 Green Lantern Vol 2 #8 October, 1961 Executive Editor: Julius Schwartz Cover Artists: Gil Kane, Jack Adler "The Challenge From 5700 A.D." Writers: John Broome Pencilers: Gil Kane Inkers: Joe Giella Letterers: Gaspar Saladino Editors: Julius Schwartz Appearing in "The Challenge From 5700 A.D." Featured Characters: Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) (First appearance as Pol Manning) Supporting Characters: Iona Vane (First appearance) Korlian Dasor (First appearance) Villains: Zegors (First appearance) Sea Monster (Single appearance) Other Characters: Raf Tamin (Single appearance) Vance Barnard (Single appearance) Locations: 20th Century Coast City 58th Century Star City (First appearance) Items: Green Lantern Ring Green Lantern Power Battery Synopsis for "The Challenge From 5700 A.D." In the year 5700 AD, the Solarite Chairman Korlian Dasor is petitioning his fellow council members in the selection of a new Solar Director. However, he decides that they should choose somebody instead from the past, and suggests that they pick the Green Lantern of the 20th Century. Agreeing on this, Korlian explains there is one minor problem with their time travel technology: Anybody they take from their past has their memory wiped out when brought to their time. In order to counteract this they have selected a false identity for Green Lantern, that of Pol Manning, who is a space explorer who has a romantic relationship with Iona Vane. Iona reluctantly accepts this for the good of her civilization. While in the past, Green Lantern is called to action when a giant sea monster appears in Coast City, but as Hal prepares to fight the creature, he suddenly finds himself transported to the future and has his memories replaced with those of "Pol Manning". Korlian tells Pol of the Zegors, highly evolved Gila monsters which have now gained the ability to fire eye beams that seemingly destroy whatever they touch. Going into battle as Green Lantern, "Pol" witnesses one incident and realizes that the humans subjected to Zegor eye beams aren't killed, they're shrunk down to microscopic size. When the council (along with Iona) is also shrunk down, Green Lantern purposely shrinks himself down to check on them. Detecting a strange energy source emanating from the ground with his power ring, Green Lantern returns to his normal size and check it out. There he finds the energy coming from a Zegor base, and destroys the device that is powering the Zegor's eye beams. With their power gone, Green Lantern restores all the Solarites back to their normal size and they fight back the Zegor invaders. Green Lantern then uses his power ring to imprison them. With his mission a success, the Solarites send "Pol" back to his own time, where he appears at the exact moment he vanished with his original memories returned (and no memory of his adventure in 5700 AD). Taking one the sea monster, he realizes that the monster is actually made of gold. And so with his power ring he creates a giant vial of Aqua Rega and melts the monster away. Afterwards the military tells him that the creature was created from an unknown form of radiation. Green Lantern rushes home when he realizes that his power ring is out of power, which strikes him as odd because so far as he knew his ring was only recharged hours ago, little knowing about the future he had an adventure in. Trivia In its early appearances, Solar City was called Star City. The date of the story was chosen at random by Editor Julius Schwartz and writer John Broome, who took the number from Schwartz's office phone, where DC's offices number was engraved: Plaza9-5700.  Pol Manning is a hero of the 58th Century with changing personas. Originally he was the Green Lantern named Hal Jordan, called forward through time by the Solar Council to deal with a crisis.
The time travel affected his memory, and a Council member named Iona Vane created the fictitious "Pol Manning" identity. Jordan eventually realized this deception, and they implanted a clone with Pol Manning's identity instead. During another crisis, Salakk was called forward and implanted with the Manning identity. Eventually he broke free of it, but decided to remain in that century as a hero. This timeline was seemingly erased during Zero Hour. Pol Manning was created by John Broome and Gil Kane, first appearing in Green Lantern (Volume 2) #8. (1961)
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