Green Hornet Comics #1, cover date December 1940, marked the character's first appearance in comic book form
The Green Hornet has appeared in numerous comic book series, beginning in 1940 and continuing into the present day. Following the popular success of the radio series in which the character originated, the franchise soon spread to numerous other forms of popular entertainment including the nascent field of comic books. During the medium's golden age, the Green Hornet appeared in a long running series, Green Hornet Comics, which spanned 43 issues over roughly the course of eight years. The character then made sporadic appearances in comic book form over the next several decades, until Comics acquired the publishing rights to the character in the late 1980's, producing an extensive line of Green Hornet titles and turned the franchise into a generational saga. When NOW Comics experienced financial difficulties, the Green Hornet once more became a dormant comic book property. Dynamite Entertainment acquired the comic book rights in 2009 and has steadily published numerous titles featuring the character since.
Golden and silver age series (1940-1966)[]
- Main article: Green Hornet Comics
- Main article: The Green Hornet in Dell comics
- Main article: The Green Hornet (Gold Key Comics)
Green Hornet Comics #9 was released in August 1942 and featured cover art by Captain America creators Jack Kirby and Joe Simon.
The Green Hornet debuted in a 1936 radio series which became a popular hit. By the end of the decade, Superman had both popularized the idea of superheroes and established himself as a pop culture sensation, and by 1940 his two ongoing titles, the monthly Action Comics and a bi-monthly self-titled series, were respectively selling 900,000 and 1.25 millon copies an issue. A rash of superhero and masked vigilante characters soon followed him into the medium. That June, the Tem Publishing Company inked a deal to produce a series of one-shot Green Hornet stories, and by October the deal and evolved to include the production of such stories via comic books in a joint effort with Helnit Publishing Company, Inc. The first issue of Green Hornet Comics soon appeared with a December cover date, with subsequent issues released on a bi-monthly basis, which was common for many titles of the period.
Issues of the Helnit series ran 64 pages and contained eight stories each. The stories were structured like the radio series, with many of the stories being directly adapted from it. However, despite their narrative fidelity, these comics also contained a number of visual inconsistencies with how the characters were intended to appear. For example, the Green Hornet's overcoat was generally portrayed as yellow similar to Dick Tracy's, and his hair was depicted as black, whereas the radio show had established him to be a blonde.
The series was taken over the following year, beginning with issue #7, by Harvey Comics, an established player in the comic book field. This series continued to appear bi-monthly and lasted 47 issues with the final issue appearing with a September 1949 cover date. During it's run, the comic changed it's title, first to The Green Hornet Fights Crime (as of issue #34) and later to Green Hornet, Racket Buster (as of issue #44). Harvey additionally used the character in the public-service one-shot War Victory Comics in 1942, and gave him one adventure in each of two issues of All-New Comics, #13 (where he was also featured on the cover) and #14. in 1946. The Harvey version of the comics changed the character's visual depiction to more closely adhere to his previously established appearance: his jacket was once more green and his hair was blonde as described in the radio series. Some of the covers of the Harvey comics were illustrated by the legendary team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, who had recently created the character of Captain America.
Toward the end of the golden age, after the Harvey series had concluded, Dell Comics published a one-shot with the character (officially entitled Four Color #496) in 1953, several months after the radio series ceased production. Both stories therein share titles with late-era radio episodes ("The Freightyard Robberies," June 23, 1949, and "[The] Proof of Treason," October 17, 1952) and might be adaptations.
In 1967 Gold Key Comics produced a series based on the TV show. However, it only ran for three issues.
NOW Comics (1989-1995)[]
- Main article: NOW Comics
In 1989, NOW Comics introduced a line of Green Hornet comics, initially written by Ron Fortier and illustrated by Jeff Butler. It attempted to reconcile the different versions of the character into a multigenerational epic. This took into account the character's descent from the Lone Ranger, though due to the legal separation of the two properties, the Ranger's mask covered his entire face (as in the Republic serials) and he could not be called by name. In this interpretation, the Britt of the radio series had fought crime as the Hornet in the 1930s and 1940s before retiring. In NOW's first story, in Green Hornet #1 (Nov. 1989), set in 1945, the nationality of the original Kato (named in this comic series Ikano Kato) is given as Japanese, but because of that era's American racism toward Japanese, Reid had pretended that Kato was Filipino in order to prevent Kato's being sent to an American internment camp.
