If Green Lantern's Coast City is to have its own franchise of The Mystery Analysts (tm), it's probably not going to have a lot of famous mystery writers or even police detectives, because we never see any of those in GL comics. Coast City's best known industries are aviation and film, after all.
Fortunately, we really only need a handful of people smarter than Hal Jordan, for which we could probably just pick people randomly from a phone book.
 |
| I mean, even HAL knows Hal's stupid. |
 |
| Speaking of phone books, how we got through the entire Silver Age and Bronze Age without seeing Hal hit in the head with the Yellow Pages I will never know. |
But in the spirit of the original Mystery Analysts, we will try to select a varied group who are thematically appropriate.
Tawny Young
Tawny Young is one of what I call DC's cockroach characters. It's not meant to be an insult; it's a comment on a character's resilience in spite of odds and obscurity. Usually these characters persist not because they are special but precisely because they are NOT and can plugged into any mythos that contains their particular ecoliterary niche. Tawny Young; you probably recognize the name as being a DCU character but know next to nothing about her.
 |
| She deduced that John Stewart was Green Lantern. Not the most challenging"intensive investigation", mind you, but at least she was willing to do the legwork of, you know, asking his MOM. Or perhaps just Tyler Perry PLAYING John's mom. |
Tawny Young was originally a TV reporter known mostly for revealing John Stewart's identity as Green Lantern on television.
 |
| I should think not wearing a mask would have done that already, but apparently writers and readers of that time must have assumed black characters were harder to individuate. Ahem. |
 |
| "Analyze THIS mystery, ya poozer!" |
Hop Harrigan
You've probably never heard of Hop Harrigan, America's Ace of the Airways, before.
But he used to be quite famous. He was not just a cover hero in comic books, but radio programs and film serials.
 |
| "What's Van Johnson got that I haven't got?" Hm. A running tab at every gay bar in town? |
He was (originally) the teen son of a famous aerialist (who disappeared or was killed, as the parents of heroes are wont to do). Hop was the dreamy pin-up boy of the flying set.
 |
| I will make no comment about this cheesecake depiction of teen ace Hop Harrigan, lest I wind up on some list of People Your Mother Warned You About. |
An updated and more adult version of Hop would be a logical aeronautical addition to the Mystery Analysts of Coast City, since the town has lots of aviation-related crime. I mean, sure, airborne adventure Hop Harrigan wasn't exactly Sherlock Holmes, but literally we are just looking for appropriate non-super crime-fighters who are better detectives than HAL JORDAN, so the bar is pretty low.
Wing Brady
Wing Brad is WAY more obscure than Hop Harrigan. Whereas Hop was a high-flying adventurer, Wing was a hard-edged bad-ass solider and spy. He was an American pilot in the French Foreign Legion (no, I don't know how that works), but then later he was a spy. He also did time, but that's another story.
 |
| Wing Brady is not to be confused with Brady Wing, even thought it is VERY easy to do. |
A former pilot, convict, and spy is enough on his resume to qualify as someone who could help Hal Jordan think his way out of a phone booth.
 |
| He will also unhesitatingly kill the CRAP out of you if you get in his way. |
Kari Limbo
Yes; Kari Limbo. Look, if I am desperate enough to dig up Hop Harrigan and Wing Brady, I'm not going to get all squeamish about Kari Limbo.
 |
| "♬ I'll never stop saying... ♬ Kari Limbo!" |
Although not too squeamish to engage her, I do lack the fortitude to go over her backstory at length. She was a psychic who lived in Coast City. She was a "Gypsy" (because of course she was). She was Guy Gardner's ex-girlfriend. She and Hal almost got married.
 |
| She also talked funny and dressed like Extraño. |
Virtually no one remembers her; she's no Lois Lane. But a psychic (fake OR real) helping Hal as part of his Mystery Analysts is, well, it's just what Hal deserves, don't you think?
 |
| She really DOES look a lot like Extraño, doesn't she? |
Clive Sigerson
A one-shot character from "The Joker" comic in the '70s?! This is the depths of desperation, people. But hear me out.
So far we have no one associated with the entertainment industry side of Coast City. Clive Sigerson, however, is a stage actor.
 |
| Whom The Joker sokked in the head while he was portraying Sherlock Holmes and then actually THOUGHT he was Sherlock Holmes, because that's a thing that happens. |
Clive Sigerson, now THINKING he was Sherlock Holmes, took on and DEFEATED the Joker.
 |
| The Joker really is a good sport, you have to give him that. |
There is no way that wouldn't make him very famous overnight. I can easily imagine him becoming a film star after that, probably portraying some Sherlock-like detective.
 |
| ...his origin is LITERALLY "head injury". |
12 comments:
Lissen, here me out... Doiby Dickles AND Streak.
