OK, That's Pretty Cool!

Colour me impressed (in green or red!).

Here's a cover from my childhood... one of my faves, in fact:


This amazing image ushered in the Dennis O'Neil/Neal Adams/Dick Giordano era of Green Lantern/Green Arrow, which featured a focus on relevant topics of the day (overpopulation, racism, drug abuse, etc). That GL/GA run, which lasted about a dozen issues, is one of the high water marks of comic books in the early 1970s.

Yesterday, DC Comics teased us with a strangely familiar and yet not-quite-right image:



Many of us in the comic blogosphere wondered just what this could possibly mean. On the one hand, it could be tied to the recently-completed Blackest Night series, which did in fact feature some Red Lanterns in it (though not Hal Jordan as one, as shown in that preceding cover). On the other hand, Green Arrow's former sidekick, Roy Harper, has been appearing as a sort of "Red Arrow" of late (actually codenamed "Arsenal"), but of course that's clearly Oliver "Green Arrow" Queen in that cover shot, not his beardless protege.

So WTF?

Well, today, word arrived on just what the deal is, and it's a good one: tonight's episode of Fringe, dealing with an alternate universe, will somehow feature that very-crimson variant on the famous Green Lantern/Green Arrow # 76 cover, showcasing at least one crucial difference between that other Earth and ours! How awesome is that? Pretty darn, I think.

Oh, and by the way: that 40-year-old Adams drawing kicks the tar out of the new version, showing just how far ahead of his time old Neal really was!

[Update May 21/10: Here's a link to the rest of the alterniverse DC covers shown on last night's Fringe. Nice side-by-side display here.]