Actually Essential Storylines: Green Arrow

This week’s 52 origin story features Oliver Queen, The Green Arrow, as drawn by current GA penciller Scott McDaniel.

It takes Mark Waid an awful lot of verbiage to get this particular origin out, and there’s not much to it by way of history. Three panels recount Ollie’s island adventure origin, three more detail his superheroic lifestyle. There’s no mention of Speedy, Hal Jordan, Black Canary, Seattle, the Justice League or even his death and resurrection.

But the “Essential Storylines” suggestions are actually quite strong this week (Has DC been listening to little old me?), and if you follow up on these, you’ll be pretty up to speed with the high points of Green Arrow’s fictional career.

But in the interest of obsessive compulsive completionism, I’m going to proceed with a feature on Ollie Queen storylines anyway, because although space in a two-page origin is limited, space on the Internet is infinite (as are the lengths I’ll go to procrastinate doing real work).

Anyway, here’s what DC suggested…

MORE FUN COMICS #73 and #89: DC continues to consider the first appearances of characters as “essential storylines,” which accounts for #73 making the list; #89 is one of GA’s origin stories. I can’t imagine either is really worth hunting down and purchasing, although I’ve only read the latter (Which was collected in this awesome book).


SHOWCASE PRESENTS: THE GREEN ARROW VOL.1: The Showcase books are all pretty much required reading in my book, although I haven’t gotten to this one yet. It’s over 500 pages of Green Arrow and Speedy adventures starting in 1958, and although they’re pretty much just a bargain basement version of Batman and Robin at the time, this book collects stories that account for GA’s “early years,” which you’ll often see glimpsed in flashbacks in later, better tales.


GREEN ARROW: THE LONGBOW HUNTERS: Writer/artist Mike Grell’s late-80’s reinvention of Green Arrow as an urban hunter of criminals signaled a creative high point in the character’s career. For the first time, GA was a true star capable of carrying his own title, rather than a team member, co-star or back-up feature filler, and he became even more greatly differentiated from Batman. It’s also the start of Green Arrow as a somewhat mature title; the Grell-helmed monthly that spun out of this series was never quite Vertigo mature, but it was certainly more so than most of the rest of the DCU at the time.

This four-part prestige series is probably the best Green Arrow’s adventures have ever looked, and is full of important moments. Ollie and his lover/partner Black Canary move to Seattle; Ollie takes a new costume; Shado is introduced; Canary is brutally attacked (when people mention her on the list of DC’s rape victims, this is the story they’re referencing, although the rape is implied rather than explicit, and it’s actually somewhat up in the air if she was sexually attacked at all or not); and Oliver Queen crosses that superhero line and kills a foe.

Re-reading it today, it’s interesting in that it shows Ollie having something of a mid-life crisis and expressing his desire to have kids with Black Canary, who flat out refuses (she recently left Birds of Prey recently to raise an adopted daughter, although those circumstances are somewhat unique). And it is an eloquent reminder that there’s a big difference between mature and sophisticated storytelling for adults and crass, clumsy and exploitive stories about violence and “issues,” which is what the current Green Arrow series has quickly devolved into since writer Judd Winick took the reigns.

Although DC recommends reading the trade collection, it is, in fact, out of print at the moment. Let’s stop and think about this for a moment: Longbow Hunters is currently unavailable in trade paperback, but you can walk into a big-box bookstore and purchase a trade of Heading Into the Light right now. How fucked up is that?

It’s moments like this that I wonder who’s in charge of DC’s trade program; I can only assume that it is a ravenous, perhaps even rabid wolf that was captured from the wild, dressed in a suit and given an office, where it runs around snapping at things and trying to escape, while those lower on the DC totem pole interpret its actions as decisions regarding what to collect and what not to. Seriously, there is no other explanation. None.


GREEN ARROW: QUIVER: This is the high profile story arc that returned Oliver Queen to the land of the living after his mid-90’s death, and launched the current volume of Green Arrow (which Winick’s been fucking up pretty much ever since). Now, Oliver Queen was really, totally, unequivocally, no-way-around-it, dead-as-a-doornail dead-dead; he was handcuffed to an airplane which was carrying a huge bomb and he got blown to kingdom come (um, that’s just expression; I’m not referring to Kingdom Come. At least, not yet). That particular storyline isn’t available in trade, but is recapped sufficiently here in Quiver that perhaps it doesn’t need to be.

