Fighting for Truth, Justice and the Middle Way

Ask any kid in the 1940s where you might go to acquire super powers, and he could have told you.

Oh, sure, he would have known that Krypton had already exploded, and that Billy Batson’s subway station had been abandoned by the wizard Shazam, and that Wonder Woman’s Paradise Island had an undisclosed location. But he could also have pointed you to a spot on the classroom globe that regularly exported super-powered champions of justice — just there, in Asia, northeast of the Himalayas.

The Green Lama in the pulp magazines.

Tibet.

On radio, Lamont Cranston had returned from Tibet with the power of invisibility as The Shadow, and Frank Chandler had come home with an array of paranormal abilities as Chandu the Magician. In comic books, childhood training by a secret Tibetan sect had produced Amazing-Man, a being to rival Superman.

And in 1940, millionaire Jethro Dumont had come back from Tibet as a Buddhist monk, only to discover that crime was so rampant he must assume the identity of the crusading Green Lama.

Although little-known now, the Green Lama was actually a fairly important American superhero in his day, a crossover character in three media — pulp magazines, comic books and dramatic radio.

His comic book adventures benefited from great art by the much-admired Mac Raboy (The Complete Green Lama: Featuring the Art of Mac Raboy is available in two hardcover volumes from Dark Horse Archives).

The Green Lama in 1940s comic books.

The pulp version of the character, which appeared first, didn’t boast such extravagant super powers. But he could, by ingesting “radioactive salts,” stun criminals with a gentle touch. Seems more fitting for a Buddhist hero than a teeth-rattling haymaker, somehow.

“When he gets in trouble, he chants Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ, and the power of that mantra resonates with a monastery in Tibet and transforms him into an unstoppable crime-fighting force,” a writer called Geoff noted in an essay about the Green Lama comics. “Needless to say, this is a fairly unprecedented use of the mantra of Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion.

“On the upside, they did get the Tibetan spelling of the mantra right, which is no small feat for 1945. Besides his unconventional use of the maṇi, he has a Tibetan servant named Tsarong who calls him 'tulku' and he even works the term 'lama' into his crime-fighting name. Surely this must be the most Tibet-centric superhero ever.”

“Other than its Tibet connection, perhaps the most striking thing about this comic series is the explicit anti-racism stance it takes. The Green Lama was published from 1944-1946, and in one issue, the Green Lama picks up a racist soldier and carries him to Nazi Germany, where he sees the impact of racism and learns the error of his ways. In another issue, the Green Lama travels to Texas in order to expose and shame an anti-Semite.”

The Green Lama was created in 1939 by pulp writer Kendell Foster Crossen as an assignment from Munsey Publications. His mission was to duplicate the success of the Shadow, by then a decade-old radio and pulp magazine character. Crossen was inspired by a Columbia University student, Theos Casimir Barnard, who had journeyed to Tibet to investigate the mysterious business of “Lamaism.”

“I was trying to pick a name somewhat like in sound to Lamont Cranston,” Crossen recalled.  “You know what I mean, Lamont-Dumont. It was as close as I dared get to Lamont Cranston. A book had just been published about an American who had gone to Tibet and studied and had become a lama, the only white person who ever had at that time. The result was the Green Lama, which the company liked.”

Originally, the crime fighter was to be named the Gray Lama, but the company found that color too drab to capture the eye on a newsstand. The Saffron Lama might have been more appropriate, but was undoubtedly out of the question.

Sales of Double Detective Magazine jumped for the issue when the Green Lama appeared. Unlike other superhero creators, Crossen wisely retained the rights to his character. When the pulp magazine ran its course in 1943, Crossen spring-boarded the character as a rival for the million-sellers Captain Marvel and Superman.

In 1949, as the comic book superheroes were fading, their wartime popularity spent, Crossen sold the character to CBS as a radio series, and the Green Lama, a/k/a the Man of Strength, almost made into onto early television. He’s still regularly revived in comics and pulp stories.