Green Arrow #4 – Joshua Williamson, Writer; Sean Izaakse, Artist; Romulo Fajardo Jr, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: It’s been several long months since we last got an issue of Josh Williamson’s epic time-space-torn saga of the Arrow family. Last we left off, Dinah and Roy were leading the search in the presence after Lian and Conner were disappeared, Lian and Conner were busy meeting with the Legion—who were not exactly being helpful under the United Planets’ guidance—and Ollie was face to face with an old friend—of sorts. This was Hal Jordan, but not the Hal Jordan we know. The return of Parallax, the corrupted version of Hal responsible for Zero Hour—which ended when Ollie killed him—was highly unexpected, and Williamson ramps up the tension between the two right from the start, in the way only old friends turned bitter enemies can be. This cliffhanger has been agonizing, and there are a lot of unanswered questions hanging in the air as the two face off.
The resolution—Ollie baiting the corrupted Hal into a fistfight rather than using their powers—is so in-character that it made me laugh. Of course Ollie would fistfight a God. But there’s a major plot thread that Hal drops, that Ollie asked him to split the family apart, that raises some fascinating questions. We’ve seen corrupted heroes before, and we’ve seen bad futures, but the one that we glimpse at the end of the issue has a great twist to it. I do think this series has such a high level of ambition that it can be hard to juggle all the characters and timelines, but I think Williamson handles the task as well as he possibly can. It helps that he’s one of the few writers in a long time to really capture Ollie’s unique chaotic energy, as well as the fact that he’s using so many great deep cuts from DC continuity. This title is really one that needed the expansion to twelve issues—and it deserves it too.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
