Ever since their birth in the early 20th Century, superhero comics have always had some aspects which are quite far-fetched, strange and generally unrealistic. This is no criticism as stuff like this make the comics all the more entertaining and less dull. Due to that, before Mike Grell started his run on the Green Arrow title, even the most darkest and urban stories written by people like Dennis O’Neil, Alan Moore and Frank Miller had parts of them which wouldn’t work in the real world, but as I said, those moments can be positives and make the story much better as a whole. What I’m trying to say is Mike Grell’s run on Green Arrow is probably one of the most realistic comics to ever be published due to the realism of the villains and plots. Sure, it’s completely like that, but I think it is safe to say that Grell is displaying the real world, but to a harsher and darker degree. Between the Here There Be Dragons story (Green Arrow (vol 2) 9-12) and the Blood of the Dragon story (Green Arrow (vol 2) 21-24), there are a number of two part stories which focus on the more realistic aspects of Grell’s world, similarly to stories like Hunters Moon. After coming back from Honolulu in the previous story, Green Arrow will face the consequences of his “heroic” actions and the law. But the main question is, will it be any good?
The stories that I will be reviewing are:
Moving Target --- Green Arrow (vol 2) 13-14
Seattle & Die --- Green Arrow (vol 2) 15-16
The Horseman --- Green Arrow (vol 2) 17-18
The Trial of Oliver Queen --- Green Arrow (vol 2) 19-20
Green Arrow (vol 2) 13-20 were published from late December 1988 to July 1989, which begins penciller Dan Jurgens’s run on the title along with other art being done by Ed Hannigan, Dick Giordano and Frank McLaughlin. As usual, the stories are written by Mike Grell with the issues being published under the “Suggested for Mature Readers” line. Finally, I have read these stories in the Green Arrow: The Trial
of Oliver Queen trade paperback.
THE STORIES AND MY THOUGHTS
Moving Target --- Written by Mike Grell with art by Dan Jurgens, Dick Giordano and Frank McLaughlin
THE PLOT
After coming back from Honolulu, Oliver Queen surprises Dinah Lance by cooking in their kitchen. Once she notices that Oliver is bleeding, Dinah dresses Oliver’s wound before punching him for not taking care of himself. She then forgives Oliver before going to bed together. The next day, Oliver takes on numerous tasks to help the people of Seattle. Firstly, he delivers flowers to man who finds out that the flowers are for a man that his wife has been seeing behind his back. Oliver leaves after telling the wife to sit down to talk to her husband, whom Oliver just knocked out due to his violence. Secondly, Oliver rescues a cat out of a tree and gives it back to a girl named Holly Peters. Thirdly, Oliver prepares and relaxes a man who is getting married at a church. Penultimately, Oliver helps a woman in a car with a flat tyre with the aid of another driver who has a similar tyre to the car of the woman. Finally, noticing an old man being attacked by a gang, Oliver becomes Green Arrow and takes out the criminals and saves the man. Later on, Oliver speaks to Dinah about his day, but as they are walking, a car nearly hits them, and it crashes into some traffic lights. Police Lieutenant Cameron comes to the scene and tells Oliver and Dinah that somebody may be trying to kill them on purpose. The next morning, Oliver goes to pick up a newspaper, but is nearly killed when a window is shot and smashes. Oliver, who is unaware that it was caused by a bullet, walks on casually.
