Green Arrow #21 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (story), Andrea Sorrentino (art), Marcelo Maiolo (colors)

The Story: Ollie gets roofied by Magus and has visions of life on a tropical island—not the good kind.

The Review: In a society where our media increasingly places value in directness, I appreciate the virtue of subtlety more and more all the time.  In fiction especially I think writers can afford to be a little less direct.  There’s hardly a point to following a character arc or exploring a theme if the writer’s just going to straight out tell you what they are.  That just takes all the fun out of analyzing and debating these things for yourself.

So if there’s one crippling flaw to Lemire’s approach to Green Arrow, it’s not only making it clear that the story is about Ollie’s fall and rise, but reminding us constantly in every issue.  Look, I get it; Ollie used to have it all, then he lost it, now he has to rebuild himself, yadda, yadda, yadda—but enough of the self-hating monologues.  It’s gotten so old by this point that if Ollie was a real person, you’d be telling him to just start getting his act together instead of repeatedly bemoaning, “I was also Green Arrow.  A superhero—whatever that means anymore.  Just a rich boy’s pathetic attempt at doing something important.  Something meaningful.”*