I was eating a supermarket baguette smothered in margarine while thinking about Green Arrow. Why does it feel like sweeps week on the local news?

More than a decade ago, I woke up on Christmas morning to a box full of Mike Grell’s Green Arrow comics courtesy of my then-POOSSLQ-now-wife. Granted, I wanted Animal Man or Swamp Thing, but it was a good gesture from someone who hoped the whole comics thing would blow over before the wedding. I fell in love (with Green Arrow- I was already in love with the gift-giver). I still have that nearly compete set. I haven’t read them in a long time, but I still think you should race out and acquire them. They shouldn’t cost much and you’ll be happier for it. I don’t remember being bored by them, but they do make my mind wander to Daredevil for some reason. Maybe both of them have always been characters on the boundaries who have allowed their writers to take a few chances. Maybe they always seemed a little less iconic than Superman and the Fantastic Four. That could be because Daredevil sounded like some lunatic on a motorcycle at the county fair. For his part, Green Arrow sounds like some lunatic on a motorcycle in the Village.

Not much has changed since then. Oliver Queen is still having affairs and hanging out in the parts of the city that haven’t seen a street cleaner in a long time, but now it feels like I’m watching television reruns.

I was as excited as the next bandwagon rider when Kevin Smith decided to bring back Green Arrow. Counter to a lot of hand wringing, I did not worry too much about how he was going to resurrect old green and pouty. In retrospect, no one else really worried either since the answer seems to be because he was not completely dead, only partly dead. It goes without saying that totally dead would have been a definite problem. In the end, Smith entertained me without insulting me. I do get annoyed when somebody thinks they only have to commit to writing a comic for a limited period of time, but, hey, that’s looking at the glass as half empty. Meltzer did his thing and it was a lovely walk down memory lane.

Then Meltzer departs and suddenly we change streets. There was the lovely little intergalactic detour with Green Lantern, apparently necessitated by their shared tint fixation. Then, we’re back in Daredevil land all over again. All we need is for Drakon to cry out “You made me miss!” And did our big boss villain have to be overweight and bald?

Let’s look at Issue 29, shall we? Phil Hester and Ande Parks continue to create the sort of pictures that make me appreciate comic books. They’ve got style. The story is called “Straight Shooter Part Four: New Wounds” (or “Cross Purposes” if feel the cover better represents the title). That would be the fourth of six parts. That would be six months for this story to unfold… at a glacial pace. In short, here’s what happens: Black Canary begins to suspect that something is up with Green Arrow (in this case, he’s fooling around with someone else); the villains meet and decide to eliminate Green Arrow; Oliver and Connor read e-mail; Oliver practices shooting arrows with his injured hands while talking with Joanna, the ‘other woman’, while Oliver Queen’s young ward eavesdrops; Oliver Queen lures ugly monsters into a fight; and we finish with the tagline “We’re just getting started.”

I have really enjoyed Judd Winick’s work on other titles, but nothing happened in this issue. Read that summary again. At best, you could say that things were getting ominous for Oliver Queen in his personal life. His professional life involved another fight very reminiscent of the last fight against the same hideous beasts. Ominous just does not carry over for thirty days. Everything that occurs in this issue feels like a placeholder. And all that does is heighten the melodrama. That might work in a self-contained story, but not in a six-month story arc. Maybe Winick is just trying to tell us too many stories at once- maybe he’s struggling with the juggling of so many characters (in which case he never should have introduced the new love interest).

Has anybody since the big name novelist actually bothered to read the first twenty or so issues? Maybe I missed something, but I thought this new Green Arrow series was going to be about something, like finding your place in the world or something/anything other than bad guys and booty. Think about comic book runs that you’ve loved over the years. Didn’t they stick to the theme? When the theme goes away, it leaves a vacuum. You can’t fill a vacuum with nasties and noogies. When the theme goes away, so do the readers. Yes, we may love the artwork. Yes, we may think it will be worth a million bucks someday. The former can get you to buy one issue. The latter is sheer idiocy.

September, 2003