This is "Got Me a Secret," a feature where I spotlight notable instances of comic book characters revealing their secret identities to people.

Today, we look at how Carol Ferris learned that Hal Jordan was Green Lantern!

Carol Ferris was introduced in Showcase #22 (by John Broome, Gil Kane and Joe Giella), right along with Hal Jordan, so we got the basic set-up right away. She was the daughter of the owner of Ferris Air, the company where Hal Jordan worked as a test pilot. Once Green Lantern came around, Green Lantern naturally ended up spending more time at Ferris Air than he did other places, so Carol quickly grew close to Green Lantern. Not to mention that, come on, this is how these things always work. If a superhero suddenly shows up and spends time with you, how do you NOT get drawn to him a little bit?

In Showcase #23 (by Broome, Kane and Giella), Hal Jordan hits the readers over the head with the predicament that he is in with Carol and his secret identity...

By the way, in case you were freaking out over the idea of Hal Jordan's love interest being his boss, DO NOT FREAK OUT! CALM DOWN! SEXIST 1960s EDITORIAL NOTES ARE HERE TO KEEP YOU SAFE! In Green Lantern #7 (by Broome, Kane and Giella), we learn that Carol might TECHNICALLY be Hal's boss, but come on, fellas, we all know the real score, right?

They really didn't mess around with the sexism there, eh? They just went right for it.

Over the years, though, the love triangle fizzled a bit and Carol mostly just became Hal Jordan's steady girlfriend. Obviously, though, since he was a member of a space peacekeeping group, Hal was often away from Earth for long periods of time. During one of those "lost" periods, he missed the wedding of his good buddy, Barry Allen. He wondered whether Barry told Iris his secret identity (you read the first installment of "Got Me a Secret," so you know already!). He then decides that now is the time to propose to Carol in Green Lantern #49 (by John Broome, Gil Kane and Sid Greene)...

However, it does not go as he planned...

Yep, Carol is now engaged to some other guy. This being the mid-1960s, John Broome seems to be clearly trying to capture some of that Marvel Comics magic by having Hal go through some of the same personal issues that Marvel superheroes had been going through to great acclaim at this point. So Hal considers quitting being Green Lantern, only for his best friend to convince him to quit in a super quick scene...

However, at the end of the issue, Hal decides that Coast City has just too many bad memories for him...

So off he goes. His best friend takes it hard (by the way, it's funny how they very quickly just started calling him "Pie," as if even they realized how racist "Pieface" was back in the 1960s)...

It is interesting to see Hal basically become a "hard-travelin' hero" well before he got guilted into traveling the country by Green Arrow.

In any event, eventually Oliver Queen DID, in fact, manage to guilt Hal Jordan into agreeing to travel around the country to re-acquaint himself with "real people."

On this journey, guess who he ran into?

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Carol Ferris Returns!']

Green Lantern #83 is one of the craziest comic books of all-time. I've written about it extensively over the years. It was part of Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams and Dick Giordano's famed "Hard Travelin' Heroes" run, but specifically it was about a sadistic cook at a boarding school for kids who manipulates an innocent little girl with tremendous mental abilities to use her powers to control everyone in the school and hurt anyone who irks the cook. The super bizarre twist, of course, is that the little girl is drawn to look like Richard Nixon and the cook is drawn to look like Nixon's then-Vice President, Spiro Agnew. Weird, right?

Anyhow, the issue opens up with Carol Ferris bumping into them and the cook, Grandy, forcing the little girl, Sybil, to punish Carol by paralyzing her...

Black Canary, Dinah Lance, arrives at the school as a new teacher and it turns out that the school's headmaster is Carol's fiance! Grandy has the fiance throw Green Lantern and Green Arrow out. As they leave, they run into Carol...

Okay, so after Sybil messes them all up and almost kills them, Green Lantern eventually gets through to her and she decides to kill herself and Grandy by taking down the school around them. Green Lantern gets out alive with Green Arrow and the injured Black Canary. They take Canary for medical treatment and Hal has to make a decision...

He reveals his identity to Carol, who is still engaged to another dude, but I guess she is not into him after he let the cook and the little girl boss him around?

The series was canceled soon after this, but Carol hung around for a while.

Okay, that's it for this installment! Send in suggestions for future editions of Got Me a Secret to brianc@cbr.com!