My main complaint from the rebooted GA was that the main character seemed to have no resemblance to the old Oliver Queen, one of my favorite quirky DC mainstays. Intended as a modern day Robin Hood as Super-hero metaphor, and with a skewed left political perspective to match, Queen has long been a cranky, contentious ass with a heart of gold and an out of control libido, making him a character hard to like, but easy to love. The rebooted “New 52″ Queen seems to have next to nothing in common with…himself. Design-wise, he looks more like Marvel’s Ultimate Hawkeye than he does Green Arrow, and he acts more like a super-selfish version of Roy “Arsenal” Harper from pre-reboot Titans.
I picked up Green Arrow hoping that the new creative team of Ann Nocenti (strangely referred to as “Annie Nocenti” on the cover) and Harvey Tolibao would be a good change from the previous team on the book. I hadn’t enjoyed the first couple of issues, and dropped it after that, so I was ready to come back and find Oliver Queen returned to all his glory.
If only. Nocenti does nothing to change the above. If anything, Queen has devolved into even more of a lothario, and a condescending one at that. He addresses women like some Hugh Hefner parody from the 70s, calling them “dollface” and “gals”. (I can only assume, since this comes from Nocenti, that she simply thinks these are terms still in common use, since she has these words coming from the mouth of a young, uber-hip corporate mogul.) Nocenti also telegraphs all the plot’s punches. There’s literally nothing that happens in the comic that you won’t see coming from a mile off. As a matter of fact, my suspicion is that she even telegraphs stuff coming up in the next issue too, which I won’t buy to see if I was right.
I’m sorry to say that the art from Harvey Tolibao made me even less happy. It’s a HUGE step down from the estimable Dan Jurgens. His figures are misshapen, panels are jumbled and overcrowded, and linework is too uniform, making it difficult to discern fore- and background objects from one another. There’s one scene where the issue’s villains “reveal” their trickery, and the tiny panels are so confusing, I honestly couldn’t explain exactly what was revealed. It’s especially horrific considering if you saw it on the stands you would be immediately drawn to the gorgeous cover by Howard Porter, then open to see…this.
I really wanted to like this issue. I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to hope to be coming home to a revamped GA, and find things worse off than before. For now, at least, I’ll have to wait and hope that someone at DC comes to their senses and does the right thing: either restore the Emerald Archer to glory, or put him out of our misery.
Rating: 1/5
Recommendation: Avoid at all costs.
I agree that the New 52 version of Green Arrow destroyed the character. His distinguishing mark was his maturity: now he’s just a young hero like (almost) everyone else, from Spider Man to Superboy. I understand they had to link the comic book to the upcoming tv series, but they could have done that in a far smarter way: for example, they could have created a comic series narrating his early days as Green Arrow, as Marvel did with “X – Men: First Class.”
Another thing that made Green Arrow great was his group of very interesting and well defined supporting characters: this implies that removing them from the series is another huge mistake DC made. Batman would be great even without Alfred, Robin, Commissioner Gordon and so on: Green Arrow needs “a little help from his friends” to be great.
When you reboot a character, you can change everything but his spirit: DC didn’t follow this simple but essential rule, so they haven’t been faithful both to their tradition and to their public.
Lemire will write Green Arrow from the 17th issue on. He promised a return to classic GA, believing that this would help bring back disillusioned fans back to the character. This is exactly what the character needed: a good writer recreating him from head to toe, and giving us back the old Oliver we used to love.
I complained about the New 52 version of Green Arrow on every blog I could find, and all the other fans of the character were unsatisfied as well, so I knew that DC couldn’t ignore us forever, and was going to making him mature once again.
Also, notice that Lemire will go on working with a penciller having a creepy style: after Foreman and Pugh, we’ll see him teaming up with Sorrentino. This is a good thing, because creepy art perfectly ties with his delightfully weird style of writing.
I hope Lemire won’t leave Animal Man, because no one could write it as well as him. The relationship between Animal Man and Lemire is like the one between Johns and Aquaman: when the writer leaves the series, it will never be the same.
I wouldn’t mind them making Ollie young again if he were just, well, STILL OLLIE. But he wasn’t, he was an entirely different and wholly unlikable character. If Lemire is taking over, I’ll try it again! I love his Animal Man and loved (past tense) his Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE. Thanks again for commenting!