This weekend’s superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at some of the earliest comic book adaptations of the iconic character the Green Hornet. That figure originated on radio in January 1936 and in a very early example of a shared universe, the Green Hornet’s secret identity was Britt Reid, grand-nephew of John Reid – the Lone Ranger.
Britt’s father was the son of the Dan Reid kid that frequently interacted with his uncle the Lone Ranger from the 1933 radio show on to the Clayton Moore television series. In fact, Britt Reid’s pride in his family’s heroic forebear inspired him to don a mask and costume and fight Detroit’s racketeers like the Lone Ranger fought outlaws in the Old West.
In the radio series and screen serials the Green Hornet’s gun was loaded with knockout gas but in comic books and television his gun fired electric blasts called the Hornet’s Sting. The Hornet’s sidekick was Kato, most famously portrayed on the tv series by Bruce Lee. Kato drove the Black Beauty, the Green Hornet’s souped-up, gizmo-filled car. The Black Beauty came before the Batmobile and any of James Bond’s tricked-out vehicles.
And just as the Lone Ranger show’s theme music came from classical music – the William Tell overture – the Green Hornet show’s theme came from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee.
Britt Reid’s father was the millionaire publisher of the newspaper The Daily Sentinel and he put his good-timing playboy son in charge hoping the responsibility would make him grow up and abandon his partying. Britt pretended to still be a shallow playboy to make sure his father and the public never realized he was secretly that scourge of crime the Green Hornet.
The police and even Daily Sentinel crime reporter Mike Axford (formerly of the 1932 radio series Warner Lester, Manhunter) misunderstood the Green Hornet’s vigilante activities and suspected the masked hero of being a criminal himself. The Hornet took advantage of that misperception by convincing some of his gangster foes that he was indeed an outlaw and wanted a cut of their illegal operations.
Completing the Green Hornet program’s supporting cast was Britt Reid’s sexy secretary Lenore Case aka “Casey.” And another show in the shared Lone Ranger-Green Hornet-Manhunter universe was radio’s Sgt. Preston of the Yukon. Continue reading
Balladeer's Blog 