Green Arrow #21 – Chris Condon, Writer; Montos, Artist; Adriano Lucas, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: It’s rare for a superhero comic to tackle issues that can’t be punched aside, but the carnage that corporate titans can wreak on communities without ever seeing justice is definitely one of those topics. The town of Freshwater has become Green Arrow’s new home, as the politicians and businessmen who poisoned the town’s soil and water get hunted down one by one. The opening segment this issue shows an army of furious parents whose children have faced an array of diseases and deformities go to war against the powerful board, only to be rudely dismissed. And in the present day, Green Arrow – or rather, Oliver Queen – finds himself hunted in his own home by a masked killer with the same aesthetic as the one who was caught and died last issue. And this one has a very personal reason to go after him – a paper with Oliver Queen’s signature on it approving of the poisoning.
Of course, Oliver says he didn’t sign it – and he likely didn’t. As a hands-off investor, it’s likely that his name was used without his knowledge on a lot of things. But that doesn’t matter to someone who’s lost their family, and it becomes clear that this is a much larger issue than just one masked killer. It’s a society of victims, each with their own tragic story, ready to start taking their revenge and putting their personal tragedies back on the front page. It’s hard to see how anyone comes out of this story looking good or gets the justice they deserve, which is evidence that this book is doing its job. Chris Condon usually works in modern western noir, with morally complex characters, and even though the setting here is very different, it feels like he’s working with a lot of those same themes. I don’t know the last time I remember a series taking such a drastic shift in tone from one run to another.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