Writer Kevin Smith, with artists Phil Hester and Ande Parks, had the task of bringing Ollie Queen back from the dead, and he did so in a convoluted but spectacular process (the resurrection story was somewhat similar to Green Lantern Hal Jordan’s, in that he was totally dead, and had to be brought back in a very complicated way to make it feasible).

Smith’s story called upon the supernatural, and included plenty of guest-stars: Batman, Aquaman, Green Arrow Connor Hawke, Arsenal, Black Canary, The Spectre Hal Jordan, the JLA, the Demon Etrigan, Black Manta and even Spoiler. In the process, Smith introduced Mia Dearden, returned Ollie Queen to his late Silver Age/Bronze Age costume and brought back the trick arrows and the Star City setting. Oh, and Stanley and His Monster are totally introduced into DCU continuity (although I’ve only seen ‘em once since, in an Infinite Crisis cameo). This epic was originally collected in two trade paperbacks and a hardcover collection, although dccomics.com currently lists the hardcover as “out of print” and there’s no mention of the trades. See? A wolf.


GREEN ARROW: THE ARCHER’S QUEST: Or, as I like to call it, “the only really good comic book Brad Meltzer’s ever written.” Returned to the land of the living, Ollie sees a photo of his own funeral, and something seems amiss, so he and Arsenal (whom he forces to wear a domino mask instead of sunglasses) go on a quest that involves collecting some very special items from some very special locales (JLA HQ, The Flash Museum, the Arrowcave), for a very special purpose that isn’t revealed until the rather satisfying ending.

Meltzer’s ignorance of post-crisis continuity shows through here and there, particularly in his treatment of Catman (Gail Simone would later have to go way out of her way to fix what Meltzer does to him here), but this makes for a very fun, satisfying story, one which drops a bombshell regarding Ollie’s relationship to Connor (Which I don’t think anyone’s followed up on yet, have they?), an almost big moment regarding his relationship with Black Canary, and a great bit between Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and Ollie. Other guest-stars include Oracle, Solomon Grundy, The Flash, Superman, The Shade and J’onn J’onnz, and the story clearly presages Identity Crisis in several ways, most notably its focus on modern superhero death rituals and Meltzer’s treatment of Villains Who Aren’t Deathstroke.


And here’s what they missed…


THE GREEN ARROW BY JACK KIRBY: Some (maybe all?) of these 11 stories are collected in the Showcase volume, but there they’re diluted by a bunch of not-Kirby art. This slim, 70-page prestige special from 2001 collected all of Kirby’s GA work, and it’s a revelation seeing all those weird monsters, supervillains, spaceships and unmistakable angles and anatomy applied to Green Arrow instead of Marvel or Fourth World characters. If you see it in a back-issue bin, buy it.


GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW VOLS. 1 and 2: The most surprising no-show on the “Essential Storylines” list are these two recently released trades, which collect the classic GL/GA team-ups by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams. While O’Neil’s issue-oriented scripts and dialogue haven’t aged terribly well (although one can draw a direct line between the preachier of these stories and the preacheir of Winick’s, like the all-HIV issue), Adams’ art is timeless, and these are the tales where Green Arrow’s modern personality began to take shape.

They’re also somewhat of a watershed in terms of DC stories addressing real-world politics and social issues, making this an important series of stories in terms of the DCU as seen from the outside (Herein you’ll find the Speedy hooked on Speed story, as well as my favorite Hal Jordan moment of all, in which an elderly black man asks him why he never helps black people, but is always flying around space helping green and purple people).

As far as GA story history goes, this “Hard Traveling Heroes” era is constantly being referenced, from the many different iterations of the GL/GA team-ups over the years (Connor and Kyle, Connor and time-lost Hal Jordan, Connor and Jade, Ollie and Kyle, and most recently Hal and Roy) to Hal and Ollie’s oft-explored bond of friendship.


GREEN ARROW, JUSTICE LEAGUER: Historically, Green Arrow was the first new hero to be inducted into the Justice League after the original seven, and he served on the team pretty much continuously until the end of the Satellite Era (of which there are no real trade collections off; which is odd, considering current League scribe Meltzer’s affection for the era), usually as a foil to Hawkman and the voice of the common man among the superheroes.

Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol. 1 contains some of these early Silver Age stories, but for modern stories set during GA’s League years, you can’t go wrong with Mark Waid and Barry Kitson’s maybe no-longer canon JLA: Year One, John Ostrander and Val Smeiks’ JLA: Incarnations #2 and #3, the Christopher Preist written Legends of the DCU #12 and #13 (a great story featuring GA in several different states of mind over the years), the Tom Peyer and Mark Waid’s co-scrpited The Flash and Green Lantern: The Brave and the Bold, JLA 80-Page Giant #1 (Which featured “For Sale—The Justice League!” By Tom Peyer, Mark Pajarillo and Walden Wong, a story in which Hawkman argues with GA, at one point throwing out, “What are you, a communist?”) and JLA 80-Page Giant #2 (In which Len Wein and Sal Velutto again show Hawkman and GA acting, as Aquaman puts it, like one another’s “arch-enemies.” Usually I side with GA over Hawkman, who has been a total asshole of late, but Hawkman makes a strong argument against Green Arrow in this story, when he mentions “that ridiculous looking beard.” I think it looks cool on paper, but I bet if I knew a dude like that in real life, I’d hate him too).


GREEN ARROW: THE SOUNDS OF VIOLENCE: Kevin Smith’s run lasted longer than he had originally intended, and the issues he wrote after the “Quiver” storyline fill this trade. Ollie tries to rekindle his romance with Canary, and this involves visiting her at JSA headquarters in the middle of the night (where we see his first meeting with Hawkman post-resurrection) and going out on a dinner date which gets disrupted by The Riddler.

Later, new and cleverly conceived comic book villain Onomatopoeia is introduced, and he is apparently a serial killer of totally human, non-powered superheroes. He takes out Virago and Buckeye (a former Ohioan who has taken up hero-ing in Pennsylvania) before heading to Star City and putting a bullet in Connor’s head. I was genuinely worried about Connor during this storyline, since there were now two super-archers named Green Arrow in the DCU, and the younger one had failed to make fans forget his dad during his chance as the sole star of the last volume of the Green Arrow comic.


IDENTITY CRISIS: Say what you will about this story (and I know I’ve said a lot already), it does make for a pretty strong Green Arrow story, even if it completely falls apart at the end (and, much like Civil War, the longer you think about it, the more problems you’ll find). As a member of the so-called “Power Pact” of Bad Leaguers who opt to lobotomize Dr. Light and mind-wipe Batman, as well as being the Everyman character Meltzer best associates with, a good chunk of the story features and/or is narrated by Ollie, who manages to bond with Connor and make an enemy out of Deathstroke, The Terminator (heh!). Rags Morales draws a really great GA, but then, Morales draws a really great Just About Everybody.


GREEN ARROW, LOITERER: Ollie was seemingly in no hurry to re-up with the Justice League after returning to life, but he sure did hang around the Watchtower a lot. When the Big Seven were lost in The “Obsidian Age”, Ollie joined the replacement League led by Nightwing. When Batman and Superman gave Sister Superior the chance to reform the Elite into a force of good, Ollie, the Flash, Major Disaster and Manitou Raven joined the Elite in 12-part maxiseries Justice League Elite.When the Big Eight needed help against the Crime Syndicate and Qwardian Invaders in Kurt Busiek’s “Syndicate Rules,” Ollie joined with other reservists to lend a helping hand. He appeared in the first modern JLA/JSA crossover (and, the following year, showed up at the Brownstone in casual clothes to make fun of Hawkman), teamed-up with Kyle Rayner to fight Sinestro during Hal Jordan’s rebirth, joined other Satellite Era alum in sticking their noses in Wally West’s business, and got in a lot of annoying arguments with other Leaguers in the last two story arcs in the recently concluded volume of JLA.


THE JUDD WINICK ERA: Ollie, Kyle Rayner and their supporting casts teamed up to bust up a ring of alien drug dealers. Then Ollie slept with Jefferson “Black Lightning” Pierce’s neice, resulting in her being killed by a bad guy and Black Canary dumping him. He fought construction workers who were being turned into trolls. He fought a mystical army of demon policeman. He borrowed The Riddler from Batman, teamed up with The Outsdiers, teamed up with Black Lightning, fought Dr. Rape, the resurrected Jason Todd, Deathstroke the Terminator (hee hee!) and new villains like kung fu guy Drakon and The Kingpin-meets-Blood Syndicate’s-Brick rip-off named Brick. Mia Dearden became Speedy II, became HIV positive and joined the Teen Titans. Oliver Queen ran for mayor of Star City and won, and no one suspected that Oliver Queen and Green Arrow were one and the same, despite the fact that they are the only two men in America with that weird little beard (outside of Uncle Sam and Deathstroke, of course).

