"Silver" Skates, "Torchy" Thomas, "Franky" Steiner, and "Natty" Nick Natwick some of the best crooks on the west coast have joined forces in order to destroy the Green Lantern. The next day, Hal Jordan is on a date with his girlfriend Eve Doremus on her fathers estate which is holding a children's charity, which boasts a special appearance by the Green Lantern. In order to make this public appearance without anyone connecting Green Lantern and Hal Jordan, Hal uses his power ring to create a duplicate that can stand in for him while he is putting on a show for the kids.

While performing for the audience, the Green Lantern not only gives an awful string of one liners, he also becomes grossly apathetic and slightly reckless with his power ring, making the audience not enjoy the show. When crooks rob the charity, Green Lantern doesn't seem to care and only does it because Eve begs him to do so. Going into space, Green Lantern wonders what is wrong with him. After saving the Earth from a meteor, he decides to embrace his apathetic behavior and decides to look out only for himself. His first act is to use his power ring to steal the Statue of Liberty, and act that causes the Guardians of the Universe to appear and strip him of his power ring. As he was publicly stripped of his abilities, the event gets the front page of all the newspapers. Later, "Natty" Nick puts an add in the newspaper offering Green Lantern what the Emerald Crusader craves and asks to meet.

Arriving incognito, the Green Lantern is offered four different power rings, each one with a different power. Although they are not as powerful as the Lantern's original emerald ring, he accepts them and once more goes out and causes trouble for everyone he encounters, ending up being branded a criminal and shunned by everyone. Meanwhile the four crooks tune into a special radio frequency to listen to their master praise their work and tell them that their job is about done. Cutting off the power to the rings, the Green Lantern becomes a wreck and a bum, and in spite of the kindness of a group of hippies, whom do not wish to judge the Green Lantern, GL is arrested and locked in a jail cell. There he finds he's in the cell next to his old foe Hector Hammond, who has been using his mental powers in order to orchestrate these turn of events from his jail cell. Explaining how he pulled everything off he also tells Hal that he is close enough to him that Hammond can use his mental powers to kill the Green Lantern. In spite of Hammond's best efforts to kill the Green Lantern, he is saved at the last minute by the hippies, who paid his bail and take him out of the jail.

Thanking the hippies, GL goes after the gang that Hammond hired to get him and easily defeats them with his bare hands. After the fight is over, one of the Guardians appears and tells Hal that the whole episode that they never intervened and took his ring, as it was all an illusion created by Hector Hammond to demoralize the Green Lantern. Afterwards, the Guardian brings Hal his power battery to recharge his ring so that he can once more proudly call himself the Green Lantern again.

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