Monday, August 27, 2018

Manic Monday Bonus--Everyone In The 60s Wanted To Do This Story, Apparently!!

A few months ago, we discussed how remarkably similar the Star Trek episode Miri and a Supergirl story were to each other. They even came out on the same day!!

Well, the coincidences just won't stop. Just over a year later, in the very first appearance of Guy Gardner...



So, wait. Once again, a planet where a disease wiped out all the adults, leaving the children in charge, and they never aged??

Now, as I said, this was a year after the Trek and Supergirl stories, so there was certainly time for their "influence" to have been felt here. And as I noted last time, it's certainly possible that all 3 stories were just tapping into the "don't trust anyone over 30 because adults will destroy the world" and "if kids take over they'll ruin everything because the new generation sucks" zeitgeists that were floating around in the late 60s. Thank gosh that today we're past all that sort of generational blaming, eh?

Anyway, this planet's kids or substantially more destructive than the kids in Miri, because they've also got a healthy dollop of the episode A Taste Of Armageddon:


They don't realize that war and destruction are evil?!? Yup, this must be where DC got the idea that Superman had to snap Zod's neck in order to learn that murder is bad...

Anyway, Guy whips up some space armor to block the kids from mentally dominating him (because the story is borrowing from And The Children Shall Lead, too!), and puts an end to this war.


Mighty convenient.

Hmm, by the way, did you notice the way that robot emphasized that it was a yellow plague that killed all the adults? I wonder why...?

Oh. Man, they just took that yellow thing waaaaay too far, didn't they?

And so...

Oh, wait, I forgot to mention---this story never really happened!! Hal's just watching some magic Guardians machine that shows him what would have happened if Abin Sur's ring had called Guy Gardner instead of him!!

Oh, you goofy Elseworlds stories!! See, it can't be plagiarism if it's an imaginary story!!

From Green Lantern #59 (1968)

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