In this feature we examine comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of The Abandoned An' Forsaked. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.
Today, based on a suggestion by NES Boy, we look at how John Broome had some differing he established in the first appearance of Hal Jordan in Showcase #22, namely the fact that Hal Jordan was originally the person who coined the term "Green Lantern" and how Hal seemingly just came up with the Green Lantern oath on the spot...
In Showcase #22 by Broome and Gil Kane, Hal Jordan meets an alien who gives him a power ring and a power battery. It's interesting to see how originally the alien is pretty sparse in details, including not mentioning that he is a Green Lantern...
so when Hal names himself, it is seemingly a new idea...
In fact, even when Green Lantern gets his own comic after two more issues of Showcase, when he meets the Guardians of the Universe, they still refer to him as if he invented the name "Green Lantern"...
It is only a few issues later that we learn, oops, no, never mind, they're ALL called Green Lantern...
Meanwhile, something interesting happens with the Green Lantern oath, which Hal just whips out of nowhere in Showcase #22, which is obviously just a reuse of the Golden Age Green Lantern's oath in the latter days of that character's title. Alan Scott went through a couple of oaths before settling on this one in 1943's Green Lantern #9...
However, Broome abandons and forsakes Alan's oath, with it now being all Hal...
He even later reveals in Green Lantern #10 that there is actually an entire ORIGIN of EVERY SINGLE phrase of the oath!!
First, Hal fights some bad guys who used a super-magnesium flare...
Then he fights some bad guys in a dark tunnel...
Finally, he tracks some bad guys down...
Put that all together and you got...
And conveniently enough, this was the oath pretty much every other minor pre-Crisis Green Lantern chose as their oath. Hal Jordan was just THAT cool!
And when Alan Scott eventually met Hal, Alan's "brightest day" oath was completely forgotten and he was back to one of his earlier oaths from then on.