Chronic Review: Green Arrow # 32

Green Arrow # 32
DC Comics
Script: JT Krul
Pencils: Federico Dallocchio
22 pages for $2.99


Boy, was I excited about Green Arrow # 32. You may recall I read the last issue and was pleasantly surprised. Krul was writing the story of a man gone too far with real emotional gravitas. There was blood on Ollie's hands, he was irritating everyone around him, and he was clearly not done with his vendetta.

The promise was for months and months of bridge-burning, moral choices, and a fresh ballsy take on a character I had previously been uninterested in. Green Arrow # 31 set quite a banquet. Green Arrow # 32 pulled everything off the table and then whizzed in my mouth.

I have never seen any book kill so much positive momentum so quickly. This was a runaway sports car that inexplicably hit the emergency brake and spit its smoking transmission out onto the pavement.

I don't want to give too many of the spoilery plot points out. To be clear, there are "happenings" in this book. It isn't that it lays still. Far worse than that, it reverses everything it was headed toward just 30 days ago in such an abrupt and unfulfilling manner that I half feel like filing a complaint for emotional abuse.

Ollie's quest for vengeance takes a left at Albuquerque.....hard. I won't say that his decision made no sense. In many ways, it made perfect sense, and sort of salvaged him as a heroic figure. But then why go through the sham of being interesting in the first place?

Ollie Queen went from a compelling man on fire to mopey-ass wet fish before you could turn the page. Gone was all the rage, all the intriguing possibilities, all the months of drama that could have been milked. Instead we get self-esteem problems and apathy. How wonderful.

Green Arrow turns himself in and heads to trial. That's where the only interesting item in the issue occurs - what Ollie does to Superman during court is actually entertaining. But this is also where the story gets disingenuous. If you're going to pull the rug out from your readers, at least make it sensible.

Queen is declared "not guilty" for the murder of Prometheus by a jury of his peers, and now insufferably self-pitying Green Arrow chastises the jury in his inner monologue. But waitaminute.....if Oliver so desperately wants to be punished for his sins, why didn't he...oh, I don't know....plead guilty??? If that's how he really felt about it, it makes no sense to put it in the hands of a jury. The decision is bullshit, patently transparent bullshit that serves preserving the status quo instead of the story.

I would have preferred one of two things. Either:

A) Go forward with where things were headed, and let Green Arrow's path of vengeance churn out months and months of potentially relevant and certainly entertaining stories about a hero gone bad.

B) Go forward with the new and not so improved Depressive Arrow, plead guilty, and run wild with a comic book preview of that "Supermax" Green Arrow prison movie they've been whispering about for years. You want action? You want redemption? Throw that dude in the clink and let him duke it out with the riff-raff. Sure, Brubaker just did it with Daredevil. You try to top him, out do him. I would respect that.

What we get is a judge who reads the "not guilty" verdict and somehow decides to gulag the man from Star City. Correct me if I'm wrong, here, but "not guilty" means "free to go". You can't just disagree with a jury and make up your own punishment if you don't like it. I know this is comics, but how am I supposed to buy into ANY of this?

This wasn't a story. This was a complete demolition of a story in the name of creating a fresh new re-booted # 1 issue. Fuck that. Fuck that in the face. This could have been special, folks. But we'll never know how special, because a whole year's worth of good comics were absolutely GOAT-ASSED inside of 22 pages. I'm guessing it's an editorial edict. Maybe Krul just lost his balls and bailed. Whatever it is, it sucks.

The sad thing is, this is probably a decision built on dollars. "We can't make this beloved character legitimately human and edgy, what will people think?" Well, they might actually buy your books. There's a novel concept. It's so weak, and right now I'm embarrassed for DC over their ridiculous bait and switch, and I'm embarrassed for myself for still buying into it.

Green Arrow just hit the chopping block.....NEXT!

- Ryan

Chronic Review: Green Arrow # 31

Green Arrow # 31
DC Comics
Script: JT Krul
Pencils: Federico Dallocchio
22 pages for $2.99

As I've previously stated, I'm not a huge DC guy, not because I have any passionate dislike for DC philosophically. It just takes a lot of continuity knowledge to understand anything these days, and I grew up a Marvel guy, continued with it, and I have more back story in the data banks to help me process what's going on.

Never been a huge Green Arrow guy, either, although I certainly have respect for Mike Grell. I'm pretty much "evented" out at this point, as well. So what the HELL am I doing chasing down part 2 of "The Fall of Green Arrow" for?

