It's like a bad joke: get a six-issue miniseries, fill it with flashbacks, advance the actual plot by one hour on a good day. Alan Scott: The Green Lantern is badly structured, there's no way around that, but it's such a deeply disappointing book that that's somehow the least of its faults. First things first: time-travelling in order to pass through walls is needlessly overcomplicated. Alan has been able to phase through walls (in a ghost-like manner, is the image the 1940s comics want to invoke) since his very first appearance, he's also previously been shown as able to time travel (Gotham Knights #10 from December 2000 calling!), there's simply no possible need for one power to inform the other except in the service of this book's endless efforts to make Alan look as naive as possible in what should be the heyday of his career. The "twist" is a far cry from what we've been told in Vlad's 'Who's Who' entry in The New Golden Age primer, and even details like the ring being from a women's college betray internal continuity errors (issue #1 of this very same series told us it's a Southern Conference College Baseball Championship ring -- very much a real thing). Then again, there seems to be no continuity or canon this miniseries respects (Alan owning lakefront property? I'd hazard a guess he wouldn't need to share a room with Doiby Dickles in All-American/GL/Comic Cavalcade if he was out there owning a house on a lake). What's deeply troubling to me is the repeated portrayal of gay intimacy as purely transactional (the rent boys from the previous issue, Vlad & his commanding officer), gay love as built on lies ("I really could sell you on anything."), and gay characters steeped in stereotypes (the anachronistic use of "old queen" in #2, Alan's motel bath here). If the fact hadn't been highly publicized, I never would have guessed there are any LGBT creators involved in this book. At the end of the day, the main character has next to nothing in common with the Alan Scott we've come to know over the decades and that has nothing at all to do with his sexuality & all to do with his characterisation.

"Confess your crimes-- save your immortal soul!" - Alan Scott: The Green Lantern #5, page 5, panel 4. As far as I'm concerned, these words alone tell you the Alan Scott of AS: TGL is not any Green Lantern we've ever seen before -- certainly not the Golden Age Green Lantern, angry willful clever complicated hero that he was, who never once made a single allusion to religion, who always seemed to believe in nothing but his work and his own two hands and his determination to survive. The inexplicable insertion of religion as the be-all, end-all of 1940s internalized homophobia is not just reductive but antithetic to the character. Worse still, it seems to have gone almost entirely unacknowledged by audiences at large, as if a sudden case of Catholicism is an acceptable addition to the creation of Jewish artists and writers, as if Alan Scott had not been again and again shown to be concerned with the palpable consequences of the society he lives in and the laws of the time rather than his "immortal soul". Beyond bad characterisation, dubious art, lamentable pacing, treating random add-ons like the above as fundamental & basic to the character does nobody no favors and only serves to make longtime fans lean into the retcon allegations. Alan's sexuality might not be a retcon and the coding may have been there all along, but you certainly wouldn't know it looking at this book. This issue, in particular, is also historically illiterate. Most readers might assume this takes place during the Cold War but title cards early on have reliably informed us this is the middle of WWII, and the full scale attack from the USSR at the end makes one question where exactly the writer thinks the Soviet Union stood in WWII and who were its allies (hint: The Big Three). The degree to which this series is set on resurrecting Red Scare-era propaganda is almost remarkable, from Vladimir finding out the Red Army's betrayal via an American newspaper (the most reliable, trustworthy and objective source of news in the free world, don'tcha know?) to what I've dubbed The Red Scare Squadron being actively contrasted against the brightly-colored, handsome, well-muscled American superheroes... here to save the day for freedom and democracy everywhere at the behest of their good & righteous government. Ahistorical, anachronistic, vaguely homophobic and deeply out of character is what this comic is and still remains.

