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GREEN ARROW #7
"Quiver Chapter Seven: Hard Travelling Heroes"
Highly Recommended (10/10)
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DC Comics
Writer: Kevin Smith
Pencils: Phil Hester
Inks: Ande Parks
Colors: Guy Major
Letters: Sean Konot
Editor: Bob Schreck
Price: $2.50 US/$4.25 CAN |
Wow. I have literally got chills after reading this issue. I mean, I've been enjoying Green Arrow and all, but wow. If you're any kind of fan of DC's super-heroes, you're going to love this issue. It's the reunion issue, really, between Hal and Ollie as well as Ollie and... well, that would be telling. But at any rate, it gets us a lot closer to understanding how and why Ollie came back as he did, and it features an interesting take on the afterlife that I found fascinating. As ever, Smith and Hester are playing around in every corner of the DC Universe, and after seeing what they've been doing with Green Arrow, I can't wait for Brave and the Bold.
It's fair to say that both Hal and Ollie have been through a lot since they last saw each other. So to see the two of them together, even in such a strange place, has a nice warm familiarity to it, even as they're adjusting to the changes each of them have gone through. The setting also allows Smith to play around in the fertile ground he mined in Dogma, an irreverent and yet obviously deeply-held
faith. His take on Heaven, including versions of the Phantom Stranger and
Deadman, is a believable take on paradise, because despite the strangeness of
the setting, the basic humanity of the participants in the story came through.
There's a certain optimism to what Smith is doing with Ollie, despite the dark connotations of his amnesia or the Star City Slayer or the mysteries of his rebirth. He's been reborn back to a more optimistic time, and I enjoyed seeing Hal back in that sort of mindset as well. I also loved that Smith handles these guest stars better than they're being handled in their regular appearances. His two pages of Boston Brand were more effective than the entirety of Dead Again, and his take on Hal Jordan is far more interesting than the whiny nutjob running around in The Spectre.
Phil Hester has been doing some fantastic
work on the dark corners of the DC Universe, but he's just as impressive in the
more brightly-lit areas of Heaven. His opening shots of the Spectre are
fantastic, and show an imagination unmatched since Mandrake was working on the
character, and he has a likable take on most of the rest of the guest stars who
show up as well. In addition, the view of Heaven as a sort of never-ending field
puts one immediately at ease, just as the cosmic background focuses attention on
the interaction between Hal and Ollie; a masterful use of backgrounds.
But what really got me, what blew me away
about this issue more than any one that has gone so far, were the last three
pages. The big surprise at the end had been pretty effectively foreshadowed, and
I had guessed it by the time he showed up, but it was still a fun reveal. And
the appearance of a long-missing icon for a guest role was stunning, an argument
for leaving those characters who are missing in action out there for a while so
that when they do make the occasional appearance, it still has impact.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
