Green Lantern #76
STOP! This is the NEW Green Lantern/Green Arrow
Writer: Denny O'Neil
Artist: Neal Adams
Editor: Julie Schwartz
No Evil Shall Escape My Sight
As
Hal flies over Star City and thinks about looking for Green
Arrow, he sees a young man attacking an older man, and the
onlookers cheering him on. Seeing this as a lack of respect for
the law, Hal intervenes, trapping the kid in a top and cage and
sending him to police headquarters. As the older man thanks him,
they are peppered by a hail of garbage! As Hal prepares to punch
out one of the rioters, none other than Green Arrow tells him to
back off!
Hal can't believe Ollie's defending
the "anarchists," but Ollie observes that he has no
business there and shows Hal the situation of the poor people.
One 80-year old lady happened to be the grandmother of the kid
Hal locked up. He was her olny means of support. Technically, the
kid was breaking the law, but the older man he beat up happened
to be the rich-ass landlord who never spent money on repairs and
was planning to evict the tenants by making a parking lot. Hal
thinks he's just doing his job, but Ollie thinks that what's
legal isn't always right.
An old black man then shows up, and
observes how he works for the "blue skins", and helped
out the "orange skins" and "purple skins".
But he never bothered with the black skins! Hal, unable to come
up with a reason why he hadn't, decides to change his ways. Ollie
tells him to go to the landlord to try to keep people from
getting kicked out into the streets. But before he does, he
charges his ring. But as he speaks his oath, he can no longer
believe what he's saying.
Hal manages to track the landlord,
Jubal Slade, down, and presents his case, but to no avail. Slade
sends for a couple groupies to remove Hal from the building, only
to get beaten down. But just as Hal prepares to knock Slade out,
he is summoned to Oa by the Guardians! The Guardians are very
upset, und send Hal to divert some meteors that are on a
collision course with Titan, Saturn's moon. As he takes care of
that, he wonders why the Guardians would send him on a useless
mission. He decides that they just sent him to cool off, and
decides to return to Earth where he's needed.
Meanwhile, Ollie is trying to talk
some sense into Slade. He wants $25,000 not to hurt Slade's
groupies. When he refuses to listen, Ollie pins him to the wall
with some well-placed arrows, scaring Slade to the point where he
offers to meet Ollie at midnight. Ollie tells him to meet him at
an abandoned store.
That night, Slade's groupies arrive
to meet him. They shoot him up, but discover that it was a dummy!
Ollie emerges and kicks all their asses. He had tried to tape the
incident, but the recorder had been shot up. He goes outside to
wait for Slade, but doesn't get him.
The next morning, Ollie and Hal
attempt to find a way to take care of Slade. They decide that,
since he isn't all that loyal to his employees, then he doesn't
know they've been caught. Hal goes to his office disguised as a
thug. When he says he paid him to kill Ollie, Hal reveals himself.
Just then, Ollie arrives with the DA, wo tries to arrest him.
Slade tries to blow himself up, but Hal pushes the grenade out
the window. Now, the DA can pin something on him!
Epilogue
A Guardian contacts Hal, yelling at
him for disobeying orders. He apologizes, but Ollie insists that
he's a puppet whose strings are pulled by the Guardians. In this
country, he contends,people are getting killed and chaos is
reigning. He admonishes the Guardian to come off his perch and
learn what it's like to be a human in America. The Guardian
agrees, and they debate the idea.
Finally, a Guardian dressed as a
human arrives with a "proposition" for Hal...
And so Hal, Ollie, and the Old
Timer, all in their human identities, pile into Ollie's truck and
ride off to find the truth...