A review by tobin_elliott
Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters by Mike Gold, Lurene Haines, Mike Grell, Julia Lacquement

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.