It's one thing to publish a badly written, soon-to-be-forgotten miniseries and to move on without making any waves -- many of those floating across the medium, especially in recent times -- but it's something else entirely to manage to permanently damage a character in six issues. This is a book by someone grasping at straws to fit into continuity what they clearly think is a crazy retcon, not a creative team willing to put in the time to research the character and understand the narrative & subtext woven into Alan Scott's entire publication history before this travesty. To be clear, this book is steeped in Red Scare-era propaganda and is remarkably ahistorical. In Alan Scott: The Green Lantern's world there's no way WWII could've followed its real life trajectory, not with the USSR launching a full scale invasion of New York City (with its soldiers full on admitting to Stalin's secret plan of taking over the world!) before the US had even entered the war. Pushing for an alliance with Nazi Germany, are we? No matter, because the good folks at DC Comics clearly think better dead than red. It's not even that that ultimately renders it a stab to the heart of any Alan Scott fan though, it's not even laughably bad children's cartoon tier lines like "I'm the villain", it's the fact that we're treated to a horrifyingly homophobic portrait of a gay man saying he'd been "deeply in love" with a woman and that the two wives we know about aren't even the full extent of his heterosexual dalliances. If you were confused about Alan's recent revelations, don't you worry -- so was he! Instead of taking the easy and logical way out, instead of framing Molly & Rose as beards (god forbid gay people lie to protect themselves!) and eighty years in the closet as the result of the societal pressure a homophobic society puts on a man in Alan's position (especially as his career grows), the "blame" is placed squarely on Alan. The main part of the story finishes with Alan telling J. Edgar Hoover that he's not ashamed of who he is, that he couldn't care less if the blackmail material in Hoover's possession will be released... only for him to immediately go back in the closet? It's a line of thinking so absurd, it gets questioned in the issue itself. This is the trouble with tying a character's entire sexuality to another character, we're told Alan has been with multiple women but on the gay front it's all centred around one man & the men who resemble him that Alan explicitly only sees as an extension of that single man. Instead of exploring the fact that Alan had dated no women until Infinity Inc's retcons, that even so he's never kissed a woman on-panel, that for eighty-something years he showed no interest whatsoever towards women especially in comparison to his contemporaries, instead of acknowledging the various men Alan has had strange & complicated dynamics with across the years, we end up with Mr. Scott talking about women more than he ever has before. We end up with the childish logic of "people can only have children if they're in love" instead of the reality that many gay men have had to marry and have children to meet society's expectations with no attraction, no love ever being involved. The Alan Scott of this series is not just indecisive, naive, and confusing, he's also not remotely allowed to harbor any negative or complex feelings towards anyone or anything. I find it hard to believe the damage suffered here can be undone any time soon.

If the last two issues had limited themselves to a couple retcons here and there, Alan Scott: The Green Lantern's worst quality is in full swing here. We get Alan visiting male prostitutes on the waterfront, and it's only downhill from there. What is it about a character that's seemed agnostic, if not downright indifferent to religion, in eighty-something years of publication that inspires the creative team here to base his internal turmoil around Catholic guilt? Why not the real life consequences that could affect the life of a young man as concerned with his career in radio as Alan had once been characterized to be? The Spectre's reassurance that homosexuality is not a sin is sort of undercut by the fact that he could've only known that about our hero because of his ability to sense sins in people, and it's further rendered meaningless by the most modern-sounding dialogue this side of any attempt at a 1940s period piece. The hug is pretty much insulting, and certainly doesn't help the sanitized feeling of this book as it resorts to children's cartoons' idea of conflict resolution. The 'twist' at the end is not even worth touching on. And that's not even remarking on how at odds the Jim Corrigan presented here is with any previous version of him, not just lacking in the period-appropriate homophobia he'd demonstrated in John Ostrander's 1992 run but showing very little in common with any major incarnation of an endlessly interesting character. In a book where transwomen are stereotypes in wigs with a guaranteed 'bad' end and gay intimacy has to be paid for, it's a little hard to see what's meant to be so appealing to LGBT audiences. Mr. Scott had had more heartfelt tales back when it was all told in subtext.

