Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

Green Arrow #1

By Hervé St-Louis
July 10, 2010 - 16:33

Green Arrow has been exiled to the strange forest that has grown in the middle of Star City. Green Arrow still wants to protect the people of Star City now that’s it’s being overrun by corrupt politicians. But the forest in the middle of Star City had other plans for the archer and his city. This is a new series with Green Arrow.

I must admit that I approached this book negatively based on my bad experience with the Arsenal mini-series written by Krul. This series is supposed to be inspired by the Mike Grell years and his long tenure on Green Arrow. That’s a bad idea. First, Grell and Krul have nothing in common. Grell was an artist and a good writer. He moved Green Arrow away from the world of super heroes and showed us a middle aged hero with inner conflicts. Here, we are told that this series is like Grell’s but with super heroes added to the mix. It doesn’t work. You can’t have Grell with overt super heroes. What’s left, is the common hero fighting for his community. There’s nothing particularly Grell about this although his stories had a lot of that too.

Looking at this story on its own, without any comparison to other Green Arrow series of the past, there is no sense of wonder. Who is Green Arrow? Is he but a modern day Robin Hood or more than that? We don’t know. This story is so linked to other recent events in the DC Universe, that it cannot move on its own and have its own voice. It feels like a committee wrote this comic book so it could fit some greater plan for the next company crossover.

The visuals are not bad, but they do annoy me. They have that sharp edge that feels like someone is rubbing their nails on a blackboard. That’s how it feels looking at them. It’s not that the artist is bad. But his work is not quiet. Blame the inker for that one.

Rating: 6 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12