Green Arrow #11 review

Oh dear, this isn’t a very successful issue. Well, unless unconvincing threats and dizzyingly dull exposition is your thing.

If you’ve come in late, the past ten issues have seen, first, Oliver Queen bouncing around time as mysterious forces tried to keep him from his loved ones. It turned out that Suicide Squad showrunner turned utility megalomaniac Amanda Waller was running things from behind the scenes. She went through a lot of motions to persuade Green Arrow to secure the secrets of Sanctuary, the AI therapy facility for superheroes featured in the terrible Heroes in Crisis series. For his own reasons, he agreed to help, and found himself reunited with ward Roy Harper aka Speedy aka Arsenal aka Red Arrow. Now they’re being attacked by the Justice League.

Or not.

How does that work? ‘Hard light holograms’ don’t sound like much of a threat, but the Superman, at least, has pretty scary heat vision. And yet, when Ollie’s Quiver Crew join him and Roy, they keep the holo-heroes at bay long enough to grab the Maguffin and get out. Cue a typically tense chat with Waller.

And as Ollie disappears, in floats a narration from a longtime Green Arrow foe, who, being an ace archer, goes by, er, Merlyn the Magician.

Cue seven pages of blah blah that boils down to ‘rivalry, defeat, banishment, seething, planning’. Honestly, it reads as sheer filler, just imagine if we had this every time a villain showed up in a comic. The only fresh detail is Merlyn now looking like a cross between Two-Face and Eclipso – he retains the Coco the Clown haircut.

Finally, we’re back in the Now, Merlyn surprises the teleported Ollie with his boxing glove arrow, taunts him with the fact Ollie never availed himself of Sanctuary’s (actually very dubious) counselling methods and…

… sets more hard-traveling holograms on Ollie.

It’s the Arrow Clan rather than the Justice League, but basically we’re back where we started. And Ollie declares that he can’t fight his own people!

Which is very, very stupid.

While the work of a lot of talented folk, Green Arrow #11 is just a lot of exposition and wheel spinning. Yes, it looks pretty and dynamic, thanks to artistic threesome Sean Izaakse, Phil Hester and Eric Gapstur. The crowd scenes are always impressive, with sterling work from colourist Romulo Fajardo Jr, who manages to keep everyone from clashing visually as they are physically. Troy Peteri’s lettering is enjoyably scrappy.

The cover by Izaakse is terrific, very intense and beautifully coloured.

It’s just a shame it doesn’t serve a better story. This series is proving a real disappointment, yet it was extended to ongoing from the initial six-issue order. I wonder if that’s not so much due to good sales as writer Josh Williamson being DC’s current events guy. This series is just one long – very long – road to June’s upcoming Absolute Power storyline, full of fan favourite family members in a story which doesn’t actually allow room for any distinct character or action moments.

I’d love to know what anyone else reading this series reckons to the direction it’s taking.