was initially a well-meaning human who appeared to be for all intents and purposes, similar to Hal Jordan. It wasn’t until he was awoken from his coma that his mind became skewed into the personality that comic book fans know and love.
He was introduced in 1985 after the continuity changing series Crisis on Infinite Earths as theGreen Lantern and took Hal’s place in the Justice League where he butted heads with team leader Batman until Guy was knocked out cold… with just one punch from the caped crusader.
John Stewart, by contrast, was a headstrong and defiant character fitting into the notion of the ‘angry Black man’ commonly found in comic books of the 1970’s. When Jordan decided to finally split from the Corps once and for all, Stewart’s role shifted from back-up to primary Green Lantern for his sector.
Stewart’s time as Green Lantern in the comic book series was brief and often overshadowed by Hal Jordan’s continuing soap opera.
John Stewart finally got the recognition he deserved when he was chosen by Bruce Timm to be their primary Green Lantern in the Justice League cartoon series over Hal Jordan (probably due to many factors including DC Editorial’s reluctance to let Timm and company use certain characters). As such, Stewart became exposed to an audience that never even heard of Green Lantern.
After Crisis settled down, DC returned Hal Jordan to his series where he became a going gray tough guy. After his home town of Coast City was destroyed, Jordan went mental and took on the entire Green Lantern Corps, taking their rings as he left their corpses to rot in space before becoming the villain Parallax.
The last surviving Guardian chose Kyle Rayner as the new Green Lantern, much to the chagrin to many a faithful reader.
Due to the transformation of Jordan into a mustache-twirling villain, many fans felt betrayed and refused to accept Rayner as the new guy, despite several stories that depicted him as the ‘last Green Lantern.’
Eventually, Parallax sacrificed himself to restart the sun and re-appeared as the Spectre. If fans of Hal Jordan were angry before, they were now furious.
Two years ago, Jordan returned to his status as the greatest Green Lantern of them all in the miniseries Green Lantern: Rebirth. Writer Geoff Johns, known for untangling the sordid and confusing threads of continuity that plagued Hawkman, made sense of Jordan’s bizarre journey and firmly set him back in his rightful place.
Alongside the monthly Green Lantern Corps starring Guy Gardner and occasionally John Stewart, the Green Lantern series is currently a top seller for DC Comics.
Most recently, Jordan’s most evil foe Sinestro returned from the anti-matter universe of Qward with an entire legion of yellow power ring bearing aliens (including an evil cyborg Superman, evil Superboy and an anti-matter giant) set on destroying the entire Green Lantern Corps. The storyline, entitled Sinestro Corps War, has been running throughout both Green Lantern titles and will conclude in a few months.
There are few character such as Green Lantern that have had such wild shifts in popularity. While he was the character that could not survive cancellation at one point, he is now the come back kid of comics, his series having re-earned the acceptance of Green Lantern fans and newcomers to the character alike.
One thing I never really understood was the what the big deal over a power ring was. I mean you only have to look online to see how to make your own power ring.
Today an announcement was made that will wake up many weary Trekkies across the planet… James T Kirk has been cast.
While the original Green Lantern debuted in 1940, it is fair to say that the Silver Age Green Lantern of 1959 is an entirely different character. Created by Bill Finger and cartoonist Martin Nodell, the original ring slinger was an engineer who sculpted his ring and power battery from a meteorite that struck a train. Much like the other heroes of the time, he was more of a fantasy character, his ring exhibiting a strange emerald flame as it worked its magic.After the successful revamping of the Flash, word came down from Julius Schwartz that the Silver Age was upon us. In short order, the other former super heroes of WWII were given a modernization. Chief amongst them was Green Lantern.
During the 1970’s, the title was altered into a team book by Denny O’Neil, Neal Adams and Dick Giordano.
Guy was initially a well-meaning human who appeared to be for all intents and purposes, similar to Hal Jordan. It wasn’t until he was awoken from his coma that his mind became skewed into the personality that comic book fans know and love.
John Stewart, by contrast, was a headstrong and defiant character fitting into the notion of the ‘angry Black man’ commonly found in comic books of the 1970’s. When Jordan decided to finally split from the Corps once and for all, Stewart’s role shifted from back-up to primary Green Lantern for his sector.
The last surviving Guardian chose Kyle Rayner as the new Green Lantern, much to the chagrin to many a faithful reader.
