Book of Doom: Green Arrow #70
Welcome back to our weekly roundup of the Book of Doom. This week I picked Green Arrow #70. Myself and Fin Fang Doom are new to the series OYL, and Jim Doom is a regular, so we’re bringing some varied viewpoints. I would compare the book to the first Die Hard movie. Die Hard is a great flick because it fits perfectly into its genre and tries to be the best action movie it can be, not an epic or dramatic masterpiece. This issue of Green Arrow was juat a flat out fast-paced action book, and it didn’t over reach. Judd Winick’s writing was consistently quick and he proved that no one else (cough, Bruce Jones, cough) should be allowed to write the Red Hood. I think I’ll come back for next issue, when things really heat up.
Fin Fang Doom said:
I don’t read Green Arrow. I tried it out in March after OYL like I did most DC titles, but this one didn’t make the cut. Why? I’m not quite certain. So when JCVD picked Green Arrow as this week’s Book of Doom, I was glad to give it a second chance and see if what was missing last time was there now.
First, the good. Green Arrow is a cool character. Here, Oliver Queen was just being Green Arrow. None of that mayor stuff, if he is even still mayor. I’ll take my superhero-turned-leftwing-mayor stories from the much better Ex Machina, thank you. I really liked Speedy (who I really enjoyed in pre-OYL Teen Titans) having her own contacts separate from GA. She’s more like Robin in her independence than any other sidekick I can remember. Ollie letting Batman do all the interogation because “it’s his thing” was a great moment. Because, as we all know, that is his thing.
Now, the bad. Green Arrow has a horrible rogue’s gallery. A strong guy named Brick is the best guy they can come up with to fight Batman? And of all the sweet-ass Batman villains you can pick, you go with the recently over-played Red Hood? I understand the resurrection of Jason Todd was sort of Judd Winick’s thing when he wrote Batman, but Winnick stuck the guy in Outsiders this week too. No one likes an overused character. Also, no matter who writes him, Batman always seems to come off as a one-dimensional character when he’s not the star of the book. I could read a much better Batman story in Detective Comics right now than I could here. It isn’t really even a good team-up story, because they’re not even in the same location or fighting the same group of bad guys.
I can’t say this issue of Green Arrow was all bad, but I certainly don’t want to pick up the title regular after it. But hey, at least I didn’t have to pay $3 for it, because I’m pretty sure the guy at the comic shop gave it to me for free since there was a huge rip on the spine.
Jim Doom disagreed:
Green Arrow was one of the books I just started picking up with the launch of One Year Later. I always thought he was a little on the lame side, but Identity Crisis, the fallout before Infinite Crisis and the OYL gimmick led me to give it a try (I would have bought it because of OYL alone, since that was also my reason for trying Hawkgirl or Hawkwoman or whatever it’s called).
I think it’s also the only book that I’ve stuck with after IC that I wasn’t already buying beforehand. Judd Winick’s writing has always been a little hit-and-miss with me, but I’ve loved it on GA and I first became fond of it on Batman before IC. So I was pleased to see Winick once again get to pen a tale of Batman and the Red Hood.
Fortunately, everyone seems to be imagining that the horrible Nightwing OYL storyline never happened, as Jason Todd was here as the Red Hood, not as Nightwing, not pooping out rocks that hatch into people. And Winick balances a perfect mix of action and snappy dialogue that fits the tone of his stories perfectly.
He creates a slightly caricatured world, suited for the political undertones of his stories, matched by the cartoonish artwork and the cranked-to-11 personalities of his characters. Batman is almost a parody of himself, but it’s so in tone with the rest of the story it works.
Green Arrow has been one of my favorite post-IC series, and for any of the Legion who got their first taste with this issue, I highly recommend checking out earlier issues and sticking with this.
And where is Doom DeLuise? Probably drunk. I’m sure we’ll be hearing from him once the booze wears off.
Oh yeah, I forgot all about this. Where’s my whiskey? I’ll get back to you. Oh, the art sucks, by the way. Maybe it’ll look better after a few shots. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I wake up next to a fatty.
The art annoyed me a little at first, then I decided it fit with the story and was OK. In places it did have a little of that Frank Miller sloppiness, though.
In defense of Brick, he wasn’t just “brought in” for a fight; Brick was a bad guy in the pre-destruction days, but after the wall was built around the slums, he took on more of a public protector role, trying to clean up the streets. The Red Hood’s arrival complicates the character of Brick, who’s a bad guy trying to turn a corner. He’s actually been built up pretty well since the OYL start, in my opinion.
That said, as unfair a rip on Brick as I feel that is (or at least out-of-context), it’s still legitimate in a way because it’s not like DC can expect first-time readers to know all the backstory if they’re not going to provide it.
And I tend to like the politics in GA better than in Ex Machina, because in Ex Machina, it just hits me over the head. It feels like a superhero comic designed to make a political point, whereas I feel like GA is a superhero comic with a political character. (The old Denny O’Neill political GA falls into the same category as Ex Machina for me)
It would’ve been nice to have a bit of background on Brick. Still, I didn’t mind him at all.
i have always been a green arrow fan, but have only read him sparsely over the years. i happened upon issue #60 when it came out and thought i may as well see the new storyline. i have been reading it since and, although i am not really that impressed with the art or story, i am glad i did begin again. i do enjoy anything green arrow and the baddies are new to me because i missed them the first time ’round. i like the “escape from new york” undertone of the city. it reminds me of a really good online comic “NYC2123”. i am looking forward to the rest of this storyline, and the future of the green arrow.
[…] A few months back, this was our Book of Doom. At the time, I really dug Judd Winick’s action-y take on Ollie as mayor of Star City. While this incarnation of the series always seemed like a bit of a ripoff of Ex Machina, up until this week I was on board. I think I’ve figured out the problem here. The series has been working as a straight action book, accentuated by Scott McDaniel’s over-the-top art. But, it transitioned into more of a political tale of late, and this writer-artist combo just isn’t a good fit for that kind of story. So, so long, GA. […]