Silver Age 80-Page Giant (2000)
by Mark Waid & Eduardo Barreto
cover by Alan Davis
This is the ending of the “Silver Age” event, and shockingly Dial H plays an important part.
Robby gets involved towards the end, and this is a VERY long comic so I’ll just cover what’s essential for his part of the story.
At this point in the event the Justice League has regained control of their bodies, but they’re considered villains by the entire world.
Even worse, the villains have exploited alien technology to learn all the secrets of the superheroes AND they have forged their own version of the Green Lantern rings that specifically target the Leaguers’ weaknesses.
I should point out that this is YEARS before the concept of differently colored Lanterns was introduced with the whole “emotional spectrum” nonsense.
This results in the Justice League being completely and utterly crushed.
However the Justice League has a secret weapon… ROBBY REED!
This is thanks to Martian Manhunter having met Robby in his own special, although Robby himself doesn’t know that.
So all members of the Justice League are given new identities and powers by the H-Dial!
They sure were lucky, because they get better superpowers than Robby tends to get!
And finally, the protagonists of the two serials of “House of Mystery” get to meet each other as heroes.
Take a moment to consider what Robby’s gone through. We barely know anything about his tragic backstory, but he’s fought crime without ever asking for recognition… so it’s VERY satisfying to see him finally acknowledged by the big leagues!
There’s a lot more to this… as mentioned this is a HUGE comic… including the entire Green Lantern Corps showing up to defeat the alien that was powering the JLA villains…
…but eventually the JLA dials back to their original identities.
The JLA even teases a potential future team-up with Robby!
…but sadly they won’t.
Historical significance: 0/10
Not followed up by future continuity inserts.
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
Does it stand the test of time?: N/A
This is not a real review so I can’t give an actual score for the test of time, but trust me: this thing jams as much Silver Age nonsense as it possibly can in an extremely convoluted story.
Dial S for SOCKAMAGEE! : 98
Sadly, once again Robby doesn’t use his catchphrase.
Dial I for superhero identities: 51
This is the first time in the retrospective where Robby doesn’t transform!
Dial O for other superhero identities: 10
Suzy still has the top spot with 2 transformations, but all eight members of the Justice League get one transformation each.
And that’s it for the Silver Age portion of Dial H.
But the retrospective is not done yet, because next I’ll have a look at the attempted revival in the 80s.
What don’t you like about the Johns emotional spectrum stuff? I thought it made a lot of sense, as far as comic book pseudoscience goes. Made the whole weakness to yellow thing way more sensible.
It goes way too much into pure magic for my Green Lantern tastes, plus how is “willpower” an emotion?
Also while I liked the idea of the Sinestro Corps as the “evil Green Lantern Corps”, it later introduced way too many other corps and lanterns.
You already have the yellow lanterns for the bad guys, adding the red lanterns just dilutes the concept. And then they went even further with blue, orange, pink, white, black (death is also an emotion now?), and now there’s even “ultraviolet lanterns”. At this point I’m just waiting for the Invisible Yellow Lantern Corps.
The one thing introduced in recent years that I found absolutely brilliant was the idea to have TWO Lanterns for each sector. It’s amazing that it took THAT long to have a buddy cop dynamic built-in into the premise!
Other than that… I’ve picked up a couple stories here and there, but the Johns run killed my interest in the Green Lantern universe.
Death isn’t an emotion, it’s the absence of emotion, like black is the absence of light. I don’t have a problem thinking of willpower as an emotion. It’s not so emotionAL, like love or hate, but that’s the idea, green being dead center of the spectrum.
Personally, I liked how it unified the powers of the Zamarons and Star Sapphire with the Guardians and Green Lanterns, as the Zamarons are the females of the Guardians’ species, I also like that yellow is the color of fear, which Green Lanterns are chosen for their lack of (or at least that was the case at Hal Jordan’s origin).
But, to each their own.
I did enjoy the fact that there was only one Orange Lantern, since the orange ring ran on Avarice.
“No, I don’t wish to share this power.”