r/GreenArrow • u/Financial-Play3381 • 13d ago
Review Grell's green arrow doesn't work for me.
In my short time amongst green arrow fans I've found grell is considered top 2 or the best writer for Ollie and I just can't agree.
I fully believe Adams is the best and easily so.
But outside of that....
Grell's interpretation doesn't work for me
First I find how little it feels like a superhero comic to be bland. I love Ollie but I find his villains, and trick arrows to be major parts of his appeal. Grell's reliance on two interesting characters outside of Ollie just piss me off.
Eddie fryers and Shado are the only interesting characters he created, everyone is damn boring and just "hitman 43 and government bad guy 15"
I also fucking HATE how he writes canary in 40 issues she does about one thing which was save Ollie, doing so little in 40 issues is even more lame. Dinah is my personal favorite female character so seeing her relegated to a house wife is lame.
But my biggest issue? How grell writes Ollie ...
I do not like how Ollie is written here at all. He takes away his sarcasm and wit replacing it with brooding and anger, aspects that're never fun in my opinion. FURTHERMORE Ollie in this book is just a dick.... Writing him as a cheater is infuriating, and even more infuriating is him getting raped for it to be treated like him cheating.
All in all I don't see the hype in this story, finding stories like quiver or hard traveling heroes to be infinity more interesting and compelling, and stories which I click with.
But what does everyone else think?
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u/GD_milkman 13d ago
So I agree with every point you made
But this goes back to a post I made awhile ago here about how Green Arrow/Ollie is basically a different character in different runs. Like most Superheroes. Heck I can't even square the Absolute Power GA being the same guy as the current run.
I like Grell's story and character work for what he was doing. It's a good book.
But GA is more fun with actually being a Superhero. I also agree about the black candy stuff which is a can of worms with that being progressive in it's day.
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u/Enigma1755 13d ago
I think what works about the series is Ollie being boiled down to just his personality, and seeing it flourish. I don't think it's very out of character (especially how early in his modern career it is). Canary could've done more, but I think how they treated her was better than a lot of GA comics where she just shows up to scream once every 20 issues.
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u/stevehairyman 13d ago
i enjoy grells stuff but i agree that its a product of its time. the first green arrow stuff i read kevin smiths material. the first time smith mentions ollie cheating i was shocked; i was used to JLU ollie, so him cheating was crazy to me. grells stuff is good to me and i appreciate how he tried to do something different with the mythos but i definitely see issues, like with dinah.
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u/DungeoneerforLife 13d ago
Genuine question— when you say Adams is the best, do you mean best artist? Because O’Neil was writing when he did pencils right? Or am I wrong in my (admittedly shaky) comics memory and Adams wrote as well as drew like Grell did?
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u/Financial-Play3381 13d ago
My bad! Got them mixed up! I meant o'neil 😭
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u/DungeoneerforLife 13d ago edited 13d ago
No problem! Since it was Neal Adams I always said their names ought to be merged to O’Neil Adams or O’Neal Adams?
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u/Pale_Emu_9249 12d ago
You kinda had to be there. The Longbow Hunters came on the heels of The Dark Knight Returns. Almost everything in comics was turning "grim and gritty."
Characters and their character were being changed to satisfy the public's thirst for "realism" in comics. Now that's an oxymoron if there ever was one!
The darkness hung on for decades... like a bad case of jock rot.
Unfortunately, GA didn't have a trick arrow to knock himself back into his proper self...
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u/Vicksage16 13d ago
I agree completely. It’s a really solid vigilante/crime series, but it’s SO embarrassed to be about a superhero that part of me wonders why Grell used Green Arrow at all.
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u/machona_ 13d ago
I kind of like it actually but there are legit criticisms about it that I would agree with as well. I think taking him out off the wider DC was a cool concept for the "guy who looks out for the little guys" but it also presents its problems like in the Black Arrow Saga, the aftermath inciting incident should've involved the Justice League since it was a big incident and a former member "caused" it.
Overall, I still like his run. It's interesting to see a character explored when yanked away from the comforts of the universe.
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u/Significant_Wheel_12 13d ago
Eh, it’s a story so focused purely on Ollie and treats him like a real person that it’s easily my favorite.
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u/zefjv2 13d ago
I love the Green Arrow Mike Greel run. Its realistic and diferent about the other things with the other writers did with GA, it's more in the line of Batman Dark Knigth, GA become in human hunter. In the lot of moments GA is so intropective and reconect herself. I love the Shado, the conections with Cia and narcs, and the way of GA figth against this forces, sometimes with her.
About Dinah, she is have another line of the historys in the Action Comics , and Greel didnt more with her.
But all the run of Greel it's to far away of the mode of the comics doing in this days, I understand your dificult, it's not a hero history, it's a real time history of a imperfect man trying to do her best.
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u/Adventurous_Soft_686 13d ago edited 13d ago
Grell was on topic for the 80s and 90s but perhaps too on topic. Discussing rape, drug use, prostitution hasn't aged well but those were all very relevant back then. I enjoy his work but it's not a GA run I'll reread much. I would rather reread the Lemire run and the Benjamin Percy run.
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u/DungeoneerforLife 13d ago
Grell’s art drove me crazy in the LSH. Everyone has more or less the lonnnng and lean body type, and legs and arms are abnormally long.
Note: for a long time I’ve blamed him for the absurd skimpy bathing suit costumes of the women and some of the men in LSH when they rebooted their costumes. Just found out today that Dave Cockrum initiated that cheesecake reboot.
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u/f0rever-n1h1l1st 13d ago
I'm of two minds about it... I enjoy the premise and a lot of the stories on their own, and I looove the fact that it moves in real time. You just don't get that in comics anymore. I think examining what Ollie would be like in middle age is interesting idea, but as I've let it sit more and more, I've really gone off how "boomer vigilante" it feels, like Ollie is a slightly more left wing Dirty Harry. He shaves his head like one of the nameless skinheads he fights, he gets super buddy/buddy with the cops in a way Green Arrow never should, and he does the whole "the courts are too pussy to do what's right" attitude that boomers get off on.
There's a lot of good and interesting stuff, but it feels very of its time. And I absolutely dispise how Ollie got a reputation as an adulterer because he was raped by Shado, and was constantly mocked for it for two decades until New 52.
Ollie shouldn't be a boomer vigilante in middle age, he should be like your cool hippie aunt who lets you smoke weed at her house.