Green Lantern #1 is the first issue of Green Lantern, and was first published in July of 1960. The character of the Silver Age Green Lantern had been introduced in Showcase #22, in September of 1959. After three issues in Showcase, Green Lantern was given his own title.
Featuring
MENACE of the GIANT PUPPET!"
(Thought balloon from Green Lantern: "AN UNKNOWN ENEMY--MANIPULATING A MONSTROUS PUPPET TO FIRE DEADLY RAY-BLASTS AT ME!")
I mentioned in my review of Showcase #22, the most striking thing about Green Lantern's first appearance was that it eschewed so much Silver Age silliness to tell a more "noir" story, as "noir" was understood by a Comics Code Authority approved comic in 1960. But, I mentioned, the Silver Age would soon assert itself. And oh boy did it.
We have a clown puppet with a raygun on the cover. That should be a good hint about what is about to happen.
In the first story, we are introduced, for the first time, to The Guardians and the planet Oa, key parts of the Green Lantern mythology. For the benefit of the audience, The Guardians take Green Lantern' "energy duplicate" and debriefs him about how he received the Power Ring from a dying Abin Sur, and the basic powers and limitations of the Green Lantern. Which are things that the Guardians know, but that the readers of 1960, without the modern infrastructure of comic book research, would have to relearn by paying a dime to read this issue. After his "energy duplicate" catches the Guardians up, they dispatch the real Green Lantern to fight a 50-foot gorilla that is terrorizing some peaceful aliens on a distant plant, and Green Lantern freezes the gigantic gorilla into a gigantic ice cube and then he flies home.
In the second story, bank robbers (the go-to villains of the early Silver Age) can't remember the crimes they are committing--because they have been hypnotized! And then, as we recall from the cover, a puppet. It turns out that someone has a hypnotism ray. Just like regular hypnosis, it can't make people do things they are morally opposed to-- so he can only hypnotize people who are already bank robbers. And also puppet operators in a crane, who will attack Green Lantern because---actually, I don't think that part is explained. Green Lantern is later kidnapped from a date with Carol Ferris by the owner of the hypnoray, and Green Lantern is briefly stymied by the fact that he is wearing yellow, before realizing that he can just pick up something non-yellow in the room and wallop him with it.
So here is one of the major problems with all this Silver Age silliness: rules are invented that don't make sense, and then are immediately circumvented with even less sense. The Guardians are unable to just take Green Lantern to Oa, despite their great power---but they can take his "energy duplicate". Why not just appear to him in his dreams? The owner of the hypnoray can't make people do things against their wills, except when he can---and why does the puppet in a parade have a gun able to hurt Green Lantern? Green Lantern can't use his powers against anything yellow---but he can just pick up anything else and use that by proxy. The little glitches and leaps in logic seem only there to stretch out the story.
Okay, okay, this was what the Silver Age was all about, and it provided me with some relief in what has been, as you might be aware, a really bad week, but still, to a modern comic book fan, it is hard to overlook some of this.