The Green Hornet, OTOH, doesn't just wear a mask but also creates a criminal persona in order to lure gangsters into his web. This puts the hero at permanent odds with the authorities, and apparently the hero's willing to suffer these slings and arrows, perhaps having faith in his superior (albeit merely uncanny) technology: the super-fast car "the Black Beauty" and his special knockout-gas gun. He like the Ranger also has a partner/confidante, his Korean driver Kato, but Kato doesn't get much action in this serial. In one scene where Kato knocks out a crook, the polite Asian apologizes afterward. The Hornet, played by hefty Gordon Jones, looks impressive in his frequent brawls with his opponents, all of whom are mundane racketeers with no great distinction.
To be sure, the actual adventures of the Hornet are no more "pessimistic" than were those of early Batman. However, in this serial the Hornet's origin suggests an emotional tone not unlike the Caped Crusader's survivor-guilt. In the first episode, newspaper manager Britt Reid-- who is carrying on the newspaper inherited from his father, implicitly still alive but retired-- doesn't listen to advice suggesting that he should investigate racketeer influence at a local mining-operation. Shortly after this bit of negligence on his part, a mine collapses and kills several miners because racketeers supplied substandard building materials. Immediately after this, Reid decides to launch a personal crusade against crime as the Green Hornet.
What's interesting is that though the script sets up the potential for the hero to be grief-stricken by his culpability, the serial avoids any direct admission of Britt Reid's guilt. The Hornet's quest isn't seen in terms of compensation; it's just something any decent man would wish to do. Still, there's a mild similarity in the serial's origin-story to that of a much later arthropod hero, the Amazing Spider-Man-- though the later hero loses a person dear to him due to his negligence, while the nascent Hornet's neglect only costs the lives of men the publisher does not know. Still, it's significant that the Hornet is born out of guilt and a failure to emulate his paternal ideal, as his secretary repeatedly emphasizes to Reid. The deeper motive is dropped almost as soon as it is raised, just as the adventures of Batman rarely returned to the scene of that character's inner trauma. External action ruled the ethos of the day in adventure-fiction, but it could be said that the Hornet, unlike his more optimistic predecessor the Ranger, suggests the way things would evolve down the superhero road.
I should add that there's one major thematic difference between the origins of the Lone Ranger and of Superman: John Reid is severely wounded by the ambush of his posse of Texas Rangers, while little Kal-L isn't even aware of what's going on when he's rocketed clear of the dying planet Krypton. However, the upshot of both characters' isolation from their ingroup are de-personalized by the way both become virtual icons. The Ranger becomes bonded to a Native American and both become a symbol of mythic brotherhood, with Reid's wounding and even his history quickly forgotten. Superman is bonded to the people of Earth as their angelic protector, and he goes through ten years of adventures before he feels any anguish about Krypton's demise. The Green Hornet and Batman have their mythic aspects as well, but there's less of a sense that they are myths made flesh; their mundane lives are never entirely obliterated by their heroic roles.
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