GREEN ARROW/BLACK CANARY #4

Dead Again, Conclusion: Please Play Where Daddy Can See You

March 2008

Written by Judd Winick

Pencils by Cliff Chiang

Inks by Cliff Chiang

Cover by Cliff Chiang

Synopsis

After rescuing Oliver Queen (aka Green Arrow) from Themyscria, his son Conner Hawke was shot through the heart.  Not having enough first aid supplies on the boat, Ollie calls for Clark.  Superman flies to the boat, grabs Conner and then flies him to a hospital.  At Mercy Hospital in Florida, the Justice League of America joins Ollie, Black Canary, and Speedy to offer support and help.  Ollie tells Hal Jordan do whatever he can to save Conner.  Meanwhile, Superman investigates the spot where Conner was shot, but can find no evidence of what happened.  Later, Jordan tells Ollie they did everything they could, but Conner, though breathing, has brain damage.  Ollie then goes to see Conner, telling him that Daddy is right there.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

Hopefully this makes sense.  I disagree with the direction Winick has taken this book so far.  I think it is a mistake to turn what had been a comedic title and then turn it serious by putting Conner into a coma.  Either this title will become a somber drama with Conner’s coma the core of Ollie’s state of mind or next month Conner will be forgotten and the title will be back to comedy.  Either way, I don’t think it works.  One will make for a dour title and the other just makes Conner’s condition an afterthought.  However, since this is what Winick has decided to do, I have to admit that he does a good job with the story and showing Ollie’s frustration and helplessness in the hospital as he desperately wants to do something to help his son, but he can’t.  As a story, it works, but I don’t like the direction. 

The current status of Conner is actually a good decision, if removing a character from a shared universe is ever a good decision.  Mind you, I am not saying the result of this storyline is good, but I suppose if one is going to go through with it, the result provided by Winick is the best they could manage.  Conner is technically not dead, so if editorial ever wanted to bring him back, they wouldn’t have to do much to revive him.

I don’t how I feel about it, but this storyline fed directly into a huge continuity address, as Winick clears up or ties up a lot of loose ends regarding Ollie and Conner’s relationship.  A lot of this was done previously, most notably in Kevin Smith’s run of Green Arrow about six or seven years ago.  I’d have to dig up those issues to see how different Winick’s events differ from Smith’s.  Either way, I really hope that this story was not written solely just to clear up any confusion about Conner.  I would like to think it was a by-product and not the reason. 

The one portion of the story that bothered me, and one that probably gave Winick fits as he was writing, is the fact that for the Justice League, when they walk into the hospital, it was the first time they had seen Green Arrow alive since his “murder.”  One would think that one of the questions they would ask is, “aren’t you dead?” or even “what happened?”  But that is missing here and it seems weird for all of these heroes not to ask either Ollie or Dinah what happened.  I would guess that Winick decided against including that scene because it would interrupt the flow of the story, and part of me can’t argue with the logic, but at the same time, it was a little distressing not to see it. 

There were a number of good moments in this issue, from Batman’s statement about losing a son (referring to Jason Todd) to Ollie’s quiet then loud request for help from Clark.  However, I do have to question why Jordan was sent into the operating room and not Dr. Mid-Nite.  How long would it take Soranik Natu to get to Earth?

I love the background detail in the art from the passer-by taking a picture of Wonder Woman with his phone to Hawkgirl stirring her cup of coffee while Ollie screams at Hal to Wonder Woman in the background returning from her conversation with Batman and to the magazines on the coffee table.

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