After watching a live performance of Cats, Oliver and Dinah leave the theatre. But a sniper shot is fired at him and misses, causing for him to duck and run away with Dinah. He tells her that he now believes that somebody is trying to kill him and after the two search the building where the shot came from, they find a rifle with a sound suppressor left behind. Oliver then thinks that the CIA is behind the attack, so he visits Eddie Fyers, who tells Oliver that he wasn’t behind the attacks and that Greg Osborne (from The Longbow Hunters and Here There Be Dragons) has been taken by the Yakuza. Fyers also tells Oliver that he would have rather taken the job to assassinate the husband of congresswoman Barbara Alexander, who has just been killed. After leaving and questioning gang members, Green Arrow visits the woman whose cat he rescued from a tree earlier as he works out that she had stolen the cat, which may have a cure to cancer in its blood. He leaves her, telling her that she should turn herself in. After speaking to other suspects, Green Arrow gets back in his van, but he gets a gun put to the back of his head from a mysterious person, who tells him to drive. When the van is on the bridge, Oliver swerves the van, causing for it to crash so he can escape. After taking out the gunman, Green Arrow confronts the congresswoman, who Oliver had helped earlier when she needed her car tyre changed. He works out that she changed the tyre to sabotage the car to kill her husband using the tyre she was given by the gunman, who was there at the scene earlier. As she thought that Oliver would see a connection between the tyre change and death of her husband, she hired a killer to take out Oliver. But, after he tells her that she didn’t know who she was, the congresswoman gets out a gun and just as she aims her gun at Oliver, the part of the bridge she is standing on collapses and she falls, leaving Oliver to watch her fall.
MY THOUGHTS
While we commonly see heroes doing their jobs in costumes, this story is an example of the good somebody can do without the need of any costumes or weapons. Now although some of the things that Oliver Queen does in this story lead into a dark plot involving murder, it is great to see Oliver helping out the people of Seattle. To me, Oliver would be a person that everyone knows in the city. This is shown excellently here as it really adds to his character, making him more believable as a human being and as a positive and nice person. The true highlight of this story has to be the fact that it feels human and contains elements of Oliver’s character when he isn’t Green Arrow, which hadn’t really been explored as much before this story. The same can apply to when we see Oliver and Dinah out together. It makes their relationship feel more real and a bit more human, again showing that Mike Grell can create a pretty believable world. Now while I find the plot nothing really too special, it is great to hear an update from the events of the previous story. Eddie Fyers does make a decent and logical appearance in the story and we even discover what happened to Greg Osborne, which shows a good sense of continuity and it works well. But although I said the story is nothing special, there is one huge problem with it…
There are too many coincidences, and everything feels way too connected. I mean, firstly, what was the real point of that cat? Apparently, it had the cure for cancer, but after Green Arrow confronts the girl who stole the cat about it, he just leaves and doesn’t even bother informing the police about where she is. But secondly, the story involving the congresswoman and her husband is just sort of thrown out of the blue and straight in your face. I think that it would have been much better and suitable if Grell had written the death of the congresswoman’s husband to be at the start of the story instead of halfway through the second part. Also, when she needed her tyres to be changed, it was done so she could kill her husband. Why did she need to hire somebody to change the tyre to get a new one? Couldn’t she have done it herself and also why did she need to change the tyre in front of Oliver? If she wanted nobody to see a connection between her and the death of her husband, then why didn’t she just do it somewhere hidden or just where somebody wouldn’t see her do it. Although I said that Oliver is a highlight to the story, even he comes across as a complete idiot. He has been Green Arrow for years and he has clearly put himself through intense and careful training. Surely the glass shattering would have been an obvious sign that somebody was after him. You would have thought that he could tell if it was a gunshot. There are just so many problems with this story that when comparing this to the previous stories in the run, this is definitely the worst.
This is the first issue that artist Dan Jurgens takes over the book, albeit not on a regular basis as Hannigan does return. While his art and page layouts aren’t as interesting as Hannigan’s, it still looks very nice and it tells the story well. Sure, it isn’t in a style and it doesn’t look like a regular comic artist, it is far from terrible. It just can be a tad dull for me in some areas, but I repeat, it serves the main function of the art in comics well, which is to tell the story.
