The Golden Age Green Lantern had no need of a team like the Justice League—Alan Scott was so powerful, he was practically a whole team in one man.
Despite his powers being markedly different from the Green Lantern Corps’, the first Green Lantern, Alan Scott, is far more powerful than most of the Justice League. His magic-based ring gives him the kind of power that would far outstrip the likes of Hal Jordan and John Stewart.
The contemporary iterations of Green Lantern are typically members of an intergalactic peacekeeping organization known as the Green Lantern Corps. These Green Lanterns get their power from rings granted to them by the Guardians of the Universe, but those rings are only as strong as the individual wielding them. These law-enforcing Green Lanterns use their will power to create hard light constructs that typically have a physical effect on the world around them, whether that be by creating a shield or a sword or anything imaginable. Green Lantern Corps members have always been extremely powerful, but the Golden Age Green Lantern, whose powers are based in magic instead of science, stretches his will-power abilities to the furthest place they can go.
The First Green Lantern Makes Hal Jordan Look Weak
Alan Scott debuts and becomes the original Green Lantern in 1940’s All-American Comics #16 by Bill Finger and Martin Nodell. After he receives his ring and lantern from a magical source, Alan pursues the corrupt men who caused a train and bridge to explode. There he shows off his astounding new powers, which are essentially anything he has enough will power to do. His abilities include walking through walls, being invulnerable to metal, and, in a later issue, even reading another person’s mind.
Though Alan Scott was forgotten during the Silver Age, during which he was replaced by Hal Jordan and the more popular science-fiction version of the Green Lantern, he later reappeared a mainstay of the Justice Society of America, and he has appeared most recently in the Dark Crisis event. But the contemporary version of Alan Scott is rarely as powerful as his earliest appearances, wherein his powers make him more dangerous than most of the contemporary Justice League. By phasing through objects and even reading someone else’s mind using his Green Lantern powers, Alan Scott is far closer to the likes of Martian Manhunter than John Stewart. Even his invulnerability to metal (wood is his one weakness) has echoes of the Golden Age Superman.
The Golden Age Green Lantern had no need of a team like the Justice League—Alan Scott was so powerful, he was practically a whole team in one man. Perhaps he still has that kind of power within him. If he does, the contemporary DC Universe might just be changed forever by the original Green Lantern.
Check out All-American Comics #16, available digitally from DC Comics!
