DCU Comic Book Reviews

GREEN ARROW #36

City Walls, Part Three:  Captive Audience

May 2004

Written by Judd Winick

Pencils by Phil Hester

Inks by Ande Parks

Cover by Marcos Martin and Alvaro Lopez

Synopsis

At City Hall, Green Arrow attempts to get the mayor to evacuate the city as Ollie believes the Riddler is in possession of an atomic bomb.  The mayor refuses until Ollie gets concrete information.  Later, all of the exits out of Star City are effectively taken away.  The Riddler then announces that he does, indeed, have the bomb and wants 1 hundred million dollars.  Elsewhere, Albert Davis, the one who paid for the Riddler to steal the museum artifacts.  Davis has cast a spell that causes all electrical power in Star City to fail and then a shield completely covers the city.  In the dark, Green Arrow is able to capture the Riddler.  Meanwhile, people being to loot stores.  Connor rushes around to stop them, but is confront by a large devilish beast who tells them:  “Peace or Perish.”

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

“What is always right before you but you can’t see?  Your future.”

There may be some people who are not going to like the sleight-of-hand trick pulled by Winick in this issue.  While we were watching the Riddler and his shenanigans with one hand, Winick silently set up Davis as the true menace to this story.  Davis appeared in the previous story, but I don’t think he was given a name and it seemed as if he was just a bit player, secondary to the Riddler’s plan.  Granted, the sleight of hand was not that tricky, but I certainly expected the showdown with the Riddler to last much longer than it did.  Of course, now that Winick has shown us his hand, he is going to have to make sure in the next issue to create a character that will be as compelling as the devilish monsters appear in this issue.  If Davis is not interesting or fails as an antagonist to the Green Arrow, then the set-up was not worth it.  Davis is a generic villain; it takes guts to toss aside a colorful villain like the Riddler for someone less clearly defined. 

What I liked about this issue is that Davis’ plan is wholly dependent on the Riddler’s plan.  Although I am sure it has been done before, I like the idea of one villain using another villain’s antics to cover up his own dirty deeds.  And then to top it off, Winick has Davis’s plan completely foil the Riddler’s plan.  The entire scenario is the equivalent of the Riddler getting bitch slapped. 

There is one flaw to the Riddler’s plan.  He is standing right on top of the bomb holding the button that will set it off.  This means that if the bomb goes, the Riddler will also be killed.