17 January 2011

Editorials // Tags: green hornet, gold key, dell, the lone ranger //

The Green Hornet certainly has some longevity. After all he has now lasted, in one form or another, for over 60 years. This weekend the Green Hornet film opened to a strong box office (and mixed reviews), but what many don't realize is that his first appearance was on a radio show in 1936.

It's 1936 in Detroit and radio is king. George W. Trendell is a managing partner and co-owner of station WXYZ. He already has a major hit with a show he helped develop called The Lone Ranger.

Just like TV, he has a major hit and so he decides to go to the well to find something really close in feel to The Lone Ranger but not so close that everyone will know that it's a rip-off. Gathering the people who helped him create The Lone Ranger, Trendell works closely with writer Fran Striker, and director James Jewell and eventually they decide Green is a great color, that the hero should be somehow dealing with political corruption and that he should have a sidekick. Settling on "The Green Hornet" for the name of the main character, they create a civilian identity as a newspaper publisher. Britt Reid is a newspaper publisher by day, but at night he takes off into the night armed with a gas gun and wearing a cool trench coat and hat.

Next they add a sidekick who can double as the hero's valet when they are working in their secret identities. For the first few years Kato is identified as the Japanese Valet, but with the attack on Pearl Harbor, that has to change. For a long time Kato is identified as the "Faithfull Valet." During wartime it is made clear that Kato is of Filipino origin. Oddly enough, even though Trendell has a lot of input into the two movie serials of The Green Hornet that were made by Universal in 1940 and 1941, Kato is identified as Korean in those serial. This is just one of the many inconsistencies that build up between the different publishers and across the mediums over the years.

The Hornet is a hit on radio and, using the experience they had with The Lone Rangeras a template, management moves the hero into comics to increase exposure. He first appears in December 1940 for six issues under the publishing banner of Helnit. The company then changes names to Holyoke. This name change can cause some confusion among new collectors when looking for the first six issues. Also adding to the confusion is the way the publisher is listed in the indicia. The first issue says Helnit, but numbers 2-6 are listed as The Green Hornet Publishing Company. The final issue (#6) is cover dated August 1941.

With issue #7, cover dated June 1942, The Hornet moves over to Harvey where he spends the rest of the Golden Age. The title lasts until 1947 when, with issue #34, the name changes to The Green Hornet Fights Crime. The name change is easily understood when you look around at what is being published at the time and see that the best sellers usually have the word “crime” in the title. For the last four issues Harvey goes one step further and changes the name to Green Hornet Racket Buster. The last issues to appear is #47 August September 1949. Harvey also used the Hornet in All-New Comics where he was the cover feature on #13.

One of the hidden books in The Hornet's history is an appearance in 1953 over in Dell with Four Color #496. The book features a beautiful painted cover and is a really enjoyable read. By now the radio show is off the air and the stories in that issue of Four Color seem to have been adapted from scripts.

The Hornet is gone for another decade until 1966 when, fueled by the success of the new TV show Batman, William Dozier and Greenway Productions quickly go looking for a second character to put on the air (kind of like George Trendell and The Lone Ranger back in 1936). The Green Hornet was similar enough to Batman, but different enough to fill the bill.

The TV series debuted in 1966 and lasted 26 episodes. Staring Van Williams and Bruce Lee, the show never got to the heights of Batman and is canceled in March 1967. Nowhere near as campy as Batman, the show was a lot better than most people give it credit for. In anticipation of the recent 2011 movie the SYFY channel recently devoted 12 straight hours to repeats. Many of the plots border on ludicrous and some of the people on screen were wooden, but the sets, the actors and the fights looked great.

Gold Key published three issues devoted to the TV show and they are all pretty easy to find in any condition. Given the network TV connection the print run on those three is assumed to have been pretty high.

Three things you should know about the TV show A) When the show was marketed to Hong Kong is was called The Kato Show; B) The theme music is an orchestral interlude to Flight of the Bumblebee by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov]s Flight of the Bumblebee which was rearranged by Billy May, conducted by Lionel Newman and the trumpet solo was played by Al Hirt; C) The Black Beauty was a 1966 Imperial Crown. Only two are known to exist and the primary car used for filming on the series sold for $10,000.

In 1989 NOW Comics brought The Hornet back to comics with great success. They did a great job of building a “comic-fan friendly” continuity into the series.The series beat its golden age run by lasting over fifty issues until it saw cancelation in 1995. They also did several Kato mini-series as well as several Green Hornet series during the run of the main title.

Today the Hornet is enjoying a new life. Dynamite Entertainment is running several series featuring both The Hornet and Kato and the issues feature an exciting take on the long history of the character. They have attracted some of the best in the comic industry, including Matt Wagner and Kevin Smith to contribute to the character's long history. It is a testament to the strength of the character that he has been able to jump between so many mediums for so long and do so well.