Strange Times & Places: Green Hornet: Dark Tomorrow

Welcome back to Strange Times & Places, where last week’s story gave me a hankering for more of those at least some of those of those characters: 1993’s Green Hornet: Dark Tomorrow.

How’s It Different?

I would term this an Imaginary Story, being as it’s a possible future that may or may not come to pass.

What’s The Story?

Clayton Reid, the grandson of the “modern” (read: 1990s) Green Hornet and Crimson Wasp, has taken up the family business as the fifth Green Hornet. However, unlike his predecessors, he doesn’t just pretend to be a crime boss – he actually is a crime boss. His cousin Luke Kato comes gunning for him at the same time that the Steel Syndicate (robotic gangsters) makes a play for his empire, and the family dispute will have to wait until the ruthless robots are dispatched.

Best of Differences

The Now Comics version of the Green Hornet was filled to the brim with references to the character’s extensive history and this story is no exception: Clayton Reid is named for Clayton Moore, who portrayed the original Green Hornet’s uncle The Lone Ranger on TV, while Luke Kato is named for Keye Luke, the first actor to play Kato in live action.
The Steel Syndicate are lead by Cap One and have names like Dil-N-Ger. That’s right – 1930s gangsters with Star Wars droid names.
The cyberpunk universe and design work hold up surprisingly well for a 1993 comic, though my love of the genre may be biasing my tastes a little bit.
This mini-series was written by Clint McElroy, best known today for playing dwarven cleric Merle Highchurch on the podcast The Adventure Zone (soon to be a graphic novel). His sons Justin, Travis, and Griffin (who are also on Adventure Zone) have a fairly popular podcast/streaming TV show (which Clint sometimes appears on) entitled My Brother, My Brother and Me – which counts Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton fame as a fan/friend. I initially chalked the name up to coincidence…until the Green Hornet’s henchmen had the names Juice and Scraps, which are the nicknames of Justin & Travis.