The Green Hornet Returns...

This year promises to be the year of The Green Hornet. Not only is there a motion picture slated to hit the screens (here, I am honestly not expecting too much with Seth Rogan in the lead, so look for a yuck-it-up, but hope to be surprised), but a number of comic book and fiction projects are in the queue, among them a series of short story anthologies titled “The Green Hornet Chronicles” from Moonstone Books.

I was recently honored to contribute a story to that anthology, and just this week turned in the edits for it. The book is edited by EIC at Moonstone, Joe Gentile, and excellent writer, pulp historian and all around great guy, Win Eckert. It promises to be the best Green Hornet fiction ever, with best-selling writer extraordinaire Harlen Ellison contributing to the Hornet lore.

My story is titled “Flight of the Yellowjacket” and the antho is based heavily on the 1960s’ TV series starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee.

For those unfamiliar with The Green Hornet, it began in the 1930s as a radio show and ran more than a decade and hundreds of episodes (1936-1952). Originally, the show was to be called The Hornet, but the name was changed to The Green Hornet so that it could be easily trademarked. The color was chosen because green hornets were reported to be the angriest.

Created by George W. Trendle (who also created The Lone Ranger, and in fact The Hornet was a blood relation, great nephew in the radio show, to the Ranger), it concerned one of the early masked crime-fighters, who, with his trusty Asian sidekick, Kato, roamed the night streets in a huge amped-up car called the Black Beauty. The Hornet was in reality Britt Reid, publisher/owner of The Daily Sentinel newspaper. The Green Hornet was seen as a criminal vigilante by police and the crime-fighter used that rep to infiltrate gangs. The classical “Flight of the Bumblebee” was its theme song.

The Hornet has also spawned a number of movie serials, big little books and comic books (in fact, a new Hornet comic book penned by movie writer Kevin Smith debuts in Mach from Dynamite with a female Kato. The Hornet will be set in modern times and this is the second female Kato to take the Hornet’s side. The first, Mishi Kato, was created by writer Ron Fortier for the Now Comics version of the character.)

In 1966, perhaps the best known version of the character came to TV. After the success of Batman, ABC looked to create another popular hero show, but unlike Adam West’s Batman, which was played for camp, The Hornet was treated as a serious crime drama, and a very good one. But audiences, mainly kids, expected Pow, Zap, Bang, and the show lasted a mere season of 26 episodes, which was a pity. In a last-ditch attempt to save it, ABC camped up the last two part episode, “Invasion from Outer Space”, and even filmed a crossover with Batman, where a very lucky Burt Ward didn’t have the crap kicked out of him by Bruce Lee.

Lee made the perfect Kato and Van Williams in the lead was superb. Had the series been run in a later time slot, it might have continued for years, but alas it and the Hornet faded except amongst a substantial cult following until the early ‘90s when Now put out a series of comic books and rumors of a movie began to surface. Kevin Smith was originally tagged to write the movie, but after completing a script, the project was scrapped in favor of the Rogan version. Smith’s script of the unmade movie will serve as the basis for Dynamite’s first comic book issues.

Look for the Hornet anthos from Moonstone (http://www.moonstonebooks.com/) coming this year and the return of The Green Hornet. I am thrilled to be a small part of his comeback along with all the other fine authors involved. I hope you will enjoy reading the story as much as I did writing it.

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