Story: 3.5/10
Art: 8/10
Seattle & Die --- Written by Mike Grell with art by Ed Hannigan, Dick Giordano and Frank McLaughlin
THE PLOT
One night at a restaurant where Oliver and Dinah are watching some Jazz musicians, some gangsters come in to rob the place. Oliver and Dinah manage to retaliate by attacking the villains, one of whom is killed by a shotgun to the face due to another gangster’s shot missing, who is then killed by another person. Oliver and Dinah confront that person, who tells Oliver that they deserved to die. After the police arrive and Oliver draws a sketch of former President of the US Richard Nixon as the vigilante figure in the restaurant, they get annoyed at him and he and Dinah leave the scene. Using a matchbox from a hotel left at the scene from the vigilante, Oliver goes to the hotel and visits the man, who at first tries to escape but is caught by Oliver as Green Arrow. The two head back in the hotel room. Oliver finds out that the hotel room is registered for a man named Archie Leech, so he names the vigilante that while asking him where he was from and how he is haunted with death and obsessed with it. But, when Oliver questions him about a picture of him and a young girl happy together, Archie forces Green Arrow to leave at gunpoint. However, as Oliver leaves in his car, he sees the hotel explode.
After the explosion, two of the men who caused the destruction search for the body of Archie, but they find he is not in the hotel but running away on the roof and has leapt from it onto a bridge. Green Arrow prevents the two men from killing Archie and confronts them about their attack on him. The two men say that they are part of the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation and are hunting Jake Moses (the real name of Archie) for murder crimes. Intrigued, Oliver takes the agents back to his home where they explain to Oliver and Dinah that Jake had been married to a model and they both went to Africa for a Safari tour, but they ran into some rhino poachers who shot and killed Jake’s wife and badly injured him. After recovering, Jake took revenge by killing the poachers violently and since then, he has never stopped killing people. Due to that, he became a hired gunman, but on one mission he accidently killed multiple women and children in Australia, making him a criminal. Oliver, with the assistance of the Australian agents, locates the hotel room where Jake is hiding, but Jake is informed by the receptionist of the hotel on the phone that Oliver and the agent have found him. He decides to climb onto the rood to make his escape, but is confronted by Green Arrow, who tells him he found his location through the name he used to book his room, which was the name of an actor that Jake was a fan of. Although Jake mentions that he still feels guilt for the death of his wife, Green Arrow reminds him of the many people he has killed and how he is to blame. Jake then decides to run to the edge of the building to jump to the next one, but is nearly shot by the agents, who Green Arrow knocks out. Jake leaps from the building, but his fate is unknown as
he isn’t shown to make it or fall to his death.
MY THOUGHTS
Unlike the previous story which I feel had too many characters and not enough depth to them, this story only has one main villain and a couple of side characters. This is already a plus and the quality of the main villain in this tale is very good. Jake isn’t a villain we have seen before in the run. I mean, we have seen mob bosses, common thugs and generic assassins, but here we see a villain who has some real depth and character to him, making it easier to sympathise with him at particular points in the story. Grell creates a great balance of good and evil, making the main villain all the more interesting. As I said for the previous story, it is good to see Dinah and Oliver in their casual lives as it makes the comic feel more human and as Grell is attempting to emulate the real world (albeit to a darker degree), aspects like this really add to the tone of the story. The main plot is fuelled by Jake and his story, which fits perfectly in a two part story, but I feel if it was any longer it would drag massively and come across as too repetitive, particularly with the flashbacks to when Jake’s wife was killed and her body being eaten by birds, which adds to the drama of Jake’s origin. I also think that the conclusion of the story works very well with Grell leaving it to the reader for what happens, which makes the story feel different and as the answer is never shown, it leaves for the reader to make their own judgement, which I think is great. The dialogue scenes between Oliver and Jake also works well as it isn’t boring and again, it adds to the plot of the story as it makes the villain more human and appealing as a character. People can be like this in real life after their time as a solider and as they would have been killing people for a long period of time in some cases, Grell demonstrates how that can be a problem for the people who have become killing machines, which again makes the story realistic and just better.
