Sunday, July 23, 2006

The Hal Jordan Head Injury Project

In celebration of the anniversary of one year of blogging on Lady, That's My Skull, I have just started the Hal Jordan Head Injury Project. I have accepted the calling of documenting and posting all the head traumas Hal has received in his career as an intergalactic status quo enforcer (I'm not including the full-body hits that cause the Emerald Crusader to take a nap, just the hits to the brain both physical and mental). This is a heck of a project because Hal was portrayed by creative teams as kind of a bull-in-the-china shop frat boy for about 40 years. I don't know if anyone else has taken on a task of this magnitude or done something similar but I won't quit even if they did. I'll keep it up as long as my scanner holds out*. As far as I'm concerned, you can never have enough images of Hal Jordan taking one in the brain pan floating around.

As of this posting I'm only up to issue #38 of the 1960's series of Green Lantern and there are more THWACKS! than you can shake a stick at. That's a lot of dead brain cells. For Hal, I mean.

A big old hat tip to the Absorbascon's own Scipio, who sparked the idea and started it all.

* If anyone wants to contribute to this historic archive then please feel free to email it to me or provide a link. Thanks to those real friends, internet friends and others that have already worked on some of the panels for me. This is my hobby but any assist will be appreciated and you will get a credit as a contributor. All I ask is that the image be in color (unless the original source was b/w and that you provide some basic info like the title of the book and issue number of where the image came from). The b/w collections are okay....but some panels, like the lamp scene from Showcase #22, work better in color.

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7 comments:

  1. This project is genius. I will help in whatever way I can.

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  2. Thanks. My head already hurts. Gil Kane is a MADMAN!

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  3. I saw a guy dressed as Hal at Comic-Con this weekend pass by my booth and I threw a yellow book at him. He ducked, though, so it obviously wasn't the real Hal.

    Bravo on this project: "It's just so crazy it might work!"

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  4. To be fair, ALL comic book superheroes got socked in the head a lot back in those days. It was part of the genre, an inheritance from the two-fisted pulp tales of the '20s and '30s. Nobody worried about stuff like brain damage from multiple concussions back then. By rights, any non-invulnerable adventure character ought to be permanently punch-drunk after a few years in the business.

    It's just funnier when you pick on Hal Jordan. BRILLIANT. :)

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  5. Thanks, but credit where is due. Scipio at the Absorbacon was the first to point all those out.

    Thank him by going to Big Monkey Comics and buying lots of stuff.

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  6. You know I tried a similar project with Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea some years ago: I tried to chronicle every time that Seaman Kowalski was knocked unconcious with a blow to the head (Frequently involving large pipe-wrenches). Eventually I gave up in frustration - it happens a lot - but I'm really interested to know what your final tally comes to. You've sort of inspired me to go back to my Kowalski KO Count.

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  7. So how hard was it to will a green crash helmet? Especially when you're easily rendered unconscious by a FRIGGING MODEL PLANE.

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