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dantastic's review against another edition
5.0
Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters Saga Omnibus Vol. 1 collects Green Arrow #1-50 plus The Longbow Hunters #1-3.
This has been on my radar for years but it finally dropped into my cheapness range a few weeks ago at the same time I had a giftcard burning a hole in my pocket.
Green Arrow was one of the lynchpins of the DC's Mature Readers line of the late 1980s/early 1990s that preceded Vertigo. With the Longbow Hunters, Mike Grell establishes Oliver Queen as a guy who is no longer fucking around. When Black Canary's life is in danger, Oliver takes matters into his own hands. Gone are the gimmick arrows and super hero trappings.
Boy howdy, is it a good read. Green Arrow patrols the streets of Seattle, picking up where the cops leave off. It could easily devolve into killing for the sake of killing but this is a mature readers book. Ollie grapples with his choices all the time and his biggest nemesis is getting older. Over the course of the volume, Green Arrow spends a lot of time in Seattle but travels far and wide before finally returning home.
It's a great read and I didn't even mention Shado. Anyway, Grell writes and draws Longbow Hunters but the Green Arrow regular series has a host of artists, namely a young Dan Jurgens, an older Dick Giordano, Ed Hannigan, Rick Hoberg, Denys Cowan, and others.
The 80s political climate makes some of the stories feel slightly dated but unfortunately, corruption and douchebaggery never go out of style. The coloring can be a little garish, as was the style at the time. The pencils and inks hold up very well, though. Grell emphasizes the hero part of super hero and you never forget Oliver is mortal. He takes a few ass kickings in this.
I don't know what else to say without revealing all the plots and such. Suffice to say, the reputation this run carries is well earned. This is great stuff and I don't know why we don't have more books like this on the racks thirty years later.
Five out of five stars.
This has been on my radar for years but it finally dropped into my cheapness range a few weeks ago at the same time I had a giftcard burning a hole in my pocket.
Green Arrow was one of the lynchpins of the DC's Mature Readers line of the late 1980s/early 1990s that preceded Vertigo. With the Longbow Hunters, Mike Grell establishes Oliver Queen as a guy who is no longer fucking around. When Black Canary's life is in danger, Oliver takes matters into his own hands. Gone are the gimmick arrows and super hero trappings.
Boy howdy, is it a good read. Green Arrow patrols the streets of Seattle, picking up where the cops leave off. It could easily devolve into killing for the sake of killing but this is a mature readers book. Ollie grapples with his choices all the time and his biggest nemesis is getting older. Over the course of the volume, Green Arrow spends a lot of time in Seattle but travels far and wide before finally returning home.
It's a great read and I didn't even mention Shado. Anyway, Grell writes and draws Longbow Hunters but the Green Arrow regular series has a host of artists, namely a young Dan Jurgens, an older Dick Giordano, Ed Hannigan, Rick Hoberg, Denys Cowan, and others.
The 80s political climate makes some of the stories feel slightly dated but unfortunately, corruption and douchebaggery never go out of style. The coloring can be a little garish, as was the style at the time. The pencils and inks hold up very well, though. Grell emphasizes the hero part of super hero and you never forget Oliver is mortal. He takes a few ass kickings in this.
I don't know what else to say without revealing all the plots and such. Suffice to say, the reputation this run carries is well earned. This is great stuff and I don't know why we don't have more books like this on the racks thirty years later.
Five out of five stars.
pataustin11's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
tobin_elliott's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Because I'm slowly working my way through Mike Grell's shockingly good Warlord series, I decided to re-read his Green Arrow story, that I hadn't read since its initial three-issue release almost 36 years ago.
And honestly? Yeah, it shows how great Grell is with Warlord.
I'll go on record right now as saying, with some notable exceptions (Alan Moore's Watchmen, Tom King's Mister Miracle, Frank Miller's first Batman: The Dark Knight Returns #1), I'm really not a DC fan. And this series, while trying really hard, won't be the one to sway me.
Unlike Grell's work on his creative baby, Warlord, that he conceived, scripted, and drew, he's now playing in the larger DC sandbox with an established history, so it felt slightly more forced, though he took a good angle...Oliver moves cities and because of the physical move, he begins to also question where his life is going and some of the decisions he's made to get him there.
There's also, of course, the shadowy (pun intended) villain of the piece, as well as two plots, both involving people showing up dead.
Grell's trying to make a point with the drug smuggling, money laundering, justice system, and the jaded public that's happy to turn away and ignore all these injustices. He sort of gets there, but not completely successfully.
Then there's the art. With Warlord, I'm constantly struck by Grell's impeccable design and layout sense on page after page. But here, it's somewhat less successful. Once again, Grell used the DC prestige format to experiment with his art as well, combining his excellent pencil and ink linework with coloured pencil sketches and even what appears to be watercolour painting. At the same time, he utilizes a lot of double page spreads that aren't, unfortunately, always obvious—at least to me—which lead to reading, then re-reading the dialogue in the correct order. I will say, though, that the actual art itself is simply stunning.