Although I’m not too sure why the poachers in Africa would decide to leave Jake behind alive, my main issue of the story is the secret agents. I understand why Jake is being hunted by them, but they just come across as dull and very cardboard. They don’t have a real impact on the story until the end of part two when one of them nearly kills Jake, but before that, all they are there to do is to tell his origin to Green Arrow and why he is like that. If they had some decent character then I would be accepting of their presence, but there is nothing that distinguishes the two of them. You might as well of just had a news broadcast about Jake explaining the information about him or something or even Green Arrow working out who he is and what he has done on his own.
Ed Hannigan does the pencils for this story after Jurgens did the story before and it is great to see his return. While I like Jurgens, I do prefer Hannigan due to his interesting page layouts and lighting, which adds to the impact of the story. Sure, it can be a bit messy at points and there are some strange uses of feathering and crosshatching, it looks pretty good and works well with the tone of the story.
Story: 8.5/10
Art: 8.5/10
The Horseman --- Written by Mike Grell with art by Dan Jurgens, Dick Giordano and Frank McLaughlin
THE PLOT
At a strip club, a biker arrives and asks for a girl who is about twenty-two years old, five foot six, has red hair and is known by the name Dawn. After the bartender asks him to leave, the biker searches the club and attacks the bouncers and guards, but he is unsuccessful. The biker then leaves while setting fire to the bartender’s car. Elsewhere in Seattle, Oliver and Dinah visit a strip club for some entertainment where a red-haired girl dances for them. The girl then goes to her dressing room and speaks to a new girl who is only in her late teens. She tells the young girl that she is planning to leave her job as a stripper using some kind of retirement insurance. She also mentions that she is going to be twenty-three next month before the teenage girl goes out to do her job. Later at night, Oliver becomes Green Arrow and takes out some general thugs and gangsters. At the same time, the biker is still looking for “Dawn” at another club but is unsuccessful, so he leaves a threat to the supplier of the club telling them that the Horseman is coming for them. Meanwhile, Green Arrow finds the dead body of the red-haired stripper nailed to some wood, emulating a cross. The police and Lieutenant Cameron arrive at the scene and he tells Green Arrow that the murder could be related to the biker at the strip club. After Cameron implies that the stripper deserved to die, Green Arrow loses it with him and tells him that nobody deserves to die like that apart from the person who killed the stripper.
In Seattle, a mob boss named D’Agostino demands that one of his henchmen named Fredo must search and kill the biker who has broken into one of his strip clubs which he owns, otherwise he will kill him. Fredo then leaves the penthouse of the mobster and goes off to kill the Horseman. Meanwhile during the autopsy, Cameron finds out that Dawn had died after being crucified and that two people would have been needed to nail her up, making Cameron cancel out that the Horseman is the killer as he works alone. At the same time, the Horseman is still searching clubs and attacking
people, unaware that the stripper he is looking for is dead. He continues his quest but is confronted by the gangsters hired to kill the Horseman. Green Arrow arrives and with the Horseman, they take out all the gangsters. After the fight, Green Arrow works out that the Horseman wouldn’t be the killer as he wouldn’t continue to hunt a woman who is dead. This shocks the Horseman and he tells Green Arrow that “Dawn” got addicted to drugs and after being forced to get evidence on a mobster for a police officer to help her drug addiction, she was sold off to the mob as a stripper. Although she had plans to get out of her job using the evidence she found, she was obviously killed. After their talk, the Horseman and Green Arrow go to the club where the stripper worked and find the police arresting Fredo and his gang. Green Arrow then searches “Dawn”’s locker and finds a key, which he hands over to the Horseman. The two then go to the border where he says goodbye to the Horseman as he can get the evidence from where “Dawn” hid it, finishing what she started out to do. Later on, the Horseman finds the evidence in Vancouver.
