Every week, I'll examine the five goofiest moments from a five-issue stretch of a particular comic book series. Here is a list of the moments featured so far.

This week, we look at Green Lantern #36-40, written by John Broome and penciled by Gil Kane and inked by Sid Greene.

As always, this is all in good fun. I don't mean any of this as a serious criticism of the comics in question. Not only were these writers certainly never imagining people still reading these comics decades after they were written, great comics often have goofy moments (Kirby/Lee's Fantastic Four is one of the best comic book runs of all-time and there were TONS of goofy stuff in those 100 plus issues!).

HONORABLE MENTIONS

I love the formality of this challenge from an alien to Green Lantern in #39....



"I didn't want to confuse anyone by my usage of the phrase 'The Greatest Fighter of All'"

One of the consistently goofy aspects of early Green Lantern stories is how so many things popped up that had yellow "bases" to stop Green Lantern's ring. Like the "yellow radiation" of this room...



The idea of a bad guy using toys to commit crimes is not a bad idea, but it is pretty funny to imagine that a bouncing toy can get into her office, snatch the tube from her hands, and she doesn't even notice until it is gone....



#36 had a couple of awesome quotes from Hal. The first one...



"Anyone who can work a toy like that" just sounds so dirty.

Here is the second one...



Golden Age Robin just stopped by to tell you your pun was stupid, Hal.

5. Glad there's a rule for that...

In #40, Krona is about to destroy the universe (he has possessed Alan Scott's body). The editors decided they needed to point out that Hal cannot, in fact, survive the destruction of the universe...



Hilarious.

4. Peeping Hal

Another consistently goofy aspect of early Green Lantern stories is all the powers the ring gives Hal. Including, apparently, telepathy (which would have come in handy about a gazillion times in previous issues had Hal had the ability)...



Also, "minds-drop" doesn't make sense as a mental version of eavesdropping, does it?

3. "You only told me to let you know if a bus hits you, not if the bus is headed towards you..."

I love how uselessly specific the ring's help can be, like in #37....



best of all, it can't prevent Hal's hypnotic state because a yellow object was used to do the hypnosis!!



"Sorry, Hal, I can't stop these bullets - they were fired from a yellow gun."

2. So why doesn't he do this, like, every single time he is confronted with yellow force fields, etc?

In #36, the aforementioned radiation is keeping Hal from entering the room with the bad guys in it, so Hal uses his ring to TURN HIMSELF INTO A ROBOT, as a ROBOT won't be affected by the yellow radiation...





For serious!? And that's not even the goofiest thing Hal turned himself into in this installment. That would be...

1. Signed, sealed and delivering a kayo punch!

As shown before, Hal was hypnotized into writing letters giving away top secret information (and unbenown to the bad guys, some of that info includes his identity as Green Lantern), so he figures...why not TURN INTO A LETTER?!!?





That shot of the giant letter throwing a punch is so amazing that I can hardly believe it really exists. I think I need to use that panel somehow in the future.