Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: dc comics, golden age, green lantern, harlequin

All Harlequin, All The Time in Green Lantern #29, Up for Auction

Published Sat, 19 Feb 2022 12:33:10 -0600

The strange, short career of Golden Age villain the Harlequin is a tale of obsession, not all that different from that of her modern namesake Harley Quinn. Created by Robert Kanigher and Irwin Hasen, in her alter ego she is Molly Mayne, Green Lantern alter ego Alan Scott's assistant at WXYZ radio. But Molly Mayne has secrets even beyond her playful villainy as Harlequin. All three of the Green Lantern stories in this issue are interconnected Harlequin tales, which was something of a rarity in the Golden Age — usually, the series included three separate Green Lantern shorts. A spectacular issue featuring an underrated Golden Age DC Comics villain, there's a Green Lantern #29 (DC, 1947) CGC VF- 7.5 Off-white to white pages up for auction in this week's 2022 February 20-21 Sunday & Monday Comic Books Select Auction #122208 at Heritage Auctions.

Green Lantern #29 featuring Harlequin (DC, 1947).

Including her first appearance in All-American Comics #89, Harlequin showed up nine times in the pages of All-American Comics, Green Lantern, and All-Star Comics in 1947-1948. Harlequin and Green Lantern developed something akin to a "frenemies" dynamic based around the notion that Harlequin's obsession with him (and her assumption that he loved her too) meant that she spent as much time making sure no harm came to him as she did in trying to attract his attention by committing crime.

Finally, a year after her debut, the other shoe dropped in Green Lantern #34 (cover-dated September-October 1948). The Harlequin was in reality a government agent called Operative H-9, posing as a supervillain in order to get close to and capture real gangland criminals. At the request of the Justice Bureau, the Harlequin and Green Lantern were to secretly become partners while publicly pretending to be foes so that they could maintain the ruse and ensure more actual criminals.

Unfortunately, this plan would not play out in the pages of Green Lantern or All-American Comics. As was apparent by Streak the Wonderdog taking over this issue of Green Lantern and several others, the era of the super-hero was on the decline during this period. Green Lantern #34 would be the Harlequin's last appearance of the Golden Age. But those few Golden Age Harlequin appearances remain desirable, and Green Lantern #29 is a doozy. There's a Green Lantern #29 (DC, 1947) CGC VF- 7.5 Off-white to white pages up for auction in this week's 2022 February 20-21 Sunday & Monday Comic Books Select Auction #122208 at Heritage Auctions.

Green Lantern #29 (DC, 1947) CGC VF- 7.5 Off-white to white pages. All-Harlequin issue. Classic cover and story art by Irwin Hasen. Overstreet 2021 VF 8.0 value = $1,485. CGC census 2/22: 4 in 7.5, 6 higher.

View the certification for CGC Certification ID 930139006 and purchase grader's notes if available.