A Tale of Two Arrows

Book: Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters
Pen: Mike Grell
Pencil: Mike Grell

Green Arrow can easily, and to an extent, correctly, be described as the poor man’s Batman. Billionaire, playboy, vigilante without superpowers, young kid’s guardian, who later became a sidekick, the whole shebang.  It all changed when the billionaire became a leftist. Suddenly he became more interesting. A seemingly ridiculous combination with Green Lantern seems to have been a huge success with the writers being able to tackle real world concerns within the framework of comics.

The real, gritty re-imagining happened with this book. Mike Grell was asked to write and draw a three-issue storyline. Grell did that, and stayed on. He decided that the flashiness and the trick arrows of old had to go. He didn’t try to get rid of the Robin Hood inspiration, but instead just let Arrow be an admirer of Robin Hood. The action was shifted from the fictional Star City to Seattle, where Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow has moved to with his girlfriend Dinah Lance, who also moonlighted as the crime-fighter Black Canary. 

In Seattle, two sets of serial killings were making headlines. Prostitutes were being slashed by someone with a very sharp knife, and senior citizens were being bumped off by someone with very sharp arrows. Meanwhile, a cracked-up junkie lands on their porch.

Dinah decided to go and find the source of the drugs, while Oliver decided to work on relaxing the fingers by going after the local hoods. He soon finds who the slasher is, but comes out badly in the encounter. The next girl is about to be killed and Oliver is late on the scene. But then a mysterious arrow kills the man. The archer turns out to be a masked female. Before introductions are made, she turns around and shoots another geriatric.

The Longbow Hunters is a major milestone in Green Arrow’s journey. Yet you feel it should have been much more. It touches all the right chords, keeps itself rooted in reality, connects to the then-recent political events and has a good structure. But somehow it seems to be missing something. Maybe the story should have been a little longer. You need to read it two or three times to get a hang of what happened. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, here it feels abrupt. The artwork is efficient, without being overly pretty, but then this is not a pretty story. 

The writing, unfortunately, does not rise above the average. The Green Arrow is famous for having a at least four quips for every situation. Here there is nothing that stands out. The same person performing both writing and drawing duties meant there wouldn't be any conflict of visions. At the same time, a different collaborator might have brought something different to the table. The Longbow Hunters seem like a project that had so much promise, but delivered less. Maybe I am wrong. The Longbow Hunters might have been a milestone comic that was ahead of its time. It just hasn't aged well.