Secret Saga of THE GREEN HORNET "My Last Case" Part 4

We change to "illustrated text story" format...

...for the epilogue to the tale of the Golden Age Green Hornet and Kato from NOW's Green Hornet V1N1 (1989)...

The story's not over!

In fact, it is just beginning!

Next Week:

The Silver/Bronze Age Green Hornet and Kato!

We told you this was a multi-generational story!

A couple of notes...

1) The site of the ambush of the Texas Rangers is usually referred to as "Bryant's Gap", not "Brian's Gap".

Presumably, this is because the authors couldn't get too close to naming anything that was part of "official" Lone Ranger continuity.
2) Though Daniel Reid Sr was buried on the site, John Reid (The Lone Ranger) and Tonto faked John's grave to fool the gang who killed the other Rangers into believing he was also dead.
It's possible that, in this universe, when John Reid/The Lone Ranger passed, Tonto and/or Dan Reid Jr interred him at that site.

Let's Roll, Kato!

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Secret Saga of THE GREEN HORNET "My Last Case" Part 3

When Last We Left Our Heroes...

...after years of work, newspaper publisher Britt Reid, pretending to be a criminal in his secret identity as The Green Hornet, has broken organized crime in his city.

With the major cartels gone, Reid feels he can finally retire his masked alter-ego, marry, and live a normal life.

But Fate, in the form of Gatland Tobias, last of the ganglords, has other plans.

Having only a month to live due to inoperable cancer, Tobias gathers every remaining gangster into an army of revenge whose only job is to make the city Tobias' funeral pyre!
Arming themselves by raiding minimally-guarded local military bases and armories filled with weapons no longer needed since World War II is over, the criminals attack government buildings, banks, stores, police stations, and even The Daily Sentinel!

The story's not over!

In fact, it is just beginning!

Next Week:

Epilogue...and a New Chapter!

Let's Roll Kato!

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Secret Saga of THE GREEN HORNET "My Last Case" Part 2

We Have Already Seen...
Cover by Jim Steranko

...after years of work, newspaper publisher Britt Reid, pretending to be a criminal in his secret identity as The Green Hornet, has broken organized crime in his city.

With the major cartels gone, Reid feels he can finally retire his masked alter-ego, marry, and live a normal life.

But fate, in the form of the last of the ganglords, has other plans...

Next Week:

The Holocaust and The Hornet!

This segment incorporates the fact that The Green Hornet radio show changed Kato's ethnic background from Japanese to Filipino...but did so over a year before Pearl Harbor..and offers a logical in-universe explanation as to how it was accomplished!
Note: The two Universal movie serials, Green Hornet (1940) and Green Hornet Strikes Again (1941) stated Kato was Korean and that Britt had saved him from Japanese racists during a trip in Asia.

Let's Roll Kato!
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Secret Saga of THE GREEN HORNET "My Last Case" Part 1

You're about to read a 30 year-old tale forgotten to pop culture and comics history...

...which takes a concept never specifically-stated (only implied), and expands it to cover over a century of a family's history!

Sadly, it won't be dull for long...as we shall see

NEXT WEEK!

Written by Ron Fortier, penciled by Jeff Butler, and inked by David Mowry, NOW Comics' Green Hornet #1 (1989) tells the history of the Reid crimefighting clan, from their Old West ancestor to his grand-nephew in the 1930s-40s, and how the Kato family became involved in the derring-do.

Trivia:
1) A link, established in the Lone Ranger and Green Hornet radio shows, is Dan Reid.

Besides being The Lone Ranger's nephew, Dan Reid is also The Green Hornet's father and appeared on both characters' radio shows and comic books, making Dan one of pop culture's first "crossover" characters!

Dan was featured in a four-episode Green Hornet arc (adapted into comics form as shown HERE and HERE) where he learned his son was the notorious Hornet.

(Remember, The Green Hornet radio show was set in the "present" of the 1930s-40s, making the adult Dan Reid (in his late 60s-early 70s) a teenager in the late 1880s, the time period of The Lone Ranger!)
2) Though the masked cowboy in the painting in Britt Reid Senior's study is The Lone Ranger, he couldn't be named in this book due to licensing restrictions separating the two characters whose non-radio projects including movies/tv shows, comic books, even prose novels, always had different studios and publishers!
(Dynamite Comics licensed both the Ranger and the Hornet, allowing them to finally join the two characters in a single story without restriction!)

And, since the creatives at NOW couldn't be too obvious about the connection, they decided to give both the Hornet and Ranger their 1940s movie serial masks, which looked suprisingly-similar, even though two different studios (Universal for Green Hornet and Republic for Lone Ranger) did the serials...

...instead of their 1940s novel and comic book masks!

Let's Roll Kato!
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The Green Hornet
Limited Edition, HTF Hardcover produced in 1990 reprinting the inital storyline
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