Green Lantern/Characters/Golden Age Green Lantern

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Alan Scott/Green Lantern/Sentinel
"And I shall shed my light over dark evil, For the dark things cannot stand the light, The light of the Green Lantern!"

Only an honorary member of the Green Lantern Corps, Alan Scott is nonetheless the first human to bear the title. Scott was once a civil engineer who survived a train crash (on a test ride across a bridge he had designed and built, that was sabotaged) thanks to the protective powers of a mysterious lantern; a voice filled his mind instructing him to fashion a power ring from the lantern's metal, and so the first Green Lantern of Earth was born. Scott climbed his way up the social ladder to become the owner of Gotham City's biggest media corporation. Meanwhile, as the Green Lantern, he helped found the Justice Society of America and kept Gotham safe from supervillains, fascists, and other threats.

Alan stopped fighting crime with the rest of the JSA, but the appearance of Hal Jordan as Green Lantern led him out of retirement. He's become a mentor to the younger Green Lanterns, especially Kyle. He's the elder statesman of Earth's superheroes, an honorary member of the GLC, and a father-figure in the new JSA. He learned that he had two children by his enemy Thorn: Jade, who possessed the power of his ring as an inherent ability, and Obsidian, who had the opposite power--manipulating darkness instead of light.

Alan learned that his lantern was in fact the power battery of an ancient Green Lantern that had merged with the Starheart, a sentient mass of wild magic in the form of a green flame, exiled by the Guardians of the Universe. The Starheart briefly became one with him, and he took a new name, Sentinel, but when the green flame nearly consumed him, he externalized the power again and became Green Lantern once more. Later, he harnessed the Starheart's power to create the Emerald City on the dark side of the moon, a haven for mystical creatures from many worlds.

Prior to the Crisis on Infinite Earths (in which he played a critical role), Alan lived in the Alternate Universe of Earth-Two with the rest of the Justice Society. His history was "folded into" that of the unified Earth because of the Crisis. Since the New 52's recreation of Earth-2, however, Alan and other Golden Age heroes are once again part of this alternate universe.


 * Badass Grandpa: He fought in WWII, and is still a part of the JSA.
 * Bumbling Sidekick: Doiby Dickles was his.
 * The Cape (trope): He's always been the classic cape archetype, and as far as post-Crisis DC canon is concerned, he was the first Cape.
 * Determinator: The Green Lantern Corps' ring may be powered by willpower.... But Alan Scott wrote the BOOK on willpower!
 * Follow the Leader: Invented the "guy who creates energy shapes" hero, and led to Hal Jordan years later.
 * Gratuitous Animal Sidekick: He was virtually squeezed out of his own book at the tail end of the Golden Age by his own dog, aka "Streak, the Wonder Dog."
 * My Greatest Failure: His son, Obsidian, turned into a crazy monster influenced by the Shadowlands. He got better.
 * Older and Wiser
 * Weaksauce Weakness: Unlike the Oa-based Green Lanterns, Alan's weakness is not the color yellow, but wooden objects. Also unlike the other Lanterns, he still has this weakness.
 * It's suggested that this weakness it psychosomatic; he has a limit to his powers because he thinks he should.
 * The Southpaw: He is usually depicted as left-handed, and has been so for decades. This is probably because he has always worn his ring on his left hand, and once he became able to make detailed constructs, he also had to be able to manipulate them properly, q.e.d.
 * Zorro Mark: In his early Golden Age adventures, Alan would often knock out a villain with a left haymaker, leaving an imprint of his ring (at least temporarily) on his foe's cheek.

The Starheart
A power source created by the Guardians of the Universe. Ages ago, before the Green Lantern Corps was formed, the Guardians gathered up all the chaos magic they could in a mass of energy and sealed it within an orb of their green light. The Starheart drifted for eons until a piece of it fell to Earth, where it was found by a man in China who fashioned into a lamp--from which, millennia later, Alan Scott would fashion his power ring. The Starheart imbued his children with its power--Jade gained the power of the green light, while Obsidian gained the shadow power of the dark magic.

The Starheart is alive. Its sentience has at times called itself the Lord of the Green Flame and, during Brightest Day, possessed Alan Scott and his children. With the JSA and JLA's help, Scott absorbed the Starheart into himself and used its power to create the Emerald City on the dark side of Earth's moon.

Jade
"AKA: Jennie-Lynn Hayden"

The daughter of Alan Scott, Jade inherited her father's powers, but without the need for a power ring. She got her start as a superhero with Infinity Inc, a group made up of the teenage progeny of the Justice Society of America. Years after Infinity disbanded, she met and fell in love with Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, who created a power ring for her to use, making her an honorary Green Lantern. Jade died (like so many of Kyle's girlfriends) saving the Polaris system in Infinite Crisis, but was resurrected by the White Light at the end of the Blackest Night.

