Summary
- Alan Scott’s new origin in Alan Scott: Green Lantern #2 takes on a much darker tone and adds depth to the character.
- The reinterpreted story includes the character Billie, a trans woman who is ultimately lobotomized, giving the origin a more tragic twist.
- The new origin adds a timely and dark layer to Alan Scott’s story, making it more compelling for modern audiences.
Warning: contains spoilers for Alan Scott: Green Lantern #2!
Green Lantern Alan Scott’s new origin has made the DC icon much darker than ever before. After being sidelined for most of the 2010s, the original Golden Age Green Lantern, Alan Scott, has returned to the DC Universe. The new Alan Scott: Green Lantern miniseries is redefining the character for a new era, and in issue two, a key part of Green Lantern’s origin is revisited, but here it takes on a dark layer.
Alan Scott: Green Lantern #2 is written by Tim Sheridan and drawn by Cian Tormey. In the late 1930s, Alan Scott was hospitalized for being gay. Alan’s roommate is Billie, a trans woman. Billie presents Alan with a green railroad lantern that she made from the mysterious substances found with Alan. The two share a heart-to-heart, but Billie angers him. As Alan takes his leave of Billie, two orderlies escort her away and when Alan sees her next, she has been effectively lobotomized.
Alan thinks back to the prophecies he heard earlier: that the Lantern would first bring death, and then life. Billie’s “cure” fulfilled the second part.
Green Lantern Alan Scott’s Origin is Being Tweaked for Modern Audiences
Parts of Alan Scott: Green Lantern #2’s story have been adapted from the characters first appearance in 1940’s All-American Comics #16. In that story, Billie (here called “Billings”) is a patient in a psychiatric hospital. Why Billings is there is never disclosed, but they work in the hospital’s shop. One day, Billings is brought a mysterious green metal that they then fashion into what will become Alan Scott’s lantern. As Billings works on it, they are “magically cured,” and later discharged from the hospital, free to resume their life. The story reflected the understanding of the medical community at the time, but was still problematic.
Alan Scott’s Green Lantern was created by Batman co-creator Bill Finger and artist Martin Nodell.
Now, this story has been reinterpreted, and given a far darker subtext. Billie is here a trans woman, hospitalized by uncaring family members. Alan Scott was missing from this part of the origin, but Sheridan and Tormey have retconned him into it. Readers sympathize with both Alan and Billie, fleshing them out far beyond the original story, the perfect set-up for the gut punch that is Billie’s fate. When Alan sees his friend again, she is only a shell of what she was. The story leaves exactly what happened up to the reader’s imagination, but Billie is no longer the same.
Alan Scott’s Origin Just Got Darker
This retooling of Alan Scott’s origin takes on an even darker meaning when he realizes that Billie’s “cure” was the fulfillment of the second part of the prophecy: first it brings death, then life and then power. Billie was granted “life,” but unlike her Golden Age counterpart, she did not live happily ever after, and instead lived out a sham of a life, constantly being forced to deny her true nature. Now that the lantern has brought “life”, it is time to bring “power,” in this case, turn Alan Scott into the Green Lantern. This addition to Green Lantern’s story gives his origin a much more timely, but dark layer.
Alan Scott: Green Lantern #2 is on sale now from DC Comics!
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