THE GREEN ARROW BY JACK KIRBY

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Thursday, November 22, 2001

The 1950s weren't a great time for most of those working in comics, but they were especially hard on Jack Kirby. After he and Joe Simon created Captain America for Timely, they tried creating characters with equal success for other companies before forming their own. But by the end of the '50s, the company had folded, and Kirby was taking any work he could find. After creating CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, Kirby was offered a gig drawing the Green Arrow backup feature, which appeared concurrently for some odd reason in both ADVENTURE COMICS and WORLD'S FINEST COMICS (you know times had to be tough when such a minor feature was shared between two different titles). Kirby wanted to take the feature in a new, more science-fiction oriented direction; his editors didn't. After drawing and co-plotting eleven stories and getting to fully script only one, Kirby left DC and did not return for another decade, during which he worked for Marvel instead. I'm sure you know what happened next, and why DC is now deservedly kicking itself.

Mark Evanier introduces this collection of the all-too-brief Kirby era of GREEN ARROW by revealing all of the above and more. It's a rare, even disturbing, look into the politics behind comic book production, and it's impossible to read these eleven stories with the same eye after reading it. Knowing that Kirby was fighting to do innovative things with the series, you tend to forgive many of the problems with these sometimes brilliant, sometimes bizarre, and sometimes flawed stories.


I must admit I'm not a big fan of Kirby's early artwork. I was also not aware that his wife Roz inked most of it. It's still recognizably Kirby, of courseno one else in comics that I know of draws characters with square fingers quite the same way he does. It does have that same quality that distinguishes it from his later work on FANTASTIC FOUR, KAMANDI, and others. When artists pay tribute to Kirby's work, as in this year's FF anniversary maxiseries, it's that later artwork they're imitating, not this. It still works for these stories, though, even if Speedy looks like more of a dweeb than usual.

The stories themselves are about the sort of quality you'd expect from a second-string backup feature with a third-rate characterthird-rate at that time, anyway. Green Arrow didn't have the star quality then that he commands now, and the stories reflect that. Apart from the interminable amount of physics-defying trick arrows and silly villains who treat GA like he's the only superhero in the world, there's nothing that distinguishes Oliver and Roy from, say, Bruce and Dick, or Sandman and Sandy, or any number of other older hero-young ward combos. (Speaking of which, why do these guys always share a bedroom, even if it's with separate beds? It's no wonder Frederic Wertham kept seeing homosexuality everywhere in comics.)

A few of the stories, however, make us wonder just what could have happened had Kirby gotten a GREEN ARROW book all to himself. His "Case of the Super-Arrows," in which archers from the future send Oliver a quiver of extraordinary arrows as a gift, really has some terrific moments. But it's the two-part "Prisoners of Dimension Zero" story, the one which Mort Weisinger and others hated so much they wanted Kirby fired, that really stands out in this collection. The premise of gigantic children from another dimension accidentally sending arrows into our own, and Green Arrow having a counterpart in that dimension, prefigures some of Kirby's later work in startling ways. And then there's the origin story, "Green Arrow's First Case," in which Kirby and writer Ed Herron manage to come up with nearly-believable rationales for each of Oliver's most often used arrows and outfit. This one's a classic, no matter who draws itbut Kirby does his best work on it.

This reprint edition has a few glaring errors, such as Speedy being miscolored to look like Green Arrow and then being featured on the coverthat goofy expression never appears on Oliver Queen's face. Still, despite that and the tepid quality of most of the scripts, this is a fascinating look at one of DC's biggest missed opportunities, and it's to their credit that they've finally admitted their error.

THE GREEN ARROW BY JACK KIRBY

Grade: B

Issue: N/A

Author(s): Jack Kirby, Bill Finger, Dave Wood, Ed Herron, Robert Bernstein

Publisher: DC

Price: $5.95