It seems commonplace today for nearly every hero who stars in their own book to have enjoyed several tweaked origin stories. In some cases, the variety of the origin stories may be vague or near-pointless. After all, Batman’s birth in that dim, dark and dank backstreet known as Crime Alley has become famous, even with the minor alterations made by writers over the decades. The same applies to Superman and the Flash, both of whose origin tales are famous and evolved only slightly. While there are a few exceptions to this rule – where heroes have had completely different origin stories over the years, like Wonder Woman – Green Arrow is a character who seems to have always began on that desert island. As far back as Jack Kirby’s tales for the archer, Green Arrow was a rich playboy Oliver Queen, spoilt by the luxuries of business and money. But then, stranded on that desert island, he learnt a new way of life and converted into a moralistic socialistic Robin Hood figure. Since the 1950s, that origin has stuck. While writers like Mike Grell and Chuck Dixon have altered that origin slightly, one of the most recent recollections of that tale was Green Arrow: Year One. Now considered a classic tale for the archer, is Green Arrow: Year One dramatically different from anything that came before?
Green Arrow: Year One 1-6 was released from September to November 2007, written by Andy Diggle and drawn by Mark Simpson, more commonly named Jock.
Silly Ollie. His path to become one of DC’s most famous and known heroes began simply with a clumsy slip into the sea. When you look back to the Jack Kirby tales or even the Mike Grell ones, Oliver Queen always has to fall into the ocean in a state of drunken euphoria. His ego and dislikable character mean that nobody around him cares for his absence, making his long stay on the desert island (known as Starfish Island in some stories) a strong incentive to change his personality and beliefs. With money no longer enjoying a purpose, Oliver is forced to construct a bow from primitive wood to fend for himself and obtain food to survive. Learning how to survive and thrive in such an environment, both dangerous and cold, by the end he believes that the forgotten in society should be helped and rescued. This is how Green Arrow is born – when Oliver arrived back in Star City, his heroic antics began. Most of this well-trodden story are retold and replicated here in Green Arrow: Year One by Andy Diggle. But this time, the writer creates a deeper and more moralistic story for Oliver Queen to enjoy.
While previous stories have shown that Oliver was simply just a rich drunk, right from the start in Year One, it’s proven that Oliver is not a nice man at all. With his riches, he is known to dodge tax and the use of his funds are sketchy. With his business partner Hackett, Oliver Queen dominates the business scene in Star City and – with as much time and money available to them both – they spend their days lavishly. Aside from a vague interest in the story of Robin Hood and a love of archery, Oliver is simply a dull billionaire with no cares for anybody other than himself. But one day, Oliver makes a fool of himself even more than he usually does. After betting $100,000 on a bow used by Howard Hill (a famously skilled archer), Oliver collapses drunk on the floor. To hide away from public criticism, he decides to take a small cruise break with Hackett. This is where the fun begins. It turns out that Hackett – as you’d expect – has stolen money from Oliver for some secret overseas scheme with a secret mobster named China White. While the details are misty early on, Hackett is told to kill Oliver now that his use has expired. But in a moment of emotion and even friendship, Hackett cannot put two bullets into Oliver’s head and he throws the unconscious billionaire into the sea. With that, the fate of not just Oliver, but Hackett and China is sealed.
After a nicely original back story, the second issue begins a more rudimentary route for Oliver Queen. Surviving his aquatic fall, Oliver wakes up on an island and what you would expect with Green Arrow is what happens. In short, he survives and lives, but a stark hatred of Hackett. In some ways, Green Arrow’s development isn’t the focus of this story. Everyone knows that Oliver Queen’s character will change. Instead, Diggle squares in on the crimes of China and Hackett since they are the reasoning behind the birth of Green Arrow.
Over the course of the story, it is revealed that Hackett has stolen Oliver’s money in order to use it to fund China’s drug trade. By complete co-incidence, Oliver’s unconscious body floated to the same island which China is using slave labour to farm and sell opium and heroin to US gangsters. Coincidence aside (which just seems impossible), this plot is revealed issue by issue and – by the standards of Green Arrow tales – isn’t wholly original or surprising. Just read the Mike Grell run if you want to read some stories featuring the heroic archer and some drugs, or even the classic Dennis O’Neil/Neal Adams run from the 1970s. Regardless, this adds new context and content to the origin of Green Arrow. Diggle writes more than a simple story of survival. Sure, you witness Green Arrow learn how to survive and develop those crucial skills which he uses later in his vigilante career, but the presence of a threat on the island which isn’t so primitive is refreshing.
Diggle succeeds in making China and Hackett the most unlikable villains out there. Brutal and adamant, they are good foes for Oliver to go against because he himself hasn’t been too kind to those below him either. This explains why the character of Taiana is so crucial.
