Green Arrow volume 1: Hunter’s Moon


By Mike Grell, Ed Hannigan, Dick Giordano & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-4326-5

First appearing in More Fun Comics #73 in 1941, Green Arrow is one of very few superheroes to be continuously published (more or less) since the Golden Age of American comic books. At first glance this combination of Batman and Robin Hood seems to have very little going for him but he has always managed to keep himself in vogue.

Probably his most telling of many makeovers came in 1987, when, hot on the heels of The Dark Knight Returns, auteur Mike Grell was given the green (Shameless, me!) light to make him the star of DC’s second “Prestige Format Mini-Series”.

Grell was counted a major creator at the time. Beginning his rise with a laudable run on Legion of Super-Heroes, he went on to draw the revived Green Lantern/Green Arrow and practically saved the company with his Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired fantasy series Warlord. He had also notched up a big fan following illustrating many Aquaman, Batman and Phantom Stranger stories before establishing his independent creator credentials at First Comics with Starslayer and Jon Sable, Freelance…

In the grim ‘n’ gritty late Eighties, it was certainly time for another overhaul of the Emerald Archer. Exploding arrows yes, maybe even net or rope arrows, but arrows with boxing gloves or paint brushes on them just don’t work. Thus, in an era of corrupt government, drug cartels and serial killers, the evergreen survivor adapted and thrived under the direction of a creator famed for the realism of his stories.

The Longbow Hunters focused on the super-hero’s mid-life crisis as he relocated to Seattle and struggled to come to terms with the fact that since his former sidekick Speedy was now a dad, Oliver Queen had technically become a grandfather. With long-time “significant other” Dinah Lance AKA Black Canary he began to simplify his life, but the drive to fight injustice never dimmed for either of them.

She went undercover to stamp out a drug ring, and he became engrossed in the hunt for a psycho-killer dubbed “The Seattle Slasher”. Ollie was also made aware of a second – cross-country – slayer who had been murdering people with arrows…

Eschewing his gaudy costume and gimmicks he reinvented himself as an urban hunter to stop such unglamorous everyday monsters, stumbling into a mystery that led back to World War II involving the Yakuza, CIA, corporate America and even the Viet Nam war…

The intricate plot, subtly blending three seemingly disparate stories that were in fact one, still delivers a shocking punch even now in its disturbingly explicit examination of torture, which won the series undeserved negative press when it was first published. Although possibly tame to most modern tastes, this was eye-opening stuff in the 1980’s, which is a shame, as it diverted attention from the real issue… and that was a massive surge in quality and maturity.

The sophisticated and intricate plot – weaving themes of age, diminishing potency, vengeance and family – were another turning point in American comics and led to an ongoing series specifically targeting “Mature Readers”. The treatment and tone heavily influenced and flavoured today’s TV adaptation Arrow and has led to the release of Grell’s nigh-forgotten urban predator tales in a new range of economical trade paperbacks.

This first full-colour paperback collection, scripted by Grell with superbly efficient and powerfully understated art from Ed Hannigan, Dick Giordano & Frank McLaughlin, re-presents Green Arrow volume 2, #1-6 (February to July 1988), offering grimly realistic yarns ripped from headlines that have as much impact and relevance today as they did nearly thirty years ago…

Sparse, Spartan and devastatingly compelling, the initial tales were all constructed as two-part dramas beginning here – sans any preamble – with ‘Hunter’s Moon’ as the hunter (the series was notable in that other than on the cover, the soubriquet “Green Arrow” was never, ever used) prowls his new home dealing harshly with thugs, gangbangers and muggers before heading home to his still-traumatised girlfriend.

Black Canary was tortured for days before Ollie found her and, although the physical wounds have faded, Dinah Lance is still suffering…

She’s not the only one. Police Lieutenant Jim Cameron has just heard that child-torturing sociopath Al Muncie has used his vast beer-dynasty inheritance to buy a retrial after 18 years in prison.

