Monday, November 4, 2013

Random Reads: "The Call of the Cosmos" by Burkett and Staton

Greetings, Groove-ophiles! Let's kick off the week with a little-seen Green Lantern short from Adventure Comics #459 (June 1978). Green Lantern was to have been a regular feature of the Dollar Comics version of Adventure, with Cary Burkett writing and Joe Staton on the art. The sci-fi slanted series was short-lived as Adventure soon became home to several Paul Levitz written/edited strips that had bitten the dust during the DC Implosion--namely Aquaman and the Justice Society. It all worked out for uber-GL fan Staton, though as he would soon become the artist on GL's own mag for a good portion of the late 70s/early 80s.







The Groovy Age GL was quite a far cry from today's womanizing GL, huh?

4 comments:

  1. Hmm, I know most people see either Gil Kane or Neal Adams as the definitive GL artist, but I'm quite partial to Joe Staton - maybe because I first started reading GL right around 1978/79, when these stories appeared in Adventure, and then Staton became the penciler in the regular series.
    Anyway, more goodness from Adventure's all-too-brief phase as a dollar comic. By the way, just a small correction: this story first appeared in Adventure #459, not 259.

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  2. Don'tcha just love typos? Thanx for the head's up on it, Edo. Fixing it right away!

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  3. I remember reading this story. Burkett posited Hal as DC's answer to James T. Kirk, about 5 years before DC picked up a license to do Star Trek comics. Cute.

    I wonder, though, how Staton would've fared drawing a certain cutie from the planet Exor..........

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  4. What a sweet little story. I love Joe Staton's artwork. He exaggerates the form just enough to give the figures force and dynamism, but maintains the basic human structure. That and he's a damn fine visual storyteller. Thank you for sharing this.

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