Taiana is one of many natives on the island. Like nearly all the others, she is a slave and forced to do China’s dirty work. The twist with her however is that she is heavily pregnant. Her tiresome and cruel life is a lesson for Oliver, and she becomes a prime person for Oliver to protect. What’s also good is that Taiana’s relationship with Oliver is just friendship. Quite bizarrely for Oliver, he sees no love sexually for Taiana. As she nurses him to good health while still working her enforced job, Oliver sees it as his duty to protect her. This is even shown at the end of issue six, when Oliver offers her a new life in America as a friend, but she turns it down to enjoy the freedom of the island for the first time in years. As a whole, the characters of Green Arrow: Year One are something of a mixed bag. Like I said, Diggle does accomplish the goal of making the villains as unlikable as possible, but that too makes them a bit plain and two-dimensional. Even Hackett, who has to overcome feelings of friendship before he can kill Oliver (as he nearly does at the end of issue three), becomes a slightly dreary foe by the end.
The inclusion of a personal animus between the hero and one of the villains is nothing new when it comes to Green Arrow origin stories. In 1995, Green Arrow (vol 2) Annual 7 was released, written by Chuck Dixon. There, the details remained the same as ever, but on Starfish Island, he encounters a murderer named Stephen Clothier. This foe changes Oliver into a heroic figure as he defeats Clothier later in Star City. Therefore, the vengeance boiling inside Oliver in Green Arrow: Year One is no different from what Dixon wrote. I suppose the only difference is that the more recent story has a deeper and more personal (to Oliver) background of betrayal.
China White is the same too when it comes to dullness, even though her execution of Hackett towards the end for his consistent failure is a nice surprise. She’s just too ordinary and forgettable, even when she dies at the end. When you realise early on what China’s plot is, Green Arrow: Year One is a very simple story. To put it in one sentence, Green Arrow has to stop the bad guys. In the end, he does that, to the surprise of literally nobody. Despite this, there is tension here around character and we do see Oliver grow as a character into Green Arrow, but much of this isn’t surprising either.
But without a shadow of a doubt, the most noticeable quality of Green Arrow: Year One is its breeziness. In the introduction of the trade paperback edition, writer Brian K. Vaughan writes correctly that “these days, you only get one page.” This judgement about how readers will only decide to read a comic based on the first page sums up modern comics nicely, and it’s clear that Diggle subscribes to this view in spades. Each issue begins and ends with drama, while along the way the absence of major dialogue scenes hugely speeds up the reading time of the whole miniseries. Aside from a few scenes here and there, Green Arrow: Year One cannot be called wordy. It’s a quick read full of action. When it comes to important moments of character, Diggle is conservative with words and often these moments are more powerful because of it. However, this is where the great irony with Vaughan’s words apply. With a lack of words and a speedy storytelling sense, Green Arrow: Year One would have been – about ten years prior – an annual. Editors would have noticed the huge amount of padding in the miniseries, most of it focused purely on action or fighting. Diggle would have been told to condense these six issues down to fifty pages. This was probably possible, but comics in the late-2000s and since no longer work as they did. These days, people want instant satisfaction. Writers aren’t frugal with dialogue because it can – when written incorrectly – bore. That is why Green Arrow: Year One feels like it is going at over one-hundred miles per hour. It certainly makes things entertaining and provides a level of intensity, but it does give readers the space to breathe and take in some of the emotions present. Then again, it’s quite likely that a fifty-page annual would have endured the same fault. So, is the pacing overall a positive or a negative. On balance it has to be the former because there is no dullness here, but not totally.
The art provided by Jock for these six issues is undoubtedly given a decent reputation because of how quickly readers can turn a page. Jock’s dynamic storytelling and sense of action meshes exceptionally well with Diggle’s writing. Jock captures the dingy look of jungle vigilante warfare effectively too. However, when you examine Jock’s art more closely, it does look frightfully faecal. His inking style is sloppy and often amateur. Sure, it may be dramatic, but the visuals dampen the effect of some pretty shocking and violent imagery which Diggle inserts into the script. Similar to Bill Sienkiewicz, Jock captures mood better than detail.
VERDICT
So, to answer the question I outlined at the start, is Green Arrow: Year One different or unique from previous origin stories featuring the archer. The answer – rather anticlimactically – is both yes and no. Green Arrow: Year One is different because it offers a deeper and more personal origin story for Oliver Queen. Yes, it’s still the same old story involving the desert island, the training, the survival and all the rest of it, but there’s a new cast of characters, a few of which Diggle succeeds in writing very well. Despite it’s speediness, it’s memorable too. These days, Green Arrow: Year One is considered the definitive Green Arrow origin story. That’s not so much because of violence or the grim art, but more the fact that it is a stark reflection of how modern comics are obsessed with pacing and action, as are many readers. In short, it’s breezy but lacks breathing room.
Next Week: The Batman Adventures (Batman Adventures 1-10). Written by Kelley Puckett and Martin Pasko with art by Ty Templeton, Rick Burchett, Brad Rader, and Mike Parobeck.
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