Martin Nodell — Creator of Green Lantern — is dead

Green Lantern (above), along with the Flash, was one of my favorite comic book characters back in the day.

I'd sit quietly in the drugstore and read Superman, Batman and the rest, then buy a Green Lantern to take home and savor.

Here's Nodell's December 12, 2006 obituary from the New York Times.

Martin Nodell, 91, Creator of Green Lantern, Dies

Martin Nodell, who came up with the idea for the Green Lantern, the comic book superhero, after seeing a New York subway train operator waving a lantern with a green light, died on Saturday at his home in Muskego, Wis. He was 91.

He died of natural causes, his son Spencer Nodell said. He previously lived in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Mr. Nodell was looking for a new idea for a comic book in 1940; waiting for a train, he saw an operator waving a lantern displaying a green light, said Maggie Thompson, senior editor of Comics Buyer’s Guide.

Mr. Nodell imagined a young engineer, Alan Scott, a train-crash survivor who discovers in the debris an ancient lantern forged from a green meteor. Scott constructs a ring from the lamp that gives him superpowers and becomes a crime fighter.

Mr. Nodell took his drawings and story lines to All-American Publications, which later became part of National Periodical Publications, the company that was to become DC Comics, Ms. Thompson said.

The first Green Lantern appearance was in July 1940, an eight-page story in a comic book featuring other characters. He then got his own series, and Mr. Nodell drew it until 1947, under the name Mart Dellon.

After its cancellation, the series was reborn in 1959 with a revised story line, and has since been revived several times.

Mr. Nodell left the comics field for an advertising career. In the 1960s, he was on a design team that helped develop the Pillsbury Doughboy.

In later years, he traveled the comic-book convention circuit with his wife, who died in 2004.

Mr. Nodell was born in Philadelphia and studied at art schools in Chicago and New York.

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Above, Nodell at age 72 in 1987 with a drawing of Green Lantern.