MY THOUGHTS
While this story features some great mystery, particularly around the character of the Horseman and also features the dark and depressing lives of strippers, which adds to the realism that Grell is clearly going for, there is something about this story which doesn’t fit right with me. This isn’t a terrible story as it does feature some decent characters, but I feel the main problem with it had to be that it just isn’t interesting.
After reading this story, it just came across as empty, uncreative and just pretty dull. As I said, I does have some good features to it, but overall, the story is just nothing special or particularly unique. That being said, there are mountains of things wrong with this story which I don’t agree with., Firstly, I think Grell sort of ran out of ideas on how to start this story as like in the previous two stories, Oliver and Dinah are in a public place together during their normal lives. It works well sure, but it does feel a bit overdone when it is featured in three consecutive stories (spanning over six issues). Not only that, but why are Oliver and Dinah visiting a strip club? It would make sense if it was part of their heroic roles to take out criminals in them, but someone like Oliver who is a liberal person who is clearly against stuff like that, not only does it come across as hypocritical, but also completely out of character. This was almost certainly a bad choice. Moreover, at the start of part two of the story we are introduced to a gang boss and his underling named Fredo. This comes across like they were going to feature as main villains in the story to take out the Horseman, but they are barely featured as character. You might as well have had just regular characterless thugs who would just be in the story to be beaten. A lot of attention is put on the Horseman, which isn’t bad, but I think the other characters could have been fleshed out more. I repeat, this isn’t terrible. It just comes across as dull, uninteresting and incomplete. Sure, the ending of the story is nice, but as a whole, it is just an empty void. I know its too much, but that’s all I can really say for this story.
Like the Moving Target story, Jurgens returns as penciler. Just like I said, the art can be generic, but it is far from terrible (You just wait until Denys Cowan and Rick Hoberg take over the art in the book).
Story: 4/10
Art: 8/10
The Trial of Oliver Queen --- Written by Mike Grell with art by Ed Hannigan, Dick Giordano and Frank McLaughlin
THE PLOT
In Seattle, a cop named Egan is retiring soon after years of service. After he celebrates with some of the officers, he speaks with a younger one who asks him how he has survived for so long in Seattle. He reveals that if a knife is pulled on him, he gets out his gun. Just as they are talking, the two officers get a call to go to a crime. Egan goes down a dark alley but is shot twice in the chest after missing his shots against the attacker. Green Arrow shoots the attacker with an arrow and goes down to Egan, who (text continues after image)
turns out was shot with paint instead of a bullet. Another officer arrives and finds another person with a gun, who is shown to be a boy with a paintball gun. The police then call an ambulance for the boy who he shot. Some time later at court after the boy recovers and testifies, Oliver admits how he shot the boy. Even though he isn’t legally at fault, the Judge comes down hard on Oliver, telling him that he doesn’t approve of his vigilante actions and that he is a dangerous man. After the court session, Oliver walks the streets of Seattle drinking, becoming drunk. Dinah knows of this and she phones Oliver’s best friend, Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) to speak to him. Later on, Oliver arrive home and trashes the place up a bit before collapsing on the ground as Dinah holds onto him.
Back in the police force, Egan is teased by other officers as he missed the boy who tired to kill him. This makes him realise that due to his age, he needs to retire, and he could result in his partner being killed due to his actions. After having a nightmare about what the judge said to him, Oliver wakes up at a camp site in the countryside and is greeted by Hal Jordan, who tells him that they will be at the camp site for a few days. Oliver gets angry and tells Hal that he is drinking and angry as he shot a child. This makes Hal lecture him and shout at him, telling him that he made a mistake and that he should accept it. He also tells him that there is nothing special about him and that he is just a person like everyone else. Again, Oliver becomes enraged and he punches Hal. The two then fight briefly before Hal gives in and tells Oliver that he wants him back as a friend. Oliver then helps him up and the two have a friendly hug. Meanwhile in Seattle, Egan and his partner go out to take out some gangsters. Egan confronts one of the gangsters who is only a kid, but he isn’t fast enough, resulting in Egan being shot. His partner arrives and shoots and kills the kid. Before he dies, Egan invites Green Arrow into his hospital room, and he asks him if he is going to quit being a vigilante. He tells Egan that he will always stand as a vigilante as he stands for justice. Officer Egan dies as Green Arrow finishes his speech. Lastly, Oliver returns home and throws out all of the alcohol in the house, showing that he has recovered.
