Green Lantern #2 is an issue of the series Green Lantern (Volume 1) with a cover date of December, 1941.
Synopsis for Green Lantern: "The Tycoon's Legacy"
Green Lantern beats up a gang of thieves robbing a warehouse and leaves one with the image of a green lantern burned into their cheek as a calling card. Later, Alan Scott's on hand and jumps in to finish a commercial when the announcer suddenly faints. He so impresses his boss that Alan finds himself being given a man-on-the-street segment for their broadcast. While interviewing pedestrians he meets a struggling lawyer who's frustrated because he can't get ahead in his career because of having no connections and too many ethics to take cases that aren't legitimate. Alan promises to help the man, Frank Benton, get his career on track, although he himself wonders how he's going to make good on such a bold promise.
The answer comes soon when it comes to his attention that the wealthy businessman Jeffers became close friends with a worker of his, Joe Stromboli, and promised to leave his wealth to the man when he passed away. However when Jeffers died and the will was read, all his wealth was instead inherited Jeffers' nephew Lester. Alan goes to Frank Benton and claims finding new evidence to reverse this great injustice is just the case he's been looking for. As Green Lantern, he infiltrates the insane asylum where Joe was committed and finds orderlies torturing Joe. After a beating from the masked crusader they admit Slagg, Jeffers' lawyer, paid them off to abuse Joe until he legitimately went insane. Green Lantern helps Joe escape the asylum and has Doiby take him to hide out somewhere safe. Then the hero confronts Slagg about the changes in Jeffers' will. Before he can confess anything someone shoots Slagg through the window. Green Lantern declares war on whoever's behind all this.
Green Lantern rifles Slagg's office and finds a comminique from a "Baldy" to have the orderlies keep abusing Joe. Green Lantern catches the two orderlies and takes them to a hideout before leaving by walking through the wall. Meanwhile, "Baldy" has Lester killed too. After learning this, Alan Scott and Frank Benton deduce "Baldy" must belong to the Jeffers Corporation, since the fortune passes to the company with Lester's demise and that way he'll be able to gain control of it. Alan Scott and Frank Benton pay a visit to the Jeffers Savings and Loan Corporation and notify its leadership they plan to reopen Joe Stromboli's case. While he's there Alan notices both the president, Paul Blane, and Blane's secretary, Delber, are bald, and wonders if either of them might be Baldy.
Later, Baldy springs the crooks Green Lantern arrested at the warehouse robbery from prison and has them kidnap Joe's niece, Maria, and Joe receives a ransom note to give himself up or he'll never see Maria again. Doiby refuses to let him entertain any thoughts of giving in, but Joe's conscience gets the best of him and he knocks Doiby unconscious and runs out to follow the criminals' instructions. Doiby recovers and follows but both of them fall into Baldy's clutches. Seeing the note when he arrives at Doiby's place to check up on them, Green Lantern flies to the Jeffers building, hoping he's not too late. He gets there and saves Doiby from his captors, then is confronted by Baldy himself. The mastermind's gun is no more effective than his hirelings', but he gets lucky when Green Lantern makes a tackle for him and slams the wooden on the hero, making Green Lantern slam his head into his only weakness.
Green Lantern pursues Baldy and finds both Delber and Blane working late into the night. Blane gets a sudden phone call but Green Lantern answers for him and hears a mysterious voice relate a series of numbers. As he leaves, Blane panics at the thought of the hero learning what those numbers mean. Meanwhile Joe and Maria are rescued, and Green Lantern throws the kidnappers in with the orderlies he locked up in his secret hideout already. He finds a list of addresses on the crooks and coerces an explanation out of one by blinding him with the power ring, finding out that Baldy instructs his men to injure people but make it look like the victims suffered an accident. By interviewing the people on the list Green Lantern learns they all money to the Jeffers Corporation, and if they can't pay it the company will seize their property, and this is all a huge predatory scam racket. And because they have no money to pay their obligations, the victims also have no money to hire lawyers and fight back, prompting Green Lantern to suggest to Frank Benton they start a low-income law clinic where the patrons pay a little at a time instead of all at once. Benton agrees to round up all the lawyers he knows who need work. Alan Scott and Doiby go around hustling donations for startup money, and one of the people Alan visits is Paul Blane. Mainly to let Blane know afterward he can expect to be hit with a huge class-action lawsuit in his near future.
Baldy reacts to this legal threat by sending thugs to threaten the victims not to participate in the lawsuit, but Green Lantern finds out and captures them. Anticipating that if intimidating the victims didn't work, Baldy will attack the law clinic itself, he and Doiby stake out its headquarters and interrupt the gangsters who do indeed appear to try and destroy the law clinic. Then deposits those crooks in with all the others in Green Lantern's hideout.
Meanwhile Irene Miller and Doiby got to the Jeffers Building to do some investigating late in the night. Delber catches them snooping and pulls again, but is prevented from shooting them by the timely arrival of Green Lantern. Rather than being there in the middle of the night because he's the true identity of Baldy, however, Delber's there because he's been embezzling from the company to pay off gambling debts. Green Lantern lets him go, with how the Jeffers Corporation will have bigger things to worry about soon.
Appearing in Green Lantern: "The Tycoon's Legacy"
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Synopsis for "Hop Harrigan"
Appearing in "Hop Harrigan"
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Notes
- This issue is reprinted in The Golden Age Green Lantern Archives Vol. 2.
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