So, in the end, while I applaud Grell for what he was trying to do, it was only partially successful.
northern_mint's review
1.0
Well, this hasn't aged well. Trigger warning for Sexual Assault
This was written during the height of the war on drugs and it shows. Green Arrow recounts his origin story. If you're familiar with his character you will know his origin is that he became standed on an island and had to fight off a group of bloodthirsty pirates to return home. However, it turns out this was all a lie. Instead of pirates, it was two stoned and unarmed hippies that he threatened with grievous bodily harm so they would take him back to civilization. He doesn't even try to ask them for help. After this, he has these criminals arrested because they were trying to grow some marijuana. For the actions of an ostensibly a liberal hero, it's all so comical.
Several times the comic establishes that crime has never been higher. I'd like to go off on a short tangent here criminals are constantly being shocked that Green Arrow would beat them up. How on earth did they expect him to handle them? With cupcakes and hugs?
The other significant part that really hasn't aged well is that Black Canary is kidnapped and sexually assaulted. Now I am not trying to suggest characters should never be brutalized in fiction but at least it should serve some purpose in the narrative. The authors have not even come close to achieving this goal. Green Arrow kills the men who have committed these heinous crimes and goes back to being a non-lethal hero immediately. Our female lead points out the hypocrisy of his actions and he totally ignores this criticism. The comic takes the stance that this issue has been resolved even though it hasn't been in the slightest.
The comic also drops its narrative focus and picks new ones up willy-nilly. It's incredibly jarring. The comic starts off by relating the dangers of drugs and the mental health issues of Vietnam vets. The Vietnam vet angle is quickly dropped for the horrors of Japanese internment camps . Then at the very end, everything is dropped to insert the Iran-Contra affair into the story. Mike Grell should have just stuck with one because this hodgepodge of unrelated narrative elements doesn't work.
This was written during the height of the war on drugs and it shows. Green Arrow recounts his origin story. If you're familiar with his character you will know his origin is that he became standed on an island and had to fight off a group of bloodthirsty pirates to return home. However, it turns out this was all a lie. Instead of pirates, it was two stoned and unarmed hippies that he threatened with grievous bodily harm so they would take him back to civilization. He doesn't even try to ask them for help. After this, he has these criminals arrested because they were trying to grow some marijuana. For the actions of an ostensibly a liberal hero, it's all so comical.
Several times the comic establishes that crime has never been higher. I'd like to go off on a short tangent here criminals are constantly being shocked that Green Arrow would beat them up. How on earth did they expect him to handle them? With cupcakes and hugs?
The other significant part that really hasn't aged well is that Black Canary is kidnapped and sexually assaulted. Now I am not trying to suggest characters should never be brutalized in fiction but at least it should serve some purpose in the narrative. The authors have not even come close to achieving this goal. Green Arrow kills the men who have committed these heinous crimes and goes back to being a non-lethal hero immediately. Our female lead points out the hypocrisy of his actions and he totally ignores this criticism. The comic takes the stance that this issue has been resolved even though it hasn't been in the slightest.
The comic also drops its narrative focus and picks new ones up willy-nilly. It's incredibly jarring. The comic starts off by relating the dangers of drugs and the mental health issues of Vietnam vets. The Vietnam vet angle is quickly dropped for the horrors of Japanese internment camps . Then at the very end, everything is dropped to insert the Iran-Contra affair into the story. Mike Grell should have just stuck with one because this hodgepodge of unrelated narrative elements doesn't work.
luana420's review
4.0
Once you get past the kinda off-putting violence against sex workers (hey, a comic book with something to prove in 1987), this turns into a pretty cool 80s action movie, with an actual friggin Rocky Mountain First Blood/Cliffhanger style climax.
Ollie is kind of a lame duck protagonist (his only motivation seems to be to want kids, which... okay?) but Shado more than makes up for him in both design and relatability.
I heard that this was a redesign of the character which is VERY FUNNY since you have this scene of a Robin Hood cosplay motherfucker talking to a Death Wish police detective at the hospital soft drink machine. Like, uhh, maybe we shoulda redesigned slightly harder...
Mike Grell's art is truly one of the most awe-inspiring things I've seen in mainstream comics, holy shit. I was gawking practically every page.
Also kinda impressed that this was just a three-issue arc! Thank you, short comics!
So yeah, if you can get past the half-gross/half-eyerolling FILTH OF THE CITY opening, it gets fun! (hope you don't like Black Canary too much)
Ollie is kind of a lame duck protagonist (his only motivation seems to be to want kids, which... okay?) but Shado more than makes up for him in both design and relatability.
I heard that this was a redesign of the character which is VERY FUNNY since you have this scene of a Robin Hood cosplay motherfucker talking to a Death Wish police detective at the hospital soft drink machine. Like, uhh, maybe we shoulda redesigned slightly harder...
Mike Grell's art is truly one of the most awe-inspiring things I've seen in mainstream comics, holy shit. I was gawking practically every page.
Also kinda impressed that this was just a three-issue arc! Thank you, short comics!
So yeah, if you can get past the half-gross/half-eyerolling FILTH OF THE CITY opening, it gets fun! (hope you don't like Black Canary too much)
testpattern's review
2.0
Enjoyably pulpy, but terribly drawn (with the most serious of intentions) and riddled with hamfisted eighties social consciousness.
dumblydore's review
3.0
I love the art—you don't see much of pencil colouring these days, but I really hated how Dinah/Black Canary was brushed aside in typical fridge-fare.
Rating: 2.5/5
Rating: 2.5/5
lyrafay12's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
4.5
lyrafay12's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
4.25