Green Arrow #21

I knew it! He's a Hentai Rapetopus!

Sheesh! I get it, Green Arrow! You have secrets! They're probably not even very interesting secrets! I bet the secret is your dad stranded you on that island on purpose to make you grow up. Also, your dad probably didn't say he loved you enough and was always away on business trips and never played catch with you and was drunk all the time and moved to Japan and then to Oregon and then to Arizona and he never kept a stable living environment and he tucked a number of new marriages under his belt and he became paranoid about the government and technology and then he was killed by Komodo! Or maybe your dad is Magus! You know what? I don't even care anymore. Keep your stupid secrets secret!

I hope we learn Green Arrow's secrets this issue! I'm only pretending I don't want to know them in front of Green Arrow because he's been teasing us with his stupid secrets for four issues now. Maybe more! And, um, maybe less. You know what? I didn't bring this up so we could discuss my mediocre math skills.

Last issue, Green Arrow had finally found his way through the desert to a teepee with Magus inside. After a few S'mores and an agonizingly long pillow fight scene, Magus and Oliver begin a game of truth or dare. Even though I really wanted to see the kind of nipple stiffening dares these guys would get up to (especially after the long tease of a pillow fight where most of their clothes remained on), they skip the dares and get right down to the truths.

Oh! Here they come! All the deadly secrets!

Of course no secrets spill out of Magus's face because he's an asshole mystic and they always have to do everything in some half-assed drug-induced magical blah de blah ritual. Green Arrow hallucinates that he's back on the island. I hope he figures out who Jacob really was and why the smoke monster enjoyed kidnapping people and what Dharma was ultimately trying to do and how Locke's father ended up on the island and why the Man in Black wanted to kill Jacob and why Claire's son Aaron was supposed to be so important and why the idiot writers decided the island wasn't purgatory when it so obviously was for the first couple of seasons.

Ollie doesn't hallucinate his time on the island but the time that his father, Richard, was on it searching for some mythical treasure of The Arrow Clan. He's there with Emerson and a guy named Simon that could possibly be Komodo but I'm really hoping it's Simon Stagg! He'd be a great rival for Queen Industries and Richard also mentions that the Outsiders have recently been exploring this island as well. New 52 Metamorpho would be perfect working for a bad guy group of heroes under the auspices of Stagg Industries because Rex wants to marry Sapphire. Look at me! I'm still living in the Preboot world! But the Preboot world is all that makes the Reboot world exciting! Elsewhere tales are always fun because of the changes and games they play with the original universe. And what is The New 52 but an Elsewhere tale out of control?

So the guy with the Totem Fist? Is it mummified? Does he have to cut off his own hand and attach it at the wrist? Is it just a symbolic carving that gives power? I hope it's the mummified fist of the Buddha.

The Simon is simply Simon Lacroix, Komodo. Maybe he'll change his name to Stagg when he markets a Robot Vampire that turns a bunch of people into vampires and they all sue and he loses his business and reputation! And the main plaintiff against him will be Tim Drake!

Simon was a poor kid with drive and determination. He was the son Dick Queen really wanted. So he brought Simon into the secret quest for the Arrow Clan's Magic Arrow. When did Green Arrow become a Young Adult Fantasy Novel? As you probably guessed from having read so many Young Adult Fantasy Novels, Simon winds up killing Dick Queen. It was inevitable. It's exactly what happened to Daddy Warbucks when he took in Little Orphan Annie.

After hearing this story from Magus the man of mystery, Oliver Queen believes it because why not. Emerson did try to tell Oliver something about the island just before he died and it could have been all this fantastic bullshit! And Komodo is pretty good with arrows! And Dick Queen did have a room full of artifacts and maps. Actually, Ollie simply wants to kill Komodo so he figures he might as well buy into the whole story since it'll give him the best chance to find the Outsiders and find Komodo and kill him for being a huge dick.

After the scary story part of the slumber party concludes, Magus introduces Green Arrow to his friend, Butcher of the Axe Clan.

If the Axe is a real weapon, I think I might need a vomit bag when he meets the leader of the Fist Clan.

Ollie heads back to Seattle to gather up Team Green Arrow (that would be Naomi and Fyff) for a trip to Vlatava to meet up with some "dragon" that may be able to lead him to The Outsiders. But more importantly, Green Arrow answers the question I've been asking about the Justice League for some time now. Well, he answers it for the Justice League of America anyway.

I suppose the government would want to pay their employees so they can feel like they have some kind of ownership of them. The normal Justice League is probably more pure and would see paychecks as tainting the entire thing. Maybe Batman just keeps a few hundred thousand dollars of petty cash on the Watchtower for whenever anybody needs a little help in their secret lives.

Green Arrow #21 Rating: +1 Ranking. I'm glad that Queen Industries is done. It was just a distraction and an obligation with which Oliver Queen should not have had to deal. Now he can be a true hero to the disenfranchised! But back to the JLA paying its members! How do they pay Martian Manhunter? I guess they could make a check out to John Jones. Hell, they could make a check out to anybody and J'onn could probably cash it.