GREEN ARROW #61

Crawling Through The Wreckage, Part 2: Green Party Agenda

June 2006

Written by Judd Winick

Pencils by Scott McDaniel

Inks by Andy Owens

Cover by Scott McDaniel & Andy Owens

Synopsis

Oliver Queen (aka Green Arrow) and the Mayor of Star City holds a press conference to state his goals and aims of his administration.  This includes his rejection of the Willobeigh renovation project, marrying any two persons regardless of gender, and finding a way to tear down the wall without burying the underclass.  After the press conference, the Mayor’s assistant tells Ollie of a situation at the wall:  some radicals have gas trucks and are threatening to blow up the wall.  Police commissioner Brian Nudocerdo refuses to negotiate and instead requests the radicals family be brought in a placed within the line of fire.  Before that can be done, Green Arrow shoots the torches to snuff them out and then removes the radicals out of harm’s way.  Angry, the commissioner orders a warrant for Green Arrow’s arrest.  Later, one of the Mayor’s assistants wonders why Ollie just doesn’t ask one of his super hero friends to tear down the wall.  Before Ollie can answer, they find Deathstroke, who says the mayor will be unavailable for comment because he will be dead.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

“Albeit a lot of gay people, but with a name like Queen, I’m not one to judge.”

I really enjoyed this issue, with one minor exception.  As I stated in the review for the previous issue, Winick is a good writer, but he has this tendency to jump on the soap box.  In this case, that soap box is gay marriages.  I am not against it, nor do I think it is not an issue to be tackled in a medium such as comic books.  But in a book that was aiming at the US government’s lack of response of Hurricane Katrina, the gay marriage seemed wildly out of place.  To me, it seemed more like an arbitrary attempt to put forth an idea, but without any relevance to the situation at hand (and what does this have to do with the big wall?) it doesn’t fit.  So, that is my one complaint. Again, not the idea, just the placement.

Other than that, this was good.  I liked the idea of a press conference as a method to provide exposition that did not seemed forced or awkward.  Details were provided about Star City (no tv stations, no newspapers) that show just how damaged the city really is.  Yet, the most intriguing point was brought up at the end and wasn’t properly answered:  why doesn’t Ollie want the wall pulled down.  Obviously Hal Jordan could easily take it down, yet there it stays while Ollie complains to the press that he needs to raise the funds to pull it down.  I am curious to the answer, if and when we get it.  It might not come for some time as I am sure next issue will focus on the battle between Deathstroke and Green Arrow. 

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