MY THOUGHTS
For this story, Grell introduces a new point of view for Green Arrow and his vigilante actions. That view is the police and the law. Starting with the police, even though these officers really only feature in this story, they all have a character, which is good. The main officer of the story, Egan is pretty good and interesting as Grell manages to fit enough information into him as a character. In some aspects, he feels more like the main character of this story than Green Arrow, which I think was needed as secondary characters can make stories so much better, Moving on to the law, Oliver in court is an interesting piece to see and for the first time he is warned about his actions as a vigilante, which I think is also good as it shows how dangerous Green Arrow can be and how easily he could mess up, which I think adds to the human element of his character. The ending with the cop and Green Arrow works excellently as it adds some sadness to the story along with a sort of connection between the two characters. It also shows that to Egan, Green Arrow is one of them and he isn’t a villain, ending a story on a dark, but somewhat positive tone against what the judge said to Oliver. Apart from that, it is great to see Hal Jordan feature in the run for the first… and last time. I mean, he is Oliver’s best friend. He should feature in the run more as it adds more important characters to the Green Arrow title.
The huge problem with this story to me is that Oliver Queen becoming an alcoholic and depressed drunk doesn’t really fit his character. Hal rightly tells him he made a mistake, but Green Arrow has been through worse events. I mean, you would have though that Speedy taking drugs would have made him go over the edge more (from Green Lantern/Green Arrow 85-86 by Dennis O’Neil, Neal Adams and Dick Giordano). This is because Roy Harper is a son figure to him and as he has been ignoring him, it would make him depressed that he failed him. In this story, Green Arrow shoots a kid who has a gun which has shot an officer. Sure, it was paint, but he didn’t know that and nobody could have known that. It was a mistake but ignoring your adopted son and discovering he has drug issues would be a bit more of an eye opener to Oliver as it isn’t like he killed the boy with the paint ball gun. In fact, although it is very dark and it probably wouldn’t have been allowed to be published, maybe if the boy was killed it would be much more of an impact and Oliver becoming an alcoholic would be much more justified. I think the main crime of this story has to be that it is too short. It needs to be about four parts long for it to have a real impact. Everything feels too quick and rushed. It needs more development as a story.
While Hannigan’s art inside is still good and the page layouts and panels look great, I have to say that the cover to issue 20 (part two of the story) is an absolute piece of
sh*t. It is a complete mess and it’s like everything has been thrown on the page at last minute. Other than that, this is where we have to say goodbye to Ed Hannigan as the artist. After this, Dan Jurgens takes over full time, which is still good, even if the lighting and layouts aren’t as diverse and interesting.
Story: 6.5/10
Art: 9/10
VERDICT
Overall, while the stories from Green Arrow: The Trial of Oliver Queen are some of the most realistic stories in the run, they tend to be pretty mixed in quality, with most of the stories being worse than good unfortunately. Moving Targets and The Horseman story are the worst two due to their over the top and dull plots respectively. The Trial of Oliver Queen story has some good aspects, but it is far from perfect and Seattle & Die is by far the best story of the bunch. This is almost certainly a weak point in Mike Grell’s eighty issue run of Green Arrow. Lets just hope it gets better.
Stories: 5.5/10
Art: 8/10
Highlighted Character: Green Arrow (Oliver Queen)
Next Review: Green Arrow: Blood of the Dragon. Written by Mike Grell with art by Dan Jurgens, J.J. Birch, Trevor Von Eeden, Dick Giordano, Frank McLaughlin and Michael Bair. Expected to be published on 30/06/2019.
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