My resolution for 2014 is to become a reader again. Going to graduate school and writing a dissertation has pretty much killed my love of reading, and I'd like it back. The plan is to read a lot, and to record my thoughts here. We'll see how long this lasts.
Green Arrow: Quiver (Kevin Smith)
Green Arrow: The Archer's Quest (Brad Meltzer)
I can remember exactly when teenage me decided to stop reading comic books. It was just after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, when DC was rebooting everyone. I was quite excited for a new GA comic--I always loved him in JLA, and I had enjoyed a recent mini-series he had starred in. I loved Green Arrow as a kid. Loved Hawkeye, too. As the title of this blog indicates, I'm a sucker for insecure non-powered superheroes who have to prove that they belong on the same team as Superman or Thor, and archers are good for that kind of story.
So imagine my surprise when I started reading the new GA comic by Mike Grell, and I hated it. At the time, I didn't know what "grim and gritty" was. I hadn't read Watchmen, or Dark Knight Returns--this series was my first encounter with what would become a major trend to make superhero comics more "grown-up." When I saw that first image of GA skewering a bad guy with an arrow, I was appalled. When I saw his girlfriend Black Canary tortured and raped, I was disgusted and angered. I decided that perhaps I wasn't enjoying reading comic books any longer, and that my money would be better spent on cassette tapes.
These images are taken from the Comics101 website, which I was perusing the other day. The site had published an overview of GA's history, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the author Scott Tipton felt as I do about the Grell run. I also learned that a major plot point of Grell's run was GA's continued infidelities--another choice which bothers me. I'm sure the decision can be justified on "realistic" grounds--men in high-stress occupations blah blah blah--but I've come to loathe the excuse of realism, especially when evoked to tell superhero stories. I also can't help but notice that it's the outspokenly liberal hero who gets saddled with infidelity stories, feeding the conservative stereotype about liberals and their lack of family values. Every generation seems to have its own philandering liberal: JFK, Gary Hart, Clinton, Edwards, Weiner. All the conservative politicians cheating on their wives somehow get much less attention.
Anyway, Tipton recommended Kevin Smith's resurrection of Green Arrow (because DC killed him off in the 90s as part of a youth movement they came to regret) as well as the follow-up series by Brad Meltzer. Since I agreed with Tipton about Grell, I thought I'd check these books out (literally--grabbed them from my local library) even though I'm not a fan of Smith's films and I loathe Meltzer's other comics works.
The verdict? I quite enjoyed Smith; did not like Meltzer at all.
Smith's story is continuity-obsessed, but in a good way--the story not only reintroduces Green Arrow Oliver Queen, but uses his entire publication history as part of the story being told. Most importantly in my mind, Smith chooses the resurrect the character not as he was when he died, but as he was just before the Grell series. In other words, Smith, while not erasing another writer's work on the character, made it so that this new Green Arrow had no memory of the grim and gritty years--they happened, but hadn't happened to him.
Of course, Meltzer then proceeds to go right back to the "liberal hypocrite" well. On the surface, Meltzer's story seems a lot like Smith's--continuity obsessed. But whereas Smith uses the past to provide a way forward, Meltzer's story takes a step backward.
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