Green Lantern pterosaur time-tunnel story here!

I finally managed to track down the complete story of Green Lantern, the pterosaurs, and the time-tunnel. It wasn't easy to find, but if you've got WILL POWER you can overcome every obstacle and difficulty in life!

The synopsis I read earlier, which said Green Lantern was facing alien pterodactyls, was an oversimplification. There are intelligent alien pterodactyls in the story, but they live many light years away and can't invade Earth directly.  However, they have the technology to observe distant worlds, and millions of years ago, they noticed that primitive pterodactyls had evolved on Earth. Wanting to ensure that their kind will dominate that distant planet, they direct "a blot of instantaneous M-energy" toward Earth, knowing that "when the M-energy strikes one or more of our race on Earth, it will endow them with super-mental powers! They and their descendants will be able to conquer all their enemies with ease!" I'm not too clear on how they ensured this M-energy would hit pterodactyls and only pterodactyls, but you know what they say: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from bad writing.

However, the best-laid schemes o' alien pterodactlys gang aft agley. Having lost sight of the Earth for millions of years due to an "ionic disturbance," the alien pterodactyls finally regain contact and are dismayed to discover that Earth no longer has any pterodactlys at all! Apparently their energy beam missed! Well, mistakes happen, and space villains are notoriously bad at aiming their ray-based weaponry. Luckily, there is a Plan B for bringing about an Age of Pterodactyls on what is for them Planet B.

To give their "brethren on Earth a second chance to conquer the planet," the alien pterodactyls first send a "time-reversal beam" which temporarily sends a small area of the Earth back to the Mesozoic, causing a small number of pterodactyls to reappear. They then send a second M-energy beam, and this time they succeed in striking a pterodactyl! Armed with "super-mentality," this pterodactyl takes control of the other, still primitive, pterodactlys and begins wreaking havoc in the 20th century. His super-mentality also enables him to create an "energo-shield" which makes him and his fellow pterodactyls invincible, even against Green Lantern's Power Ring.

Since it is the "super-mentality" of their leader that makes the pterodactyls invincible, Green Lantern needs to find a way of sapping the lead ptero's mental force through fear. That's where the time-tunnel strategy comes in. He leads them through the time-tunnel back to the Mesozoic, where they encounter their ancient ancestral enemy, the T. rex. The fear this induces weakens the super-mentality enough to allow Green Lantern to defeat them, after which he returns to the 20th century.

Conveniently, just after this, Earth passes out of the alien pterodactyls' "scanner sight -- not to return again for 100 million years!" It's not clear why this is a big deal to a species that has time-travel technology, but apparently it is. The ptero king says, "I propose we abandon our hope of making our fellow-pterodactyls masters of Earth! Nothing else to be done," to which his subjects reply, "We agree, O superior one, we agree!" The End.

And thus we see the triumph of those who have Will Power over those who do not. If those space-pterodactyls had been a little less quick to abandon hope -- if they had only realized the importance of keeping on doing the thing that has you licked -- we might all be speaking ptero right now. Will Power, boys and girls, gets you what you want. Lack of Will Power loses you what you've got.

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Throughout this story, Green Lantern refers to his enemies by the abbreviated name ptero. This is obviously a sync with Tero, former surname of Mr. T, and with the Deros and Teros of the Shaver Mystery. Like the alien pteros, the Deros use various sorts of "rays" as their main weapon.

Ptero is also interesting because of the gematria connection. (As noted before, Green Lantern, time-tunnel, will power, and pterosaur all add up to 133 in S:E:G:.) Pterosaurs have at times been a sort of personal totem animal for me, and a very long time ago (c. 2003?) I noticed that ptero has the same S:E:G: value as its homophone tarot, and I even designed a handful of "ptero cards."

Pterosaurs in a superhero comic also reminded me of this classic meme:

What's the name of this pterosaur guy Spider-Man is talking to? Sauron. What is Green Lantern's only weapon against the pterosaurs? The Power Ring.

When I went to Know Your Meme to find the above meme, I found this:

This meme format reminded me a lot of something from "Once a Green Lantern, Always a Green Lantern," from the same comic book issue as the time-tunnel story. I'll upload it later and add it to this post. For now, you get this instead:

Update: Here it is.

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And now, finally, what you came here to see:

I don't know about you, but I would totally shell out for tickets to see a movie version of this.