Hm, they seem a little long in the tooth to work with Hal, BUT I would counter-offer Rex, The Wonder Dog, as a replacement. And unlike Streak, Rex can actually talk, which would make things easier on Hal.
Coast City doesn't need any mystery analysts. Here's how it usually goes:
Hal: "Time's up, Riddler! You thought you could checkmate me, but I'm holding the wild card!"
Riddler: "Green Lantern? B-but how? That riddle would have kept Batman guessing for days!"
Hal: "I didn't know how to solve the riddle. So I just told my ring to find you."
Riddler: "..."
Hal: "You need to ask easier riddles."
... about Kari Limbo there. I got into comics around GL/GA 117, so Kari was probably in the very first comic book I read. Also, I was really into Joe Staton art when he took over with #123, because holy cow, it was all so beautiful, it was like Michelangelos wearing unitards.
It was a very long time later I figured out what was going on: Dick Giordano was the inker, and he was fixing the hell out of Joe Staton faces. If you let Joe draw the faces, EVERYONE looks like Extrano, just with different wigs.
I've seen people who look exactly like how Jack Kirby would draw them (that guy from "Pawn Stars"). I've seen people who look exactly like how Jim Starlin would draw them (Rod Blagojevich). But I've never seen anyone who looks exactly like how Joe Staton would draw them.
- HJF1 (also the author of that fine Riddler fanfiction up above)
"the I.Q. of a guacamole"
I don't think "guacamole" is a "singular-count word" to which "a" or "an" can be applied. Which only makes it that much appropriate, I supposed: Hal can't even contemplate his own stupidity without being stupid about it.
Maybe he thinks a guacamole is a type of mole. In his head he's pronouncing it "gwaka-moal".
- HJF1
(just a bit of a private rant here) After the depicted scene, Tawny accuses Kilowog of trying to kill her. Does anyone even want to attempt to list all the ways Green Lanterns could kill people without being suspected? Random example: Use near-microscopic, uh, "bits of energy" to clog up a throat, an artery, a lung, whatever, then once death occurs, the bit of energy vanishes and not even the Green Lantern who summoned it could re-create that SPECIFIC bit of energy. It would be like trying to recapture a breath of fresh air. When a Green Lantern forms a giant green energy hand and then disperses it, and then forms a giant green energy hand later, they're not the SAME giant green energy hand. Green Lantern energy constructs emerge from nothingness and into nothingness doth they dissolve. OSLT.
That's why, to some extent, it's absurd that anti-superhuman organizations can even exist, because if so inclined, some superhumans could kill such organizations' leaders in utterly untraceable ways. I mean, suppose Ray Palmer "sneaks" into your hope via telephone, enters your head at microscopic size and then grows to explode your head into damp fragments, the departs as undetectably as he arrived. Who's even going to think of that? "The guy's head exploded? Sound like the work of someone who can shrink..." (private rant concluded)
"sixth member"
At the risk of being obvious: Thomas Kalmaku? He kept a "casebook" on Green Lantern much as golden age Alfred kept a "casebook" on Batman.
Wait a minute, wouldn't creating a functioning stethoscope require you to actually know how a stethoscope WORKS?
I think too much about how power rings work. The AI that works behind the scenes probably does two things in response to a GL's mental commands: it creates the energy constructs requested, and then it performs the desired results. So the ring is probably "thinking" that it needs to amplify sound and also it needs to create a construct with tubes.
Like when Hal makes jet aircraft with his ring, they very likely don't have the working innards. They probably don't even do the aerodynamical parts right. But they match what Hal wants them to do.
- HJF1
"Like when Hal makes jet aircraft with his ring, they very likely don't have the working innards. They probably don't even do the aerodynamical parts right."
Oh, I don't have any trouble believing that Hal knows how *jet aircraft* works. They were pretty much the center of his life, first as a teenager longing to be a pilot, then as an pilot. You don't get to be one of those without learning a lot about how aircraft works. Hal knows what he NEEDS to know...and not much else. ;-)
How about Radu Stancu, Kyle's coffee shop owner buddy? He was in New York but that's an easy relocation, and Coast City is bound to be loaded with coffee shops. Just add an analytical, detective-like mind to the fact that he's got his connections to the street through the coffee shop he now owns in Coast City.
Post a Comment