by SEAN McQUAID

ha comic8industry that’s often devoted to meaningless.

salesshype, ‘““cosmic’’ stories are usually a dime-a- dozen, éspecially. whenyourcharacters are oftensu

premely powerful beings. *‘Epics®’ like Marvel’ $ Over-—

rated Infinity Gauritlet.titles:are often’ more spéctacle than substance‘and wholly lacking in imagination: Thankfully, none of those criticisms apply to the recently released Green Lan- term;,.Gantlet’s Tale book. DC-has,in this case, managed to produce a thought- provoking, entertaining;and.visually stun- ning piece of comics: literature.

For those. unfamiliar With the title Poittecer, Green Lantern refers to Earthman Hal Jordan, who is.the ‘ ‘Green Lantern”™.of Earth, chosen for virtue and fearlessness and givénaring-like weapon thatallows him to tapand manipulate a near limitless green énergy by means of his willpower, so long as hecharges the ring each day athis lantern, which in turn drawsits limitless. power from the planet Oa; home of the selfproclaimed *‘Guatd- ians of the Universe’?;who recruit beings such as Jordan to. serve as members of an intergalactic police force called the Green Lantern-Corps. The Guardians and the-GL€ have long been

majorreéurring figures inthe DC Contics continuity and figured”

prominently in D@*s ground-breaking Crisis on Infinite Earths series, where thé tale Was repeated of how evil first began to spread in theuwniverse ‘millennia ago when an Oan scientist named Krona dared to break his immortal, advanced people’s strongest law by attempting to observe the beginning of the universe through time, the one piece of knowledge thatthe Oans agreed they were not meant to know. Kronacaught a glimpse of a cosmic hand forming galaxies in-its-palm beforé the maghine blew up in his face and.released, according to legend, the force ofevil.in the universe, a force the Green Lantern Corps was formed to combat. “*This of course, is a lie,’’ we are told in the retelling of the legend at the opening of Ganthet’s Tale. From there, author Larry Niven goes om to reveal the truth behind that lie, and how the,secret therein threatens the destruc- tion of all that‘exists.

The talé’s catalyst is Ganthet, amaverick Guardian who comes to Earth to enlist Hal Jordan’s help in finding a hidden commu- nity of Maltusians (the mother race of which Oans are an offshoot) n Earth to serve as new recruits for the Corps. They soon ferret out the hidden community, learning that these Maltusians and their ancestors had beena hidden race on Earth forcenturies, and were the source of legends such as those of leprechauns, fairies, and Arthurian mystics. Content for dec- ades to be secluded from humans in what wilderness remains on Earth, the Maltusian tribe are uninterested in their birthright to join the advanced culture of their brethren on Oa, and Ganthé finds only onerecru isian named Percival who segs the Corps the heroi t he’ once upheld al

never exist,

SL tty CE alee EN Me ae ee MU OE She ty Bee Tee a ee Ee

illusion placed in the time stream by the Oans countless cen- turies age to confuse and intimidate any being who sought to strike at the Oans by travelling back to the days’of their civilization’s emergence. The universe’s true origin is imper- ceptible, but by letting hisown time probes reflect forward from

‘this chaos, Ganthet saw what the ‘‘celestial hand”’ image has

been meant to distract people from; the fact that the Maltusians (later the Oans) were, at an early stage in their development, warlike savages. Ganthet-goeson to reveal the more terrible secret, that Krona’s crime had

as Ganthet did but attempting,to see t fooking past the cage of time, when theu

a billion years, snufi

It was actually to atone for this secret monstrosity that the Green Lantern Corps was founded, and now a desperate Ganthe! reveals his race’s hidden shame to Hal Jordon and Percival s0 that they can join him in trying to stop renegade Maltusians fromduplicating Krona’s expemient.

it’s awonderful science fiction story, as one would expect from 2 -winning science fiction writer Larry Niven who makes iy into comic books with this book. niven’s tale of rets and impending martvcr tat doom has the kindof eServes the term ‘‘cosmic’’, and he mixes this with egend and myths in the ‘ ‘Gieen Knight’’ Percival not to mention the modern ‘‘superheroic’

en Lantern Hal Jordon comes from. Ina story Jordon is as much the plot’s vehicle as its t would be easy for him to get lost in the s careful to divide the action between the