Happy 89th birthday Gil Kane!

Gil Kane (April 6, 1926 – January 31, 2000), is the legendary creator who was instrumental in bringing about the Silver Age of comics with his art work on the new Green Lantern (in DC Showcase #22, Sep. 1959) and the Atom (in DC Showcase #34, Sep 1961).

Self portrait of Gil Kane with his Atom colored by yours truly. 

Alan Moore's Green Lantern annual #3

Ever since reading my first Moore story back in 1985 (Swamp Thing #40) I've been a Moore fanatic picking up everything with his name on it. When he left DC it was a hit or miss thing but in the early days everything he wrote was head over heals above any other comic, it was MAGIC! One of my favorite of his (and I had many) was his Green Lantern annual #3 that he did with Fables and the Elementals, Bill Willingham.

 

Kevin Nowlan in Tales of the Green Lantern corps #3

Kevin Nowlan's 

A Sense of Obligation 

a true classic of the comic medium!

The time was 1987. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen was coming out. I tried to get everything by Alan Moore because almost everything that he wrote was amazing. I'm sure I got The Tales of the Green Lantern Annual #3 because of his 6 page "In Blackest Night" short in it. But this issue also contained another amazing story in it, "A Sense of Obligation" written by Richard Bruning and illustrated by Kevin Nowlan. I know I've seen work by Kevin Nowlan before on various covers of Defenders or in such titles as Dr. Strange #57, in a back up piece to Dalgoda called "Grimwood's Daughter" and the amazing the Outsiders annual #1 but this piece was special. In this piece he outdid himself. Not only did he do an amazing job penciling this issue, he did a near perfect job of inking as well as doing one of the most remarkable coloring jobs I have ever seen!