Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Space Traveling Heroes Hardcover – 21 July 2020

In 1970 the Green Lantern was going to be canceled, because he had become a little predictable and staid, especially compared to other superheroes at the time, such as spiderman who had already had stories involving drugs. So what DC did was team up conservative, law-abider Green Lantern with the vigilante Green Arrow and send them out on a series of adventures tackling a lot of social and moral problems. This volume contains the first story arc of 'hard-travelling heroes' in which the two drive across America in a camper van to see American life as it really is.The result is a fantastic comic. Dennis O'Neill's writing was strong and fast-paced, sometimes so much so that it's easy to zip through these comics without appreciating the finer details. Neil Adams art is typically vibrant and kinetic. This whole run has a really great energy to it, and is up there with the best of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, in my opinion.I've read that people have sometimes found the social and moral issues here a little dated and simplistic, but to be fair, this is a comic, not a novel, lecture, or political manifesto. A great comic with great action and plots, made grittier and more realistic by the fact it's chosen backdrop was (and still is in many places) a true one.

Green Lantern-Green Arrow vol. 1 collects issues 76 to 82 (Apr 1970 to Mar 1971). The book is in colour and printed on a fairly decent newsprint paper, not as good as the 'Marvel Masterworks' series, but fine for reading. An introduction by Dennis O'Neil, the covers of the original comics, and of earlier reprint editions, are also included.I came to this book as a Brian Bolland fan curious about Neal Adams, who seems to have been a big influence on Bolland. It turns out that, besides the excellent art, this is a great story, and an early example of the turn from 'silver' to 'bronze' age in comics, when writers began to include in their comics more realism, more complex characters, and references to difficult social issues like drugs, alcoholism, poverty and corruption. This story, in which the shiny and naive Green Lantern learns from Green Arrow that the right does not necessarily equate with the lawful is also a product of the era of student protests and sixties radicalism. So- the book is historically interesting, but also definitely worth reading in its own right.