The cops couldn’t get him for murdering all those “missing” kids but one lucky ten year old, after days of appalling torment, escaped and testified so Muncie’s been locked up for aggravated assault ever since. Now the heartbroken cop has to tell that brave survivor she must do it all over again…

The victim grew up to become Dr. Annie Green and she’s working wonders treating Dinah, but the therapist’s own long-suppressed terrors come flooding back when Muncie – despite being in total lockdown in his palatial house on the family brewery estate – somehow hand-delivers a little souvenir of their time together…

On hand when Annie freaks out and flees in panic, Ollie gives chase and finds her once more calm and resigned. On hearing the full story he makes a house-call on the maniac but cannot “dissuade” him from paying Annie another visit that night…

The experienced manhunter is waiting as a masked assailant tries to break in to the doctor’s apartment, but when the intruder shrugs off a steel arrow to the chest Ollie realises something’s not right…

Part Two expands the mystery of how Muncie can get past police guards at will, but by the time the Arrow has convinced the cops to raid Muncie’s den with the solution to the obsessed sociopath’s disappearing act and apparent invulnerability, the killer has already made his move.

Once again however Muncie has underestimated Annie, and her defiance buys Ollie time to intercept the hellbent human beast. After a furious chase back to the brewery the killer meets his fate in a most ironic manner…

A broad change of pace follows as ‘The Champions’ sees Ollie abducted by government spooks and pressganged into competing for a deadly prize. A joint space venture with the Chinese has resulted in a deadly “DNA-programmable” virus being created and, following the sudden destruction of the satellite lab where it was propagated, the only surviving sample has crashed onto remote San Juan Island.

With political allies turned rivals for sole possession of a bio-agent which can be set to kill anything from wheat harvests to black or yellow or white people, overt warfare would only lead to catastrophic publicity, so the political superpowers have agreed to use a gladiatorial bout as the method of deciding ownership.

Ollie has his own reasons for accepting the job. For starters he doesn’t trust any government with the DNA-hunting bug, the agents who drafted him are Russian not American and, most urgently, he has no doubt that he’ll be killed if he refuses to compete…

Equipped with a tracking device, Ollie is dumped on the island as a colossal storm starts, meeting his arrogant opposite getting off the ferry. Former CIA operative Eddie Fyers is an old foe and one of the sneakiest killers on Earth. He convinces Ollie they should work together… before double-crossing and leaving him to bleed out in a blizzard.

The archer is rescued by an archaeologist who has inadvertently picked up the fallen bio-agent pod, but as Ollie argues with his saviour over the wisdom and morality of his mission, her cabin is peppered with gunfire…

Fyers has the upper hand but suffers a sudden change of attitude when a third team ambushes him and his prisoners. It seems neither the Russians or Chinese trusted their champions…

Again forced to team up, spy and vigilante despatch the hit squad but Ollie has the very last word after finding a way to deprive everybody of the bio-sample…

Determined to challenge all manners of social inequity, Grell’s final story in this collection confronted the rise in homosexual prejudice that manifested in the wake of the AIDs crisis.

It begins after two customers leaving Dinah’s flower shop are brutally attacked by kids ordered to “gay-bash” as part of their gang initiation. The horrific crime is further compounded when Ollie discovers that Dinah’s new assistant Colin is not only a bloody-handed perpetrator but also a victim…

The Warhogs are the most powerful gang in the city, but their new induction policy is one the Arrow cannot allow to exist any longer. Any kid refusing to join is mercilessly beaten by a ‘Gauntlet’ of thugs. Those who eagerly volunteer suffer the same treatment as their initiation. And once you’re accepted as a Warhog you still have to prove your loyalty by beating – and preferably killing – a “queer”…

In the shocking conclusion Ollie, having failed to make a dent through any of his usual tactics, goes straight to the top. Big boss Reggie Mandel has big plans for the Warhogs. He’s already made them a national force to be reckoned with, but when he arrives in Seattle to check on his regional deputy Kebo, the Machiavellian schemer is confronted by a nut with a bow challenging him in his own crib…

The Arrow is keen to point out that the strictly local Warhog policy of gay hate-crimes is not only bad for business but is serving someone else’s private agenda. Reggie actually agrees with the vigilante, but before he’s prepared to take appropriate action he expects his verdant petitioner to undergo the same gauntlet any Warhog must survive before being heard…

Terse, sparse scripts, economical and immensely effective illustration and an unfailing eye for engaging controversy make these epic yarns some of the most powerful comic tales American comics ever produced. Compiled here with a cover gallery by Grell (both fully painted and line art), Hannigan & Giordano, this compulsive retooling is an epic masked mystery saga no lover of the genre will want to miss.

© 1988, 2013 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.