Every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without explaining that the previous story was retconned away. Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of Abandoned Love. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.
Today, we take a look at the infamous (and thus quickly discarded) plot involving Green Lantern Hal Jordan having a threesome with two superheroines.
Green Lantern Hal Jordan has always been a bit of a womanizer. Check out his VERY FIRST appearance from Showcase #22 (by John Broome, Gil Kane and Joe Giella), where he is quite aggressive trying to get a date with his boss, Carol Ferris...
Then he woos her as Green Lantern...
The very next issue, Green Lantern starts dating various ladies to make Carol jealous...
It is clear that Jordan was different from other DC Silver Age heroes, who tended to have steady girlfriends. Since Carol was Hal's boss, they couldn't really date, so even though they clearly DID date, Hal also would have romantic bits with other women (mostly aliens or women from the future). And as soon as Carol officially breaks everything off by getting engaged to another dude, Hal quickly moves on...
By the end of the Silver Age, Hal had more girlfriends than any of his Silver Age peers.
And then, of coure, who could forget his rather sketchy relationship with Arisia during the 1980s, which I've covered in great detail before.
So Hal, when he returned as Green Lantern in the mid 2000s, went right back to being a "ladies man"...
Hal Jordan's friendship with Oliver Queen was a big part of DC Comics history after it was introduced in Hard Travelin' Heroes (hopefully we see that history of friendship plays a role in DC Comics post-Rebirth), and that was the case after Geoff Johns' brought Hal back...
It was Oliver's friendship with Hal that led to Oliver quitting the Justice League to join up with Hal's sort of "rogue" Justice League from Justice League: Cry for Justice #1 (by James Robinson and Mauro Cascioli)...
But then, in the following issue, their friendship led to an interesting conversation...
A number of folks, myself included, took issue with the scene, as it really seemed to turn Lady Blackhawk and Huntress, two important members and good friends from Birds of Prey...
into sort of sexual trophies (heck, I might very well feature it in Remember to Forget in the future).
It was also annoying because Birds of Prey had recently finished its initial run at the time, so these characters were without a regular series, so it was sort of like, "No one can say no now!"
Gail Simone, longtime Birds of Prey writer, and the one who brought Huntress and Lady Blackhawk into the book as regular cast members, was not a fan of the scene at the time. A year later, she was given the chance to relaunch Birds of Prey, and she took the time to discard this plot.
Go to the next page to see how it happened...
In Birds of Prey #7 (by Gail Simone, Ardian Syaf and Vicente Cifuentes), the female members of the team are at a strip club when we learn the truth behind what happened at that alleged threesome...
Clever solution from Simone!
If anyone has a suggestion for Abandoned Love, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com
NOTE: The display image is from Oliver Queen's bachelor party.