With the headlines full of hydrogen bombs, UFOs, and Sputniks, science fiction seemed to be merging with science fact in the 1950s.
The movie houses and ubiquitous drive-in theaters featured numerous science fiction movies throughout the decade, and it’s safe to say that DC Comics staffers Julius Schwartz, Gil Kane, and John Broome saw some of them.
And I’m betting that one of those was This Island Earth, a critically praised 1955 Universal International film that starred Jeff Morrow, Faith Domergue, and Rex Reason and was based on the novel by Raymond F. Jones. Prominent elements of the film would be paralleled in DC’s revival of the Green Lantern character in Showcase 22 (Sept.-Oct 1959).
Nor am I the first to make that observation. Film buff Heath Holland observed, “As a lifelong comic book fan, I’m struck by the similarities in this story to the comic book title Green Lantern, which follows the adventures of test pilot Hal (versus this movie’s pilot Cal) who commands enormous power with his Green Lantern ring (this movie features a powerful green energy beam) for an alien race (Cal’s adventure leads him beyond Earth’s boundaries).”
Even more pointedly, both science fiction adventures begin with a plane, or something resembling a plane, being seized and transported by a powerful alien force.
A mysterious green glow saves Cal Meacham’s life as his Lockheed jet is about to crash in the 1955 film, and whisks Hal Jordan’s flightless trainer away to meet the dying interstellar patrolman Abin Sur in Showcase 22.
To retool the magically powered Aladdin-like superhero of the 1940s into the streamlined jet-age Emerald Crusader of the later 1950s, the creators built numerous science fiction elements into the concept, including a corps of alien police officers commanded by a lofty, dispassionate race of “Guardians” — an idea borrowed from a 1952 Captain Comet story in Strange Adventures. Inspiration for both the Captain Comet and Green Lantern stories can be traced to Edward Elmer “Doc” Smith’s 1930s Lensman series of SF novels, which featured telepathically powered space patrolmen guided by “guardians” in the form of the peace-loving, staggeringly ancient Arisians.
About Author
