DCU Comic Book Reviews

GREEN ARROW #70

Seeing Red, Part Two:  The Buddy System

March 2007

Written by Judd Winick

Pencils by Scott McDaniel

Inks by Andy Owens

Cover by Scott McDaniel & Andy Owens

Synopsis

After a gun deal that goes bad thanks to Green Arrow, Jason Todd (aka Red Hood) approaches Danny Brickwell (aka The Brick) about a different type of deal.  Meanwhile, Batman joins with Green Arrow and Speedy to find the Red Hood.  Using Speedy’s contacts, they find one Red Hood’s flunkies and get the location of three possible drops for the next shipment.  They split up to check on the addresses.  Both Green Arrow and Batman experience a few traps that leads Batman right to Brick and Green Arrow directly to Red Hood. 

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

“Why the hell do you wear a mask underneath the helmet?”

I had the exact same question in my head when I saw Jason sans hood for the first time.  It looked ridiculous.  The explanation for why that Winick provides is not all that bad, as far a stupid unnecessary explanations go.  But at least Winick realizes how stupid it all seems.  I gotta give him props for that.  I also gotta give him props for working in the Winick Dialogue (tm), which is defined as two characters arguing a useless bit of trivia or information for one or two pages moments before the main characters make both the dialogue and the characters, well, completely useless.  Plus, is it me or does the dialogue attributed to the character seem to flip flop, as if the letterer was pointing the balloons to the wrong place. 

As for this issue, the small moments make up for a rather lackluster plot.  The small moments are Ollie’s heartfelt attempt to sympathize with Batman’s plight and the return of Jason Todd, Speedy’s ability to track down her snitch, and Batman’s quick and effective interrogation technique.  I also liked the ending panel although it was predictable they would face the other hero rather than the usual counterpart they fight against.  But the opening sequence with Brick and Red Hood, while a touch fun, seemed extremely drawn out while the ending sequence seemed a little too short.  Actually, I am not sure we needed all of the explosions and stuff.  Essentially Winick just needed to have Batman and Green Arrow show up without all of that extraneous stuff. 

A complaint I had in the previous issue rears its ugly head here as well.  Supposedly, Ollie spent significant time during the missing year on an island getting better in terms of his ability to fight.  Part of the training includes recognizing traps.  It just seems that Ollie recognized the booby-trapped cars too late and I don’t he noticed the guns on the roof at all.