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By Jason Bourgeois
I've been hit by a trend lately of every time I say I love something, there's always someone very close by to tell me how much it sucks, or how stupid it is. There's always a person like that around, but they just seem to be in greater numbers and even more prevalent these days. I'm sure there's no greater agenda behind it or concerted effort to annoy me, but everywhere I turn there someone is to throw their opinion at me. Actually, it's not even an opinion, just a simple statement that something sucks. They'll just rear their heads and not back their statements up with anything.
Where is all this going? Well, when the time came for me to pick a subject to write about, it got me thinking that I'd take a look at a book I have come to quite enjoy, and a majority of people I know think is a steaming pile of crap. So, let's review Judd Winnick's Green Arrow/Black Canary series.
Judd has never quite been a favourite writer of mine. I've ducked into his books here and there, and never stuck around for long. He can be wildly inconsistent, varying from very good, to very, very bad. His comic reuniting the original Teen Titans was so awful that I dropped it after one issue. Judd is quite talented, but sometimes he drops the ball, and it's like his evil twin picks it up and runs with it for awhile.
However, his GA/BC title has been tons of good, classic fun. He started the lead up to this book with his solo Green Arrow comic which I never read, and then into the big wedding between the two characters. At the time, there was a giant cry from fandom when they killed Green Arrow at the end of the wedding. They nitpicked it, found tons of plot holes, and how it couldn't be real. Fans are good at that. Funny thing was, they were right. It wasn't even more than a few weeks that we learned that Ollie Queen had been replaced by a shape shifter to try and wreak some havoc. It was never really Green Arrow who died. But give fans something to cry about, and they'll cry. Even if it's a big swerve. Usually, they'll cry even more for being deceived, but that's a rant for another time.
Anyways, Ollie came back pretty quickly, but then there was a murder attempt upon his son, another Green Arrow. All the while, there was fun action and adventure trying to rescue Oliver from his captors on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere, intrigue, and mystery. It appeared that Connor Hawke was killed by nothing, just a blast from empty sky. Where others may find this extremely dumb, or corny, or weird, I take a different take; only in comics can we get something so unreal, so mysterious. I was on board and ready to find out what was going on. Others were set to hate the book no matter what it did.
Things took an even weirder turn when Green Arrow and Black Canary finally found the ship, and inside were something entirely unexpected that just made things even weirder: never before seen aliens. What the heck?? This title was just sucking me in more and more with every twist and turn. This was good, cracked fun as only comics can deliver. And I wanted more.
It just kept getting stranger with a plot to kidnap Plastic Man, a big swerve with a fake Ra's Al Ghul and fake League of Assassins, and Connor had been returned to them, fixed and healed, but with huge gaps in his memory, no ability with an arrow, and new abilities entirely. I suspect this was a way to differentiate Connor from just being Yet Another Green Arrow, but only time will tell how long these changes last. I do understand complaints in this case about fundamentally changing the character so much, but better to have him alive and viable, as well as unique, to be used later on. At least he's not dead to clear the way for only one Green Arrow.
The art has been a lot of fun too, done in a mostly toon-like style, yet still somehow within a traditional comicbook style, making the look of the book into something quite unique. Vibrant, full of life, made the book a pleasure to look at on that merit alone. Even with a change in artists midway through, it kept the same tone and style in the art, for a more coherent whole. Cliff Chiang, and later Mike Norton have done a great job with this material, bringing to life such absurdity.
Yes, the book is absurd, and not for everyone. Yes, it has its share of moments that make even me shake my head and go, "What the hell?" Yes, I'm sure there's some big continuity flaws that would annoy people more fluent in these particular characters. The thing of it is, I don't care. Winnick and his artists have given me a monthly read that literally I never know what to expect. Sadly, Winnick's last issue just came out, and I have no idea what direction the book will take in the coming months. Hopefully it will be just as good.
Green Arrow/Black Canary is not a conventional comic, and that's only a good thing. The material and bizarreness make this book stand out. While it may not be the book I most look forward to each month, it is very well remembered, and sticks in my mind. This is a book I want to talk about, because it's just so damned weird.
Definitely a title I recommend, at least up to issue 14, and especially if you want something a little weird and don't mind the occasional reaction of "Huh?!"
Jason M. Bourgeois
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