GREEN ARROW #50

New Business Part 4:  All Together Now

July 2005

Written by Judd Winick

Pencils by Tom Fowler & Tommy Castillo

Inks by Rodney Ramos

Cover by James Jean

Synopsis

Green Arrow, along with Speedy, Connor Hawke and the Outsiders, have just learned that the Riddler, with the help of assassin Constantine Drakon, has kidnapped Roy Harper (aka Arsenal).  With the help of Batman, they are able to find Arsenal’s location:  an abandoned prison.  While the Outsiders deal with the Riddler’s henchmen on the outside, Team Arrow makes their way inside.  The team, however, gets separated.  Drakon deals with Speedy and Connor while the Riddler tortures Ollie.  Drakon pounds and beats Speedy and Connor until they spring their plan:  Shift in disguise, allowing him to capture Drakon with relative ease.  Meanwhile, the Riddler finishes his torture and then leaves before the Outsiders can capture him.  Later, Ollie and gang return home, but it explodes just before they can enter.  Elsewhere, Brick thanks his benefactor for taking care of his problem, but warns him Green Arrow will be coming after him.  Deathstroke is looking forward to it.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

This was an interesting, if somewhat confused, way of ending this storyline.  I don’t have a problem with the Riddler deciding to seek revenge and to dish out the revenge in the form of torture against the Green Arrow.  I can buy that he doesn’t want to kill him, only wants to injure him.  But when it happens, it all feels anticlimactic.  It seems like he is just getting starting when he bolts.  Part of the problem is that the Riddler leaves when the Outsiders break into the prison, but we don’t actually see that (except for one panel which is too muddled to have an impact), so we don’t get the feeling that they are close to the Riddler.  The other part is that it seems as if the Riddler and the torture of Ollie was a small part of Deathstroke’s larger plan (one would assume the Riddler was use to get Ollie out of the house to set up the bombs), but this was not made clear.  At one point the Riddler mentions that, “this was all just gravy time,” which suggests he was part of the plan, but it wasn’t stated outright, just hinted at.  I get the feeling that Winick had a clear plan on what is going on in terms of the plot, but it doesn’t come through that well to the reader.  This is quite sad because the set up in this issue works well, but the payoff (or lack thereof) occurs too suddenly to have any impact.  And without a sense of the overall story, it makes the ending that much more frustrating. 

The drawing of Mia at the end (which I think was done by Jimmy Castillo) just does not look like her at all.  Too old and too tall and the hair just seems all wrong.

In previous reviews I mentioned that I don’t like Fowler’s exaggerated work.  In this issue, his Riddler looks too much like the Joker at times, to the point that I wondered if the Joker was supposed to the villain, but changed at the last minute.  I doubt this is true; the Riddler’s appearance works well with his appearance earlier in Winick’s run.  Yet, look at the Riddler on the bottom of page 4.  You can not tell me that does not look like the Joker. 

PREVIOUS	Main		Page	NEXT