How do I keep doing this?
By this, I mean reading 20 issues of boringness because I WANT to like it. There's 52 series occurring and outside of Batman, I've yet to find one I've really liked enough where I'd pay for it. This could be a problem
But why did I go with Green Arrow? Honestly because I knew little to nothing about him. I've never seen much about him outside of appearances in a few DC events (Identity Crisis comes to mind). My largest exposure to him comes from Batman The Brave and the Bold where him and BaderBats constantly try to one up each other. I liked him there and decided to give it a go the other day while at Barnes and Noble. I read the first trade..and it didn't make a lot of sense. Oliver Queen is Green Arrow. He's also the anti-Steve Jobs. Given a giant tech company by his father, he is almost never present. Much like Tony Stark, he drinks, parties, and crimefights rather than be a part of his corporate machine that funds his gadgets he needs since he has no superpowers. And by fund, I really mean fund. He pays people to design his weapons and do his intel, while he goes out and punches and shoots things with random arrows. So unlike Batman who does everything himself, Green Arrow does nothing but show up. Did I mention his origin? He was cruising and they were attacked and somehow everyone died but him. Now he's motivated to fight crime. Um dude it was pirates, not supervillains that attacked your friends. You're doing it wrong. The writers cant seem to make up their mind whether Green Arrow is a "superhero" or a street level crimefighter and the comic suffers for it as it constantly jumps between the two. They try to build some emotion and growth and show the evil CEO as trying to be Snapeish (you think he's the villain but he's trying to help under it all), but none of it connects. It's like me playing baseball. Swinging at everything and hitting nothing. Ollie's not even all that likable.
One of the biggest offenses is something silly but bothered me throughout this run. For me, comics are an episodic format. Next month's issue should pick up as close to this month's issue as possible for a reasonable story. Often we'd end in a crisis and just skim over it. What the hell? Ugh.
The good thing is? Towards issue 17 Jeff Lemire take over and he seems to have a better handle on how to make Ollie and co interesting. This still could be saved. Honestly? Wait a few more issues and pretend like issues 1-16 (Jurgens/Nocenti) never happened.
The Arrow is my penis.
-Oz
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