Green Arrow #1 – Joshua Williamson, Writer; Sean Izaakse, Artist; Romulo Fajardo Jr, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: One of the most ambitious books to come out of Infinite Frontier and Josh Williamson’s many plot threads set up in Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, this new six-issue (for now) series takes the sprawling Green Arrow family and sets them against not the usual arrow-wielding crooks, but potentially against a cosmic conspiracy. Oliver Queen has been one of the major loose ends of the current DCU, lost in time and space when the Justice League returned from Pariah’s trap. But his family, led by Dinah Lance, Roy Harper, and Connor Hawke, have never given up searching for him. As they discuss their next move, Oliver is trapped halfway across the universe in a surreal alien landscape. It’s a nice parallel to how Ollie’s story began—alone on a hostile island—and isolating him once again lets Williamson isolate the story in his head so he can recap his origin and how he became a family man.
The heart of this issue, though, isn’t with Ollie. It’s with Roy, and his long-awaited reunion with his daughter Lian. Now a young teen, roughly around Damian’s age I would gather, Lian has been popping in and out of the DC books for a while—first as Catwoman’s associate Shoes, and now as the vigilante Cheshire Cat. She keeps a cool, distant exterior—which makes it all the more emotional when we get the moment we’ve been waiting for since 2010. But it’s not long before they’re separated again, as the mysterious power broker pulling Ollie’s strings targets Lian as well. What does Amanda Waller have to do with all of this? Why are there what looks like Manhunters involved? It’s a fascinating, twisty first issue that resembles Lost or The Prisoner in some places—but is grounded in a story of one of the most complex superheroes in the DCU, and the legacy he built. Great first issue.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
