this is just one of the tags from the INCREDIBLY yusuf superman agenda that has not left my mind but GREEN LANTERN NILE???? If you have any more THoughts on that or how the book of nile agenda works into the 70’s superhero verse…. i would LOVE to here them. And this au is just so fantastic to begin with! (from @tovezza)
thank you!! i have Thoughts and i am excited to share but, some context for the class on why i love green lantern (in this iteration hal jordan) and green arrow as a team so much
you have parallels to superman and batman, right off the bat. an entity with vast, potentially world ending power not of this earth and an entirely vulnerable millionaire with a flair for the dramatic and a compulsion to help people. green lantern is basically a space cop, challenged by green arrow to come back down to earth and see what people really need from their heroes. so they pack up in a truck and tear around america. and this was written in the seventies!!
starting from ‘72 the comics covered evil landlords, exploited laborers, cults, native american land rights, judicial abuses, overpopulation, consumerism, drug addiction, race relations, activism in general, and environmental concerns. now, green arrow was often positioned as sort of lecturing and dragging green lantern to see things his way, question his guardian overlords, etc - i don’t much care for the idea of booker lecturing nile, a black american woman in the seventies, on much of anything. but being a confidant, a sounding board as she reckons with the enormity of her new power, this thing she was given without warning
but let’s rewind a bit. hal jordan was a pilot - here’s what i like for nile. in 1973 the us navy allows women to train as pilots sure, but. in 1971 the association française des femmes pilotes was formed. here is why i’d like some wiggle room with suspension of disbelief. the first black (as well as the first native american) woman to hold a pilot’s license was bessie coleman, in 1921. she had to study in france because no one would issue her a pilot’s license in the states (black, native, woman). in fact, part of her sponsorship came by way of african-american paper the chicago defender.
so say you are nile freeman. say your father was one of the tuskegee airmen (because if hal jordan can mythologize his father then so can nile). bessie coleman worked in your neighborhood as a waitress saving up money to travel overseas. these are your legends! so this is how we come to test pilot nile freeman, licensed and fluent en français, staying up til two in the morning to call her mother back home after work.
small side note: hal jordan was often mocked for having a ring of infinite power (well except over the color yellow) that could construct anything he imagined, from light, and what did he use? a boxing glove. but latter day lantern kyle rayner was an artist, and i think in practice nile would likewise make the most - beautiful, intricate, artistic constructs with her power.
a story nile never tells: she is above a clean sheet of stratocumulus cloud and a man in blue and red flies alongside her, unhurried. he circles her jet and dips and causes her no trouble. returns. flies ahead, flips heels over head and circles her again. she holds her breath and prays and she gives him a barrel roll. he smiles and looks young, at a distance, maybe not any older than she is. she never tells this story, says her radio went out. this is what she remembers when the ring finds her. all things are possible.
(and possibly, she might kiss booker someday if she doesn’t kill him first) ((but to challenge is a form of love. to regard the best in each other and demand it is a form of love))
jessica cruz, to help us illustrate