Well, I made the "mistake" of listening to the latest episode of Raging Bullets, pretty much the premier podcast if you're into DC. Nobody likes anything as much as Sean Whelan and Jim Segulin dig DC comics. So the mistake isn't listening to their show, because the passion is infectious and they dig deeper into these books than most shows would dare attempt. It's funny actually, that in episode #199 they claim to be doing "rapid fire bullet" reviews instead of their usual developed treatments.....and the show ran 150 minutes!

No, the mistake is that when you get done listening to Raging Bullets, you understand enough of what's going on where you find yourself wanting to read some of the damn books they cover! Such was the case with Green Arrow after listening to the Ragers cover Justice League: Rise and Fall, which represents chapter one in this Oliver Queen downward spiral.

It has always seemed to me that the best concepts and the best "event" books are based on things that are just dirt simple and matter. Now James Robinson has been penning this little mini-series called "Justice League: Cry For Justice" which has been met with mixed reviews. At the end of that thing, (spoilers coming) Green Arrow has suffered trauma to the point where he's crossing lines in the name of vengeance. Like...putting arrows in people's faces until they don't breathe any more lines.

That's the hook, and it's dirt simple, and it's compelling. "What would happen if a guy with already creative moral principles gets pushed to the brink and starts going postal?" I'm not saying this is an unprecedented achievement in storytelling, nor should it have to be.


What I'm saying is, this is organic storytelling that builds off of past events, remains true to the spirit of the character, and makes for good drama. How do you react if you're this guy's teammate? Friend? Wife? This is what I believe Brian Hibbs was getting at in his last "Tilting at Windmills" column on Comic Book Resources, in which he laments the rise of plot-based storytelling.

This Green Arrow plunge into darkness is not a plot-based storyline focused on the death of Prometheus and the almost certain impending demise of the Electrocutioner. That's not where the juice is. The juice is how this plays out for the man inside his tortured skull, and whether or not he's going to have anyone or anything left when he's done with his vendetta. This is character-based drama, and to me at least, it doesn't feel manufactured or artificial.

Things are shaking down in this book that matter. Forget leaving your toothbrush out or your dirty sock on the floor, this cat is drawing arrows on his wife:


That's just not bound to play well with her. I like this so much better than the "deaths" these characters routinely survive, because this will be playing out on screen. So many times we're promised "this time everything will change forever", usually because somebody dies. And then they're gone, and nobody cares, and the whole thing is forgotten until the character's improbable return from the grave. Lather, rinse, repeat. (I would say Brubaker's Cap is a notable exception to that formula, though. That character's disappearance was handled with care and depth on the page)



Well, Green Arrow isn't disappearing. He's murdering people, he's burning bridges, and one would think this is going to have to be dealt with on the page for a good long time to come. So I'm in for the duration, because this is bloody fascinating to me.

What's extra beautiful about the scenario is how organic it is. Eventually, this sort of thing would happen, would happen quite often, really. Reasonable people can come to very different conclusions about whether Ollie's actions are justified. I think he's dead wrong. I understand it, but I could never condone it. I don't think. That would be a deal-buster on the friendship thing, I think. My podcast partner would give him a high five and help him out, on the other hand. This whole thing is just more fun than most comic books allow themselves to be these days. Kudos to J.T. Krul for handling the whole thing with drama and respect for the character, and kudos to the DC braintrust for letting him run with this.

- Ryan

Chronic Review: Justice League of America # 42

Justice League of America # 42
DC Comics
Script: James Robinson
Pencils: Mark Bagley
30 pages for $3.99


Last week was devoted to experimenting with books that smelled faintly of excrement to see what was actually inside. I ended up choosing three Marvel books for that exercise, and in full disclosure there was nothing conscious or intentional about that.

I tend to read a good deal more Marvel than DC, although I don't consider myself a "Marvel" guy. Like many of you, I tend to follow particular writers rather than slavishly stick to a corporate brand. So this week I'll be profiling comics published by DC, because I don't really have my thumb on the DC pulse. This fact came into play quite often as I twirled through the latest adventure of "The World's Greatest Superheroes!"

To begin with, I really like James Robinson, or I guess to be more accurate, I REALLY liked his run on Starman. What he did with Starman was take everything silly, overly macho, simple, and boring about superheroes and throw them in the trash. Starman was more about Jack Knight than his alter ego, and maybe more about Opal City than just Jack. That comic was deep and poignant, and like any great story made you feel as though you were privy to the most intimate details of a living, breathing world.

