It’s all go for the Green Arrow family. As Oliver Queen and Lian Harper are pinged from an alien world to Earth’s future by forces unknown and encounter Ollie’s long-lost son Conner Hawke…
… Dinah Lance and Roy Harper have broken into Belle Reve prison in an attempt to find out who’s determined to stop a family reunion.
The grey-faced guy with the tragic soul patch is Count Vertigo, once the most debonair of supervillains. Does he know how Amanda Waller, Suicide Squad leader turned general psychotic, is connected to the Arrow family’s problems? Why they keep teleporting away from one another?
Another interesting question is: how the heck is Lian alive? She was seemingly blown to smithereens years ago in the terrible Justice League: Cry For Justice mini-series. Here we get answers.
I mean, they don’t actually make sense – we saw Ollie cradling Lian after a building collapsed on her – but if you look in the other direction, they’re enough to take Joshua Williamson’s story forward. The DC Universe has had several resets since Lian died, so of course she didn’t really pop her clogs, she found herself living a few years in the past and grew way beyond her original five years.
I don’t quite get how the teleporting heroes bit fits into the DC timeline. Sure, Lian was dead, we never saw Connor for years and Ollie vanished during a recent Justice League adventure, but that just seemed like comics. People come and go. No one was asking: ‘Why are Ollie and Dinah and Roy and Conner always being displaced and dispersed’: it simply wasn’t a thing. But if Williamson wants to try to make a series of random events into a coherent narrative, fair enough. At least it gives fans of the Brian Bendis/Ryan Sook Legion of Super-Heroes a chance to enjoy one more crowd scene in which no one actually does anything. Later in the issue Brainiac 5 does at least pinpoint what’s causing all the zapping around time and space…
…but he doesn’t have any notion as to how to help. It’s not like he has a brain the size of a planet, one pal who can phase into people’s bodies, or another who can shrink her way in. Or know a couple of magic users. Or someone with all the sensory and subtle powers of Superman. An any-material alchemist. The Legion of Super-Heroes is helpless. Helpless!
Finally, a recording reveals all.
I’ve admitted many a time to being a massive fan of ‘continuity porn’. Join the most obscure of dots and I’m usually happy. But I’m getting a tad tired of this sprawling reset for the Green Arrow family. A Dark Knight Returns Oliver doing deals with Amanda Waller? The Great Disaster caused by the Green Arrow family rather than (giggle) Karate Kid? The surprise last-page guest star? It’s getting a bit too much, and looks set to be serving the upcoming, dreaded ‘Amanda Waller Vs the DC Universe’ or whatever story more than Green Arrow and co… I just want the characters having (mainly) street level adventures and popping in and out of one another’s lives – DC Editorial’s current obsession with superhero families living in one another’s pockets is making things feel a bit samey.
Which isn’t to say Williamson’s script doesn’t have dramatic, poignant and fun moments. Roy and Dinah vs Peacemaker and (who the heck is) Peacewrecker is great. And the art by Sean Izaakse is eye-poppingly pleasing, with strong character work and sharply choreographed fight scenes. Izaakse’s montages are the biz. There’s one confusing scene transition, but that’s a choice Williamson made, not Izaakse – some elliptical dialogue by Count Vertigo’ is succeeded by Lian’s unidentified narrative box, and it makes for a bumpy moment.
Romulo Fajardo Jr’s colours and Troy Peteri’s letters are as good as we’ve come to expect from these gentlemen, with style and vibrancy throughout. The cover by Izaakse and Fajardo is a cracker, a classic confrontation design, well toned and lit.
Story direction aside, as a unit of comics, Green Arrow #3 is pretty decent. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
Just read the reviews on this and the previews but it doesn’t seem appropriate for the character. Sure, Ollie has been a key member of the Justice League over the years and been involved in some epic DCU events/battles/heroism. But this really does seem to be working overtime to make the Green Arrow FAMILY matter to DC/continuity. Williamson, as he was in Dark Crisis, really seems big on the whole generations thing and playing that up. Having just read most of the Grell run last year after picking up some affordable TPBs I gotta say that I do like my Ollie a bit more grounded, though have no problem with him hanging out with the JLA as well to give that team some everyman soul. But The Great Disaster? The Legion? Future Ollie making deals? I just think it’s taking things a little too far.
Hey Martin, curious, did you see “The Flash”? Would be interested in a review if you had? I did and really enjoyed it and am sad to see it doing so poorly. It’s one of the better superhero films of the last few years, I’d argue, and kind of a nice one to wrap up the current DC film universe on if you at all enjoyed some of what Snyder tried (though I really disliked the violence in “Man of Steel” so that was a big misfire for me.)
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Excellent thoughts. All we need are good GA stories, occasionally featuring the family members. We don’t need the members to suddenly be vital to the safety of reality… I got sick of that with every Doctor Who companion after Billie Piper’s Bad Wolf turn.
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Peacewrecker? I assume that’s a joke. Please tell me that’s so, Martin!
What the heck have they do be to Count Vertigo?! He looks like an @$$h- well, you know where I’m going with that…
Williamson’s explanation for how Loan is still alive maketh no sense. Why not just say that one of the Crisises changed the circumstances of Cry for Justice or – yay! – completely overwrote it? Simples. This is atrocious and I’m pleased you read it so I don’t have to do so.
Go away, Waller, Go away, go awaaaayyyyy! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!
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Nope, Peacewrecker is a thing. Not actually a character, just a name in a costume. We know nothing about her.
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Yeuch. (Do you think we’ll *want* to know anything about her? When I first glanced at the cover I thought, “Hey that’s weird, Peacemaker appears twice and why as he got boobs in one drawing?” Heh.)
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I just noticed stupid spellchecker changed *Lian* to “Loan” in my first comment. So much for artificial intelligence!
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Edit: “What the hell have they *DONE TO* Count Vertigo?”
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A decent enough comic — the art is wonderful! — but not remotely what I look for in a Green Arrow book. And I say this as someone who’d like to see the Legion in EVERYTHING. (And yes, it would be even better if they did something!)
As for Lian, I see the dilemma. You can’t just hand-wave her death, because the story hinges on everyone thinking she’s dead. So you’ve got to give an explanation, and go from there. (And anything that contradicts that explanation, like Ollie finding her body, *that* can be handwaved.)
This feels of a piece with a lot of Williamson’s writing; going for big, emotional moments, but never quite connecting; even with the lovely art, they all seem like moving pieces around on a chessboard.
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This is so weird as a Green Arrow story, I wonder if it was just created as part of a big DC crossover thingie.
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It feels like Williamson’s ideas for Green Arrow in his last crossover (Infinite Frontier?) got so big that he had to break them out into their own series. Like so many other DC crossover comics, it’s *kind of* a story, but it’s also “the story we need to tell in order to get the characters to where we want them for when we want to tell Green Arrow stories again.” Rather than just straight-up telling a Green Arrow story.
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