Green Arrow #23
© 2003 D.C.

Mania Grade: B
Authors: Ben Raab, Charlie Adlard
Publisher: D.C.
Price: $2.50

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GREEN ARROW #23

One of the first comics I ever bought back in my long-departed, misspent youth was the excellent GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW series. At the time I (and probably no one else, either) had any idea how pivotal Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams' run on that series would be in establishing the Ollie Queen-Hal Jordan relationship - heck, I don't even think I knew the word "pivotal." All I knew was that it was good stuff. Suffice it to say that this new team-up has a lot to live up to it.

We're one issue into a six-part story, so it may be a bit too early to say whether it does or not. Besides, Ben Raab has a tougher job than Dennis O'Neil did - O'Neil's Lantern and Arrow liked each other, a lot, about as much as Kyle Raynor and Oliver Queen dislike each other. On top of that, he faces the daunting task of following in Kevin Smith and Brad Meltzer's footsteps in writing Ollie and following those of Judd Winick in writing Kyle. Ouch. Raab handles the challenges quite well, though, establishing the Green Team's grudging partnership early on and making it clear that, like it or not, these boys are going to have to play well with others. (I'm still a bit disturbed that in his own title, Kyle's still out in space after sending Jade home, but here they are out on a date together...but I gave up trying to reconcile the divergent continuities of individual titles a long time ago.) Kyle's a bit more mean-spirited here than usual, and his near-homicidal anger at being told he's no Hal Jordan is something you'd think he'd have worked through by now, but it's all consistent with the way these guys work together.

I also once said that this book would have some serious health problems without the artwork of Phil Hester and Ande Parks, and it's true that after a hiatus of about a year from this title, I'm a bit shocked coming back to it to see Charlie Adlard's comparatively more rough-hewn artwork. But his style works particularly well for this sort of story about urban punks smuggling bleach - yeah, you heard me, bleach - for a group of unidentified aliens who are willing to kill for the stuff. The image on the last page is particularly gruesome, and yet it's hard to imagine how Hester and Parks might have pulled it off.

Sadly, it's not the Jordan-Queen Green Team, and it's never going to be. That pairing was perfect for its time, when heroes were still chums (and generally used that very word for each other) and enjoyed each other's company. This pairing, however, is equally reflective of the times, and it's just possible that in thirty years' time, some young comic reviewer is going to bemoan some new Green Team and say they're not a patch on the Queen-Raynor team, as written by Raab and drawn by Adlard. This book is just good enough to allow that to happen.