Green Lantern (Alan Scott)



Alan Scott is a superhero from DC Comics. He is the first Human character on Earth to become a Green Lantern. A member of the legendary Justice Society Of America, he fought with that group for decades starting just before the Second World War, aiding in that conflict outside the front lines, where a Nazi-held mystic artifact prevented the JSA from going. He first appeared in All-American Comics # 16, in July of 1940.

Born Alan Ladd Scott in the early part of the 20th Century (Alan Ladd was not only a nod to a then-prominent actor, but to the fact that a Green Lantern's ring was like having Aladdin's lamp), he studied hard and rose to become a prominent engineer. During a train derailing accident in a rail system he helped design, he survived only to find a lantern that spoke to him, offering power. Fitted with a ring made from this lantern and using it to design a swashbuckling hero's outfit, he embarked as a vigilante but law-respecting hero called The Green Lantern.

Unknown to Scott for many decades, his lantern and ring were fundamentally different from the other Green Lanterns of Oan origin he would also encounter much later. While theirs were based upon the direct power of The Guardians Of The Universe, Scott's was an indirect creation of the Guardians. Feeling that magic caused too much chaos in the cosmos, the Guardians bound this power together into an entity that came to be known as the Starheart. Overcoming its prison, the Starheart sent a portion of itself to ancient Earth, where the matter from this fragment was forged into the Lantern eventually found by Scott.

Basing himself in his native Gotham City (of which he became its first superhero), Scott was summoned by federal agents to be part of a strike-force sent to Britain to turn back a Nazi invasion of the island kingdom, even encountering Adolf Hitler himself, who used the Spear Of Destiny to summon a Valkyrie escort from Asgard to accompany a bomber mission against Washington, DC. The team Scott was a part of included an odd variety of superhumans, including the Flash (Jay Garrick), Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson), Doctor Mid-Nite (Charles McNider), Wildcat (Ted Grant), The Atom (Al Pratt) and the Spectre (Jim Corrigan), and together, they turned back the Nazis and their mystic allies, with the Spectre actually traveling to the afterlife to restore President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to life when he was assassinated by the Valkyries. At the restored (with all absent memories of his being killed) President's suggestion, the group decided to meet on a regular basis as The Justice Society Of America, DC's first super-hero group, and possibly the first one in any comics universe. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the group renamed itself the Justice Battalion and joined a much larger group of heroes in The All-Star Squadron. But when Hitler again used the Spear Of Destiny (said to be the spear with which a Roman soldier pierced the side of Christ), he was able to cast a spell that placed any Allied superhuman under Nazi control. Scott, whose powers derived from magic, was especially vulnerable to this, making an early end to the war impossible.