Favourite Comics: Green Lantern / Green Arrow issue 85

When Green Lantern / Green Arrow issue 85 hit the newsstands around August 1971 I wasn’t even aware that there was a Green Lantern comic being published, let alone that it was considered to be the hight of comic books as an art form. However, that all changed around mid-1972 when I was reading a 1971 issue of Superman and noticed the Academy of Comic Book Arts (ACBA) awards page showcasing the talents of Neal Adam and Denny O'Neill. From that day forward my comic book ambition was to track down a copy of Green Lantern / Green Arrow.

As it turned out I never managed to track down a copy of the Adams /O’Neill Green Lantern / Green Arrow title until around mid-1977 when I was on a weekend break with my parents to Blackpool where I spied a copy of GL/GA issue 85 in one of the many comic book stalls that populated Blackpool at the time. Now it has to be said that in 1977 your average kid / teenager (in Scotland anyway) probably wasn’t that aware that there was a drug problem despite our own damaging relationship with alcohol. My knowledge of narcotic drugs at this time was restricted to media reports that only evil perverted criminals took them. GL/GA 85 certainly opened my albeit young eyes to why some people turned to drugs.

It's difficult to get the full effect of this storyline viewing it through todays eyes. The story itself avoids overpowering the reader with the total futility and desperation of drugs and its true effects on the body, finances, relationships and society but you can tell that O'Neil and Adams were really trying to portray this within the confines of the medium at the time. Issue 85 for me is the storyline that made the O’Neill / Adams run famous with stunning and at times controversial art. Even by today’s standards the cover of a teenage boy shooting up on heroin is both powerful and shocking.