Green Arrow #25 – Review

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

The Story: We have a knight and archer in the same room.  Now where’s the mage?

The Review: I confess that I have a certain amount of cynicism about crossover events in comics, viewing them usually as schemes to capture readers (and their dollars) who wouldn’t read these books otherwise.  The farther spread the crossover, the more suspicious I get, and Zero Year’s infection reaches far, indeed.  Having just read an Action Comics tie-in that was only marginally related to events in Zero Year proper, I wondered if Green Arrow will fare any better.

Lemire gets a leg-up on Action Comics #25 by actually setting his story in Gotham and allowing Ollie to run into the early Dark Knight himself.  True, it’s a little too fortuitous that Ollie’s return from the island coincides exactly with the chaos erupting in Gotham, but it’s a narrative necessity that mostly pays off, so you don’t take too much issue with it.*  At the very least, you get to see some interesting parallels and contrasts between two of DC’s most prominent non-powered superheroes.