I bought this shirt with my mom at Target while new clothes shopping.
The first in a long line of Green Lantern shirts that you will see. I will be showing some of them back to back eventually. When I got this it was during my time in college and I was really getting into comic books. This is as they were ramping back up in popularity from the 90s. With comic arcs like World War Hulk and Infinity Crisis it was cool to like graphic novels again. For a very long time I had chosen the Green Lantern as my favorite hero. Like when people would ask you, "What superpower would you choose if you could have any one?" I would always answer with a Green Lantern ring. Unfortunately, this particular shirt was made when it was trendy to have a worn in shirt. As if you had kept it from when you were a little kid. Personally, I think buying shirts like this is apparel posing but I was ecstatic to see a Green Lantern shirt on the shelves they were was usually just music, food, and maybe cartoon brands.
When I got this it was at the peak of my black graphic tee buying. I thought they were the coolest thing and, to be fair, it fit in with my style at the time. The shirt is a medium since I got it for myself. The fabric is kinda light, despite its appearance, the ink is actually well printed. You'd think that with it looking all distressed it would have a poor print job but they managed to screen it very nicely and -I don't think- that it has worn much.
The graphic that was used is very old. Originally from a vintage Green Lantern comic, it was rehashed into the DC classics line. They would re-release old comics in Omnibus editions so that you could catch up on some of the really timeless stories if, lets say, you weren't born when they first ran. Along with these comics they began to come out with apparel and merchandise to compliment them. DC put these classic characters and comic book covers on all kinds of stuff -so you would see the same image repeated over and over on lots of different things-. The one I bought used the masthead from the 2nd volume of Green Lantern, they switched to this title style before the Green Arrow team-ups around issue #72 -back in the late 1960s-. It features Hal Jordan -the second of Earth's Green Lanterns- who wields a power ring to keep peace in our sector. In this picture he is charging the power ring with his Lantern Battery, this must be done once every 24 hours or it will run out of energy.
I took great pleasure in wearing this shirt when I got it because other people might be wearing Superman or Batman or X-Men shirts and I felt awesome wearing a hero who was much less mainstream. At the time, Green Lantern was on the Justice League animated TV show and was a B-list hero. It took an epic story arc to propel him into the public conscious. A massive "Ring War" against his arch rival Sinestro! It spanned and entire summer or more and was an epic event with thousands of heroes fighting and dying. When someone mentions this shirt or brings up Green Lantern I enjoy telling a tale of the Corps or two. Sometimes, since I'll wear a ring or have my phone's wallpaper as a Lantern symbol, it feels fashionably redundant wearing several items of the same brand but I chalk it up to "matching".
What really got me into comic books was a late evening at the break room in college. I was hanging out after classes and someone started talking about a series they had just finished. It was called the House of M and it featured all of the characters that I had known from the X-Men animated TV show and put them in a gripping storyline with twists and turns, backstabbing and betrayal. This guy went on for a long time about everything that happened and how the characters had to change and grow and went on to explain details of their back stories so it all added up. It felt like a story circle from ages ago; people all sitting together sharing an oral tradition of heroes and villains. It sparked my interest and in the next few weeks I read up all I could about the Green Lantern. It turns out there was so much more than the cartoons had to offer, a rich, vibrant world that was so much better than anything I had ever read. I was hooked at that point and have been trying to keep up ever since.
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