This is DC’s Best Ever Team Up (And Really Should Get a Live-Action Adaptation)

With the hype behind the DCU, DC is about to hit a new level of popularity. The Internet is abuzz with news of the DCU, and as usual, fans are talking about what stories and characters they want to get adapted next. DC has a plethora of amazing stories to choose from, as well as some of the best team-ups in the history of comics, including one starring two of DC’s greatest characters – Green Lantern and Green Arrow. The story I’m speaking of in “Hard-Traveling Heroes”, by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams. This Silver Age classic is one of the best Green Arrow stories, and stars one of the best Green Lanterns, Hal Jordan. “Hard-Traveling Heroes” is one of those stories that has become legendary, and is an early example of the maturation superheroes years before stories like Watchmen, Squadron Supreme, and The Dark Knight Returns came along.

Creature Commandos kicked off the DCU in media res, with a fully formed superhero universe. We’re getting a Green Lantern story in Lanterns which stars an older Hal Jordan alongside John Stewart. Superman and Batman are both established heroes. On the one hand, all of this could mean that we have no hope of getting “Hard-Traveling Heroes”, but there’s ways around it. “Hard-Traveling Heroes” would make for an excellent DCU project, and it’s honestly pretty weird that DC hasn’t adapted the story at any point in the intervening years.

“Hard-Traveling Heroes” Was a Cold Dose of Realism in a Time of Fantasy

To understand why “Hard-Traveling Heroes” was so amazing, you have to understand DC Comics in the Silver Age. While Marvel sold itself as the world outside your window, DC was always the land of fantasy. This was the time of Superman and his godlike powers (it’s also known as the Superjerk era, as many covers and stories showed Superman messing with his friends), Batman’s silly adventures, the weird sci-fi of the Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom, and the Justice League of America flitting around the DC Multiverse. There was nothing grounded about DC Comics at this time, and their audience was basically kids. However, Marvel was starting have more success with their more human heroes, and DC wanted to get into that game. Enter Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams. Neal Adams is one of the greatest comic artists in the history of the medium. His art is iconic; if you’ve never seen it, go look up some of his Batman and X-Men work. While a lot of Silver Age art can look dated, Adams’s art looks like it could come from right now. Meanwhile, O’Neil was a man of the time, an ultra-liberal resident of New York City who wasn’t afraid of the darker side of superheroes. O’Neil’s work brought realism to Batman and other DC heroes, and he worked with Adams as if the two shared one mind. Green Lantern was circling the drain, so DC put O’Neil and Adams on the book. Green Arrow was added to the cast, and Green Lantern/Green Arrow was born. Nowadays, Oliver Queen is known as leftist loudmouth, and O’Neil is the one who took the Robin Hood by the way of Batman Green Arrow and made him what he is today.

“Hard-Traveling Heroes” is basically a story of opposites. Conservative space cop Hal Jordan and hippie loudmouth Green Arrow were the perfect odd couple, and O’Neil used them to talk about racism (with a black man asking Hal Jordan why he spent so much time saving aliens and not black Americans) and drug addiction (this is the story that made Speedy a heroin addict; O’Neil’s own struggles with alcohol addiction informed this story). The stories were more mature than anything that DC was putting out at the time, and changed the way everyone looked at the DC Multiverse. O’Neil and Adams were doing work that more modern creators like Alan Moore and Frank Miller get credit for, and they were doing it over a decade earlier. Their work on Batman, Green Arrow, and Green Lantern changed DC forever, and would lead the publisher in directions that would eventually lead to the amazing hits of the ’80s and ’90s. They brought complexity to simple characters, and showed that DC could give readers stories that even Marvel, with its Cold War American exceptionalism, wouldn’t give readers. It’s an amazing set of stories, and if you’ve never read it, you should seriously give it a try.

“Hard-Traveling Heroes” Could Give the DCU the Realism Some Fans Want

The DCU is looking to go in a lot of different directions, and “Hard-Traveling Heroes” can fit in anywhere. It deals with a lot of deep subjects, things that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has stayed away from, and has the right kind of flavor for fans who want something a little more complex. Now, seeing as Lanterns stars an older Hal Jordan, it may seem like it would be impossible to do “Hard-Traveling Heroes”, however, that’s what flashbacks are for. DC Studios can take fans back in time to tell the story of that time a space cop and a hippie with a bow and arrow traveled the United States, arguing with each other, and taking out villains.

The DCU is a lump of clay right now, and it can become anything. One of the biggest strengths of the DC Multiverse is how varied it is, and if the DCU can capture that, than it will be a success. “Hard-Traveling Heroes” is just what the DCU needs and it’s long past time that this classic gets adapted.

What do you think about “Hard-Traveling Heroes”? Sound off in the comments below.