Green Lama
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Green Lama was an American pulp magazine hero of the 1940s. In many respects a typical costumed crime-fighter of the period, the Green Lama's most unusual feature was the fact that he was a practising Buddhist. Slightly different versions of the same character also appeared in comic books and on the radio.
Contents |
[edit] Pulp origins
The Green Lama first appeared in a short novel entitled The Green Lama in the April 1940 issue of Double Detective magazine. The novel was written by Kendell Foster Crossen using the pseudonym of "Richard Foster". Writing in 1976[1], Crossen recalled that the character was created because the publishers of Double Detective, the Frank Munsey company, wanted a competitor for The Shadow which was published by their rivals Street & Smith. The Green Lama proved to be successful (though not as successful as The Shadow), and Crossen continued to produce Green Lama stories for Double Detective regularly up until March 1943. Although appearing in a detective fiction magazine, the Green Lama tales can be considered science fiction or supernatural fantasy in that the Green Lama and other characters are possessed of superhuman powers and super-science weapons. The Green Lama is an alias of Jethro Dumont, a rich resident of New York City who spent ten years in Tibet studying to be a lama (a Buddhist guru) and learning many mystical secrets in the process. Dumont is also endowed with superhuman powers acquired through his scientific knowledge of radioactive salts. Dumont has two alter egos - the crime-fighting Green Lama, and the Buddhist priest Dr Pali.
[edit] Buddhist element in the stories
The Green Lama stories are unusual amongst the pulp fiction of that era in their sympathetic and relatively knowledgeable portrayal of Buddhism, both in the text of the stories and in numerous footnotes. From Crossen's own comments,[2] however, it is clear that this was not proselytism on his part but simply due to the fact that he wanted to create a Tibetan Buddhist character and then read everything he could find on the subject. The most frequent reference to Buddhism in the stories is the use of the Sanskrit mantra "Om mani padme hum", which would indeed be used by Tibetan monks. However, the majority of other references to Buddhism in the stories, while accurate, relate to the Theravada form of Buddhism rather than the Tibetan form, with frequent use of Pali words such as "Magga", "Nibbana" and "Dhamma" which would be unlikely to be used by Tibetan Buddhists.
[edit] Transformation into a comic-book character
The pulp version of the Green Lama described above is reminiscent in many ways of a comic-book superhero, and with his mystical Tibetan origins the character can be seen as a distant precursor of Marvel's Doctor Strange. It is therefore not surprising that soon after his pulp appearance the Green Lama underwent the transition to comics. The Green Lama's first comic-book appearance was in issue #7 of Prize Comics (December 1940), where he continued to appear for 27 issues. He then moved to his own title, The Green Lama (Spark Publications) which lasted for 8 issues from December 1944 to March 1946. The character of the Green Lama was somewhat different in his comic-book incarnation (for example having the power of flight, and wearing a skin-tight costume) although the scripts were still written by Kendell Foster Crossen who had created the earlier pulp version of the character.[1]
[edit] Radio appearances
More than three years after the demise of his comic-book, the Green Lama was resurrected for a short-lived CBS radio series that ran for eleven episodes from 5 June 1949 to 20 August 1949, with the character's voice provided by Paul Frees.[2]
