In Green Lantern #49, John Broome and Gil Kane shook up the series by having Hal Jordan lose Carol Ferris forever, quit his job and split from Coast City. From now on he’d be a rootless wanderer, desperately searching for a life where Hal Jordan mattered more than Green Lantern.
By #53, that was over and done with (and one of the intervening issues had been a flashback to the Coast City days). He’s settled in Washington State where he’s working as a claims adjuster for Evergreen Insurance.
For a superhero this isn’t a totally bad choice: insurance adjusters deal with disasters and thefts so it gives Hal a chance to spot trouble. Of course, as the problem in this issue is a giant sucking up Earth’s oxygen, it’s hard to think he wouldn’t have found out about it anyway.
As a new life for Hal Jordan it’s a head-scratcher. Hal’s a pilot by profession and he loves the gig; his first post-Ferris Air job, in #50, was as a charter pilot. Why would he pick a suit-and-tie, behind-a-desk job instead? The story doesn’t tell us. For all we know, writer John Broome and editor Julius Schwartz stuck index cards on the wall with different jobs on them and threw darts: “Is it the doctor, lawyer, or the Indian chief?” “There’s no way he can be an Indian chief, Julie. Anyway it’s insurance adjuster.”
Even if Hal, for some reason, wanted the gig, insurance is a tightly regulated industry. Hal’s new boss Mr. Lawford isn’t going to give someone the job if they don’t meet the legal requirements. Apparently Hal’s completed all the training already, not to mention qualifying to sell insurance (in #57), even though that’s a separate line of work with its own extensive requirements.
I doubt Schwartz and Broome thought about any of that. In the Silver Age, most superhero day jobs weren’t important. We almost never saw Barry Allen working as a police scientist; as I’ve mentioned in a previous post (I don’t have time to find the link) Donald Blake is a general practitioner one day, a world-class surgeon the next. Heroes have to have day jobs if they’re not millionaire playboys, but for many of them the workday details don’t matter.
Even so, the transition is poorly done. As I complained in my previous post, it feels like the creative team wanted a big, dramatic reboot but had no idea where to go with it. Hal’s suffering over losing Carol has been completely forgotten — okay, not completely. It comes up in the second story of the issue, “Two Green Lanterns in the Family,” by Broome and Carmine Infantino.
But why the heck isn’t Hal telling Jim the real reason he left Coast City? I presume it’s to make Hal more lonely and tormented — just like Peter Parker there’s no-one he can turn to — but the brothers are close enough the drama feels forced. It would be easy enough to rationalize (“The pain’s still too raw to speak of. Maybe next visit.”) but as is, it doesn’t work. I notice Hal doesn’t mention his new job with Evergreen either; perhaps it was written before the new status quo, which would again show how disorganized this reboot was.
Another element of the story surprised me though. I’ve blamed the series’ increasing emphasis on Hal fist-fighting rather than ring-wielding on Gil Kane, who preferred dynamic action scenes to having Hal power-ring his enemies to defeat. Here, though, Kane’s not on the art but we still get one of those scenes.
Did Broome write the script with Kane in mind? Or was it that Broome really did want to make “Hal hates using the ring” a part of his characterization? Either way, it feels contrary to Hal’s role as an interplanetary cop to give the bad guys an advantage like this. I don’t care how much it soothes his wounded soul.
#SFWApro. Art by Infantino.
P.S. About that flashback issue, #52. The title of “Our Mastermind, the Car!” was inspired by the short-lived TV sitcom My Mother, the Car, about a man whose mother is reincarnated as yes, a car. They make the connection clear in the issue, which involves Sinestro putting his mind in Doiby Dickles’ (Alan Scott’s sidekick) cab Goitrude.
Thing is, living in England I’d never heard of the sitcom. As I didn’t pick up the issue until years later, all I had to go on at the time was the Direct Currents listing for the title. Even given that it mentions Goitrude, calling the story “Our Mastermind, the Car!” made no sense to me. I decided the ! was actually an I and it was something like “Our Mastermind, the Cari” in which the Cari was an evil mystic or something.
Cross-cultural misunderstanding at its finest.
insurance adjusters deal with disasters
… but only a long time after they’ve passed, surely?
his first post-Ferris Air job was as a charter pilot
So why didn’t he move to Alaska with his wife, a clone of Carol, to be a charter pilot there? Then move back to Coast City when Carol comes back from the dead and…
I may have been reading X-Factor recently…
the short-lived TV sitcom My Mother, the Car, about a man whose mother is reincarnated as yes, a car.
Something similar happened to me, once, and the car was a red an white Plymouth Fury. Man, that car was bad to the bone!
Our Mastermind, the Cari
It’s spelled Carrie, and do not go to the prom with her!
I’ve heard she was bullied and finally decided not to be a good sport about it.