DCU Comic Book Reviews

GREEN ARROW #66

The Away Game, Part One:  The Old Dog/The New Tricks

November 2006

Written by Judd Winick

Pencils by Scott McDaniel

Inks by Andy Owens

Cover by Scott McDaniel & Andy Owens

Synopsis

From an earlier time...Green Arrow had been shot, twice to the chest, by arrows.  He thought he was close to dying (again) but was saved by a bunch of Star City citizens who got him to makeshift medical camps.  His son, Conner, then took him and Mia Deardon (aka Speedy) to an island on the Pacific Island to recuperate.  After healing enough, Conner tells his father what happened to Star City.  Conner advises they should not go back until they are 100% healthy.  Ollie tells him they are not going back, yet.  He knows he was beaten, physically beaten, so he has plans to prepare himself.  Ollie, Conner, and Speedy then go through intense training for three months.  But to Ollie, it was not enough.  He then decides to learn from Natas, the same assassin who trained Deathstroke.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

“And I’ve been dead before.  It only slowed me down.

Satan backwards is Natas.

Sad to say, much of this issue was predictable simply because all of the clues and information had already been told to us during the first arc of the One Year Later.  We know Ollie re-trained himself; this was already told to us.  And it is no surprise that Ollie would want to learn from the person who trained Deathstroke.  Since his first big battle was against Deathstroke, this also makes sense.  Plus, the first meeting between Tuckerman and Ollie is more of a nod, wink, nudge to the OYL arc than any type of “holy cow” type of situations.  Essentially, this first part of the new story arc seems slightly pointless; let’s hope the next issue improves. 

The entire scene with Ollie waking up, bashing in the heads of the medical people, and then running free to the edge of the cliff was a bit annoying.  I hate it when characters resort to violence first before assessing the situation they are in.  This may have been intentional, showing how much Ollie has to learn, but I suspect it was done simply for the cheap joke of Ollie running out somewhere to run and then turning around to find Conner and Mia. . 

I had a little trouble with the art in this issue, mostly due to the beard given to Conner and the lack of beard for Ollie.  I know it made sense in the story, but it was a little odd to me.  However, I did like the blackout drawings of Ollie, those little scenes that reminded me so much of Eduardo Risso’s work in 100 Bullets. 

The timeline in this story doesn’t quite mesh with the 52 series, since Ollie was seen fairly early on getting the idea to run for Mayor, yet this issue states he was on the island for at least 3 months training, plus a little more recuperating.