If the first issue had been promising, the second one fails to live up to expectations. In effect, the story here is an extended flashback littered with retcons that does not move the story forward in any capacity -- the present day part of the comic is entirely static, and focused on Alan telling Doiby his story. I'm a great enjoyer of character studies but even I'd go as far as to say that this is one of the big no-no's in a six-issue miniseries; there's simply not enough space to be able to afford this kind of departure from the actual plot. Structural issues aside, the flashback itself could tell a touching story if the Starheart's prophecy hadn't been so fundamentally altered, now having brought nothing but misfortune even during the 'life' prophecy. It seems odd to me that the original Billings had had a happy ending in every version of this tale, but Billie is granted a thoroughly horrific fate instead. For longtime readers, it may be a step too far from the morally neutral all-powerful force Mart Nodell & Bill Finger had written about all the way back in All-American Comics #16. Jimmy Henton being a stand-in for Johnny Ladd also rather cheapens the story that had been told in the Green Lantern 80th Anniversary or DC Pride 2021.

As a longtime Alan Scott reader & big time enthusiast of 1940s comics, this is the New Golden Age title I've been looking forward to the most. We were promised a story about lost love, a story that expands upon decades of gaycoding, a story that revisits Alan's hidden past -- and it certainly doesn't disappoint! There's been a lot of talk about how sanitized comics have become even under the guise of diversity and I know I've personally been missing the radical approach of the early-to-mid 1990s Vertigo imprint for too long now (remember when DC had the guts to publish a book like Enigma?), so it's nice to see this very first issue is a step in the right direction. A step towards an explicitly gay story that acknowledges the terrifying reality of the times men like Alan had lived through, the times that had pushed them to stay closeted for their own safety lest they be arrested or worse. Many readers of a certain variety would say it's already too much, I personally feel there is still a fundamental need to appear palpable to straight audiences at the heart of the story being told here -- especially when it gives way to out-of-character details like Alan's "it's a sin" worries -- but it's a right step nonetheless. If the book fails in any capacity, it's in its inability to capture the tone and charm of actual Golden Age comics. It's distinctly modern writing, distinctly modern pacing. Still, if you know Alan Scott then the man himself is as recognizable as he's always been and Doiby's appearance (despite not wearing a doiby!) is a real pleasure. Placing the flashback action in 1936 (before Alan's GL origin in 1939) is a nice touch though and does give the creative team plenty of space in uncharted waters. Alan Scott: The Green Lantern isn't precisely a triumph but it's as close to one as we've ever gotten. Looking forward to the rest of it!

It really is completely unreal to me how much Jay Garrick: The Flash #4 (and subsequently the miniseries as a whole) is a legitimate love letter to the Golden Age of Comics, not only in style & substance but in its sincere respect for the books that started it all and that still have so much to offer. It's especially poignant when so many recent titles have chosen to go out of their way to erase/disparage/fundamentally change these original stories instead of understanding what had made them great (why these characters work so well 80+ years later!) and leaning into that aspect like this fantastic miniseries does. It's without a doubt the first New Golden Age title to successfully recontextualize the 1940s stories for modern audiences without losing its charm in the process!

Hands down the best issue of the series and one of the best single issues I've had the pleasure of reading this year, JSA #8 is something that calls back to a better time in comics through a combination of mature, complex writing and dynamic, dazzling art. Mikel Janin might very well be putting out some of the best work of his career in these pages -- astounding, expressive, and amazingly capable of capturing minute details & emotions. Geoff Johns' JSA has always felt like a passion project, and this issue definitely emphasizes that passion and the writer's long association and familiarity with these characters. In many ways, it feels like coming home for any longtime JSA fan. Alan Scott, in particular, is the heart of this story and his picture-perfect characterisation is both a triumph and a relief. He's the same man he's always been: cold, angry, blunt, and secretive but always willing to try to understand, to sympathize, to work to be a better hero. His past and his struggle with his sexuality are both hinted at masterfully, solidly there but never taking focus away from the story being told. Ruby Sokov's introduction is also immensely exciting and definite proof of Johns' uncanny ability to make a new character fit right in. A fantastic breath of fresh air.