Cover to NOW Comics' Green Hornet #1
The NOW comics considered the 1960's television character as the namesake nephew of the original, 1930s-1940s Britt Reid, referred to as "Britt Reid II" in the genealogy, who took up his uncle's mantle after a friend was assassinated. Britt Reid II eventually retired due to a heart attack, and Kato—given the first name Hayashi, after that of the first actor to play Kato on radio—goes on to become a star of ninja movies. The NOW comics established Hayashi Kato as Ikano Kato's son. Britt Reid's nephew, Paul Reid, a concert pianist, took on the role of the Hornet after his older brother Alan, who had first taken on the mantle, was killed on his debut mission. Paul Reid was initially assisted by Mishi Kato, Hayashi's much-younger half-sister, who was trained by Ikano Kato. Her being female caused problems between the publishers and the rights-holders, who withdrew approval of that character and mandated the return of "the Bruce Lee Kato." After Mishi's departure—explained as orders from her father to replace an injured automobile designer at the Zurich, Switzerland, facility of the family corporation, Nippon Today—Hayashi Kato returned to crime fighting alongside the Paul Reid Green Hornet. Mishi Kato returned in volume two as the Crimson Wasp, following the death of her Swiss police-officer fiancé on orders of a criminal leader.
In NOW's final two issues, vol. 2, #39-40, a fourth Kato—Kono Kato, grandson of Ikano and nephew of Hayashi and Mishi—took over as Paul Reid's fellow masked vigilante. The comics also introduced Diana Reid, the original Britt Reid's daughter, who had become district attorney after the TV series' Frank Scanlon had retired. A romantic relationship eventually formed between her and Hayashi Kato.
NOW's first series began in 1989 and lasted 14 issues. Volume Two began in 1991 and lasted 40 issues, ending in 1995 when the publisher went out of business. Kato starred in a solo four-issue miniseries in 1991, and a two-issue follow-up in 1992, both written by Mike Baron. He also wrote a third, first announced as a two-issue miniseries, then as a graphic novel, but it was never released due to the company's collapse. Tales of the Green Hornet, consisting of nine issues spread out over three volumes (two, four, and three issues, respectively), presented stories of the two previous Hornets. Volume One featured Green Hornet II, written by Van Williams, star of the 1960s TV. Other miniseries included the three-issue The Green Hornet: Solitary Sentinel; the four-issue Sting of the Green Hornet, set during World War II; the three-issue Dark Tomorrow (June-Aug. 1993), featuring a criminal Green Hornet in 2080 being fought by the Kato of that era.
Dynamite Entertainment (2009-present)[]
- Main article: Dynamite Entertainment
Teaser for Dynamite's inaugural Green Hornet comic book
In March 2009, Dynamite Entertainment announced that it had acquired the license to produce Green Hornet comic books. As in the NOW Comics, Dynamite chose to treat the monikers of the Green Hornet and Kato as mantles that are handed down from generation to generation. Its first release was a series based on a scrapped movie script written by Kevin Smith in March of 2010 in which the son of Britt Reid and daughter of Kato take up the crime-fighting personas of their fathers. A week after the launch of this series, a new limited series titled The Green Hornet: Year One, focusing on the exploits of the original Green Hornet was launched, written by Matt Wagner.
In the ensuing years, Dynamite expanded their line to include a number of Green Hornet comics books, consisting of both ongoing titles and limited series. While the majority of these have focused on the two core iterations of the character, Britt Reid Sr. and Britt Reid Jr., they have also released titles focusing on Kato and a number of crossover arcs including characters such as The Spirit, as well as tie-in comics set within the continuities of the television series and the 2011 film.
Crossover appearance in Dick Tracy comic strip (2018)[]
Dick Tracy and the Green Hornet as they appear in the 2018 crossover arc
In 2018,Britt Reid, Kato, and Lenore Case appeared in crossover arc in the daily Dick Tracy comic strip. The crossover ran for 48 days and centered around the trio of Green Hornet characters travelling to Dick Tracy's city to stop Cyrus Topper, an original villain created for the crossover, who seeks to form an alliance with the criminal network known as the Apparatus.