As of the New 52, Alan Scott was reverted in age to be far too young to have adult children. Jade's fate hasn't been explicitly confirmed, but as her brother Obsidian has been stated to not exist in the reboot it's unlikely that Jade exists either.


 * Green Skinned Earth Babe
 * Legacy Character
 * Ret-Gone: In the New 52.
 * Stuffed Into the Fridge: She even lampshades it when she Came Back Wrong. She's fine now.
 * Thigh-High Boots
 * Weaksauce Weakness: Like her father, Jade's powers are useless against wooden objects.

Charles "Doiby" Dickles
When Alan Scott was incapacitated by a group of thugs, a simple taxi driver called "Doiby" Dickles donned a makeshift Green Lantern costume and came to his rescue. Impressed by his spirit, Scott invited Doiby to become his sidekick and eventually revealed his identity to him.

In the waning years of the Golden Age, Doiby accompanied Scott on an adventure in space, where he fell in love with Princess Raima of the planet Myrg. Rather than return home with Scott, he married the beautiful extraterrestrial and has remained on Myrg since (briefly getting involved in a couple of adventures with Young Justice).


 * Brooklyn Rage: He had an exaggerated Brooklyn accent and propensity for wrench-related violence.
 * Bumbling Sidekick
 * I Call It Vera: His cab is named "Goitrude".
 * No Celebrities Were Harmed: In his Young Justice appearances, Doiby is drawn to look like Mickey Rooney.
 * Put on a Bus
 * Sidekick

The Harlequin
"AKA: Molly Mayne-Scott"

A secretary at Alan Scott's broadcasting company, Molly Mayne fell in love with Green Lantern, so she adopted the costumed persona of the Harlequin to commit harmless crimes to attract his attention (to no avail, as he loved only one thing--fighting crime). Over the years, she joined numerous gangs, including the Injustice Society, only to covertly betray them; Green Lantern eventually learned she'd been hired by the FBI to infiltrate them. After this, Green Lantern revealed his secret identity to her and the two were married.


 * Badass Normal
 * Happily Married
 * Harmless Villain
 * Retired Badass
 * Reverse Mole
 * Goggles Do Something Unusual: They project illusions.
 * What Could Have Been: During the planning stages of Infinity Inc, Jerry Ordway thought about including a teenage male Harlequin who was to be mainstream comics' first openly gay character. Because the team already had two GL-related characters (Jade and Obsidian), though, the idea was scrapped.

The Gambler
"AKA: Steven Sharpe III"

Steven Sharpe was once an honest man, but a string of unlucky incidents convinced him that the only way to win at life was to cheat. He became the Gambler, a notorious bank robber who clashed with Alan Scott, the first Green Lantern. He also fought Starman and The Sandman, and was one of the founders of the Injustice Society. Years later, after losing everything he had to his gambling addiction, he committed suicide. He is survived by his daughter, Hazard, and his son, the new Gambler.


 * Master of Disguise: To the point that he claimed to no longer remember his true appearance.

Solomon Grundy
"AKA: Cyrus Gold"

In the late 1800s, a shady businessman named Cyrus Gold was murdered and dumped in Slaughter Swamp outside Gotham City. For decades, rot, flotsam, and debris from the swamp built up around his body, until finally, in 1944, he rose from the swamp as a hulking zombie. Named Solomon Grundy by a group of drifters after the nursery rhyme (he was "born on a Monday"), he fought Green Lantern Alan Scott to a stand-still because his body was largely composed of wood, Scott's one weakness.

Every time Solomon Grundy is "killed", his body rises again from Slaughter Swamp the next Monday. However, every time he is reborn, Grundy has a different facet of Cyrus Gold's personality. His intelligence ranges from stupid to genius to mindless; his personality may be gentle, reclusive, or sadistic. In any case, Grundy is always a danger to those around him.

Because of Slaughter Swamp's proximity to Gotham, Grundy has sometimes gone up against Batman as well.


 * Hulk Speak
 * Implacable Man
 * Our Zombies Are Different: Falls under "Type V" (Voodoo). He was created by uncontrolled supernatural forces.
 * Super Strength
 * The Undead

The Sportsmaster
"AKA: Lawrence Crock"


 * Badass Normal: He went up against Green Lantern, the wielder of unimaginable power, with mundane (wooden) sporting equipment. Dude had some serious guts...

Thorn
"AKA: Rose Canton"

Vandal Savage
"AKA: Vandar Adg"

The immortal Vandal Savage has attemped to rule the world (and on a few occasions, succeeded) countless times since prehistory. Alan Scott was the first superhero who fought Savage, earning him the counqueror caveman's eternal hatred. Savage continues to clash with all of Earth's heroes to this day. See his own page for more.