I’ve read it all in trade up until the first issue of “Crawling From the Wreckage” (borrowed from the library, so as not to pay for it anymore), and it’s all been really, really, really bad (Except for the issue where Roy and Connor bond, however, was pretty great; further evidence that Winick doesn’t have to suck, he just tends to).

Does DC agree? Seems like. If not, why aren’t any Winick-written storylines listed as “essential?” Particularly since his run is better represented in trades than any other run?

Word on the street (and by “street” I mean Comicbookresources.com’s “Lying In the Gutters” column) is that the current volume of Green Arrow is going to be cancelled and replaced with Green Arrow/Black Canary some time this year, as the two heroes are supposed to tie the knot (Yeah! A big event comic that doesn’t involve a death!). I have my fingers crossed that the new series will be written by Black Canary expert/capable writer Gail Simone.


THE BEST OF THE REST: Detective Comics #549 and #550 featured a two-part Green Arrow/Black Canary story entitled “Night Olympics.” It was illustrated by Klaus Janson and written by some guy named Alan Moore. It’s been collected in DC Universe: the Stories of Alan Moore, which is absolute required reading for any and all DC fans.

Scott Beatty, aka The Guy Who Should Have Taken Over Green Arrow after “Archer’s Quest,” presented two excellent done-in-one fill-ins during the current volume of the series. In #22, he joined series artists Hester, Parks and cover artist Matt Wagner to retell Ollie’s origin and check in on longtime antagonist Count Vertigo. And in #33, Beatty joined guest artist Shawn Martinborough to tell a flashback involving Speedy and the Arrowcar, while Mia, Batman and The Scavenger all duked it out on eBay for a bit of expensive GA memorabilia.

And while not strictly an Oliver Queen story per se, JLA #8 featured Connor Hawke’s first day on the job as the League’s new Emerald Archer, and he finds them all in the clutches of The Key and his killer androids. His own quiver destroyed, Connor is forced to use his father’s crazy, impossible to fire trick arrows pilfered from a trophy case to save the day. It’s a brilliant little story that manages to be about both Green Arrows at the same time.

That’s all I can think of. I know there were Legends of the Dark Knight and Legends of the DCU stories featuring a young Ollie Queen, and an appearance in Adventures in the DCUniverse that were all decent, but not great. If anyone has any must-read suggestions, feel free to give ‘em a shout out below.


OTHER UNIVERSES: In the DKU, Ollie was one the only DC heroes aside from Superman to play an important role in The Dark Knight Returns, in which we see how scary a radicalized Oliver Queen is, and exactly how many arms he needs to be deadly with a bow and arrow. He’d rearm to join Batman’s forces in less-awesome but still great fun sequel The Dark Knight Strikes Again!

Alan Davis’ Elseworlds epic The Nail played off of Frank Miller’s version of a one-armed, half-deranged Oliver Queen, although this Ollie is in his current state do to getting fucked up by Amazo (Black Canary, meanwhile, leads The Outsiders). Not much of a story, but fantastic art.

On the Elseworlds tip, one of my favorite alternate Ollies is surely the one that appears in Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham, the Lovecraft-ified Bat-tale written by Mike Mignola and Richard Pace, with pencils by Troy Nixey (and covers by Mignola).

Ollie would again join forces with Batman in Kingdom Come, when he, Black Canary and Ted Kord sign up with Bats and his human team against the forces of Superman and Wonder Woman (Even if Roy Harper grew his own stupid beard and sold out to Superman, going under the name “Red Arrow.”)

In Darwyn Cooke’s New Fronteir, we get some Arrow action toward the end, when young, smooth-chinned Oliver Queen takes the Arrowplane up against the menace of flying Dinosaur Island.

In the Ross-iverse, GA is a member of the JLA, along with his live-in girlfriend Black Canary. His origin is retold in the Paul Dini/Alex Ross collaboration JLA: Secret Origins, and he guest-stars near the end of their JLA: Liberty and Justice. In the still ongoing Justice, Green Lantern is one of the ten thousand heroes on Ross’ Justice League.

Thanks to his appearances in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon, GA is of course a member of the JLU in the Johnny DC JLU series. My favorite Green Arrow moment came in #17, in which GA punches Uncle Sam in the super-strong jaw, saying “Nice beard, old-ti--yeow!” Sam responds by punching him across the room, while saying “I was gonna say the same thing to you, youngster… only without the 'yeow' part!”

Man, is there anything better than two guys with the exact same beard getting in a fistfight?