The Green Hornet

Green Hornet
Gold Key Comics' The Green Hornet #2 (May 1967)
Publication information
First appearance	The Green Hornet radio program (January 31, 1936)
Created by	George W. Trendle Fran Striker
In-story information
Alter ego	Britt Reid
Partnerships	Kato
Abilities	Genius-level intelligence Master detective Expert hand-to-hand combatant

The Green Hornet is a fictional character, a masked crime-fighter, created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker, with input from radio director James Jewell, in 1936. Since his radio debut in the 1930s, the Green Hornet has appeared in numerous serialized dramas in a wide variety of media. The character appeared in film serials in the 1940s, a network television program in the 1960s, multiple comic book series from the 1940s on, and a feature film in January 2011. The franchise is currently owned by Green Hornet, Inc., who license the property across a wide variety of media that includes comics, films, TV shows, radio and books. The comic book rights are currently licensed out to DC Comics and Dynamite Entertainment.

Though various incarnations sometimes change details, in most versions the Green Hornet is the alter ego of Britt Reid, wealthy young publisher of the Daily Sentinel newspaper by day. But by night Reid dons the long green overcoat, green fedora hat and green mask of the mysterious "Green Hornet" to fight crime as a vigilante. Reid is accompanied by his loyal and similarly masked partner and confidant, Kato, who drives their technologically advanced car, the "Black Beauty". Though both the police and the general public believe the Hornet to be a criminal, Reid uses that perception to help him infiltrate the underworld, leaving behind for the police the criminals and any incriminating evidence he has found.

The character debuted in The Green Hornet, an American radio program that premiered on January 31, 1936, on WXYZ, the same local Detroit station that originated its companion shows The Lone Ranger and Challenge of the Yukon. Beginning on April 12, 1938, the station supplied the series to the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network, and then to NBC Blue and its successors, the Blue Network and ABC, from November 16, 1939, through September 8, 1950. It returned from September 10 to December 5, 1952. It was sponsored by General Mills from January to August 1948, and by Orange Crush in its brief 1952 run.