Green Arrow #51 and #52

I have to admit that I like the idea of Green Arrow, a robin hood type figure who fights for the poor and meek against the rich and strong.  I think as much as any other character, Green Arrow seems to have gone through many manifestations.  Perhaps a better word might be reincarnations.  I think Green Arrow, although not one of the trinity of DC Comics lead super heroes, is subject to manipulation by comic book writers and artists, simply because he is a paragon of pity and mercy for the poor, similar in the manner that Batman is the paragon of true justice.

When DC Comics rebooted their comic books under the New 52 brand, there was a lot of hope for the books.  One of the books they re-launched was Green Arrow. 

It started very roughly.  The writers and artists had taken away from him his wisdom and experience and replaced it with youthful vanity and inexperience.  I started the book (and continued collected I am ashamed to say) even though I felt that the character had known prior to the reboot had lost his depth, had lost his pain, had lost his motivation.

The series had some shining spots.  I remember fondly the work Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino had done on the book.  It had regained some of its depth and beauty I had known before.

The series ended with issues 51 and 52.  Ollie has been infected by the Lukos virus, a disease which turns him into the wolf-like warg.  He shares this disease with a number of citizens of Seattle who have been placed in camps as a part of a campaign by hate mongers who are intended to mimic racists and white supremacists.  Ollie takes Kumiko and his wolf pet, George, to Nigeria, to hunt down someone knows as Doctor Miracle whose blood cures all ails of everyone.

In Issue 51, Green Arrow encounters the “Whites” who are holding Doctor Miracle to use for their own nefarious purposes.  It all goes to hell when Deathstroke and captures Doctor Miracle to fulfill a contract he had with a dying old man.  Green Arrow is killed by Deathstroke at the end of the issue.

Or so you think, for the same knife which Deathstroke uses to kill Ollie is the same knife used to cut Doctor Miracle and draw blood from him was the one impaled into Ollie, and, as a result, Ollie is brought back from the brink of death and cures him of the Lukos virus.

In Issue 52, the final issue, Ollie chases down Deathstroke who has delivered Doctor Miracle but is shorted by his employer.  Rather than engage in battle with Deathstroke, Deathstroke stands out of the way of Green Arrow who reclaims Doctor Miracle and “requests” his help to cure others of Seattle infected by the Lukos virus.  Ollie returns to Seattle, offers the cure, the lead supremacist is killed by the gang leader of the wargs, and peace is restored to Seattle.

The art is mediocre, barely so.  There is nothing distinctive of the art either.  It lends nothing to the story telling.  It has very little style or interest.  It is clear that the artist Symon Kudranski tries to steer clear of risks, or is told to do so, which is upsetting because Green Arrow is a book on which risks are often taken and with great reward.  Kudranski’s work on Kumiko is particularly depressing as she appears to be rendered incomplete.  See for example the bottom panel of Issue 52.

There are times when Kudranski’s art left me puzzled as when Deathstroke is fighting with Green Arrow in Issue 51.  Kumiko, several feet from away, shoots an arrow.  However, he miraculously closes the gap between himself and Kumiko, his leg reaching up to kick her in the face. 

The characters in the issues, who might have been more artistically developed, who could have drawn more interest to the story, were mockeries of themselves, and, truth br told, of other comic characters.  One could not help but imagine Marvel’s Moon Knight mortal enemy, Bushman, a black man with a white face when looking at the “Whites,” a Nigerian military gang composed of black men with white faces, or even Todd McFarlane’s Violator, with his large, engorged and twisted.

The story itself also is weak.  It is a premise that seems to belong in a Green Arrow book, prejudice and preying on the weak, and, yet, the messages seem mixed.  Ollie attempts to find a cure for the division that the Lukos virus has caused in Seattle and his answer is to cure those with the Lukos virus to make them human.  If the Lukos virus is a symbol of the differences between people, why is a cure necessary.  Is there a cure for being black, brown, gay, Jewish?  It really makes no sense.

Further, it is clear that the writer, Benjamin Percy, operates on a false premise, that mankind’s need to conquer and consume, is purely a “white” idea, or that such methods in order to conquer and consume are learned in elite colleges found in the United States.  Percy attempts to attack on an issue as old as mankind by slapping a racial label on it.  It is dishonest and disingenuous at best.  At its worst, it hypocritically prejudicial in and of itself.  The premise makes a mockery of the values that Green Arrow stands for.

This was a disappointing end of the Green Arrow series, a slapped together morass of story and art which left me wondering why DC Comics even bothered publishing the story line instead of just canceling the title.