So I was particularly interested in seeing how Mr. Robinson might tackle something like the Justice League, which doesn't seem like a good fit for his best attributes as I understand them. This is a tent pole action book with a catalog of over-the-top characters. Maybe that's why he took the book, as a change of pace, a place to flex his artistic muscle and maybe add a bit of his sophistication to a lowest common denominator affair. I don't really know why was offered the book or accepted it, but I was intrigued enough by the prospect to choose this as my first book for "DC week."



The story opens with the Shade (I guess he didn't leave Opal City behind after all) offering Green Arrow a trip into the same sort of "Moment of Trepidation" cave that Yoda pushed Luke into during Empire Strikes Back. Which isn't exactly a new idea, but one that can still pay off if you're clever about it. My issue was that I had no clue about how the Shade got involved at all, or what Green Arrow's motivations are for wanting to do such a thing.

To be fair, I'm jumping in smack in the middle of an arc, not at the beginning. But this is part of why we have difficulty bringing in new readers; it was difficult for me to feel invested in this decision of Ollie's to brave the "dragon" cave.

We then cut to the Justice League pounding the crap out of Atlas. And this is the sort of thing that bores me to tears, but what Robinson does to add depth is give access to the team members internal monologues as they fight. Batman is thinking about how strange it is to be giving orders to Green Lantern. Green Lantern is thinking about how strange it is to take orders from a Batman, particularly one he can sort of tolerate. Starfire is thinking about Dick. (insert joke here)

The point is that here is where the Robinson influence will show through; he just can't help but get at the core of the people he's writing about, and god bless him for that. It was an interesting flair that made a mindless battle into something that reveals character.

The question then becomes; what caused Atlas to go ape shit? The answer is connected to a strange device that can manipulate strong emotions with a simple touch. One of these devices is stored at S.T.A.R. labs, our next cut scene, where more super-powered over emotional people pound the crap out of each other. Again, I'm a bit lost here, because I don't know who these characters are, or their connection (if any) to the Justice League. I'm lost.

We then segue into the Watchtower, where The Atom declares that this device that makes people go bat-shit psycho is based on "New Genesis" technology. This obviously means something to the League...but it meant nothing to me. I was more interested in the side conversation (more Robinsonian bread and butter) between Hal Jordan and the Canary about Green Arrow. But again, the problem is that an obviously distressed Canary tells Hal about what happened with Roy and Star City.....and I don't know any of that. So it just lands flat.


Meanwhile, outside of the main meeting room we see Cyborg working on his computer while the head of Red Tornado tries to converse with him from behind. This was my favorite moment in the story, because we find out that Tornado's poor head had been sitting around fully conscious with his speech capacity turned off. So he's been sitting there absorbing everything, but everyone has been treating him like a paper weight because he couldn't talk and they weren't recognizing his sentience.

So Cyborg took the time to get him talking again, and is working on building him a new, supposedly indestructible body. And this is the humanizing stuff that Robinson does so well. Cyborg's research turns up another "crazy machine" in the Justice League archives, and alerts the team that the device was stored on Blackhawk Island.

So the next step is for the team to zip over there, where they find another group of super-powered people I don't recognize knocking the stuffing out of each other. And while that's going on at Blackhawk island, some of those big bads that were fighting at S.T.A.R. labs teleport onto the now empty Watchtower to do God knows what. Except the Watchtower isn't completely empty, because Ollie ends up stepping out of his Empire Strikes Back trepidation and directly into this new danger. Cue hijinx for next issue!


It's hard for me to grade this, because there's so much that is lost on me. I can definitely detect all the best humanizing elements of Robinson's writing in this "blockbuster" type story, and I think it works. My guess is that long time DC/Justice League readers are being polarized by this; some will embrace the Starmanization of their action book, and some will wonder who wussified it. But at least they'll understand it.

It's very possible that if I got the full ramifications of what was going on with Green Arrow, or if I could absorb the impact of what "New Genesis" tech implies, I might think this was the height of drama. But alas, I cannot.

Were I new reader, I don't think I would be intrigued enough by this to want to suffer through it further or backtrack. I think I'd find something else that I could pick up from the beginning. And I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with DC or Robinson taking the approach that they did. At this point, the hard core folks are your last vestige, and this is what I'm assuming they want. I think it's well written, but it was not written to invite me in. I'm not crying about it, I'm just sayin'.

Oh, by the way.....Mark Bagley rules. One of the best pure comic book style comic book artists that ever lived. And he does it on time, like a goddamned professional. I wish there were more Mark Bagleys in this world.

- Ryan