Green Arrow #5

Here we see Green Arrow climbing into his office window at Q-Core Headquarters. Which seems a bit contrary to wanting to keep a secret identity. I'm pretty sure Seattle is populated with people who can look up. And then there are the people in the buildings across the way who probably look over on Queen's office day in and day out hoping to catch him fucking some starlet against the window panes.

But even if people don't know that's his particular office, they would still know the building is a Queen Industries building and realize Green Arrow has something to do with Q-corp. Or Q-core. Or whatever his business is called.

But then how does that little domino mask hide who he is anyway? I know, I'm asking all the old questions that everyone asks when they decide to suspend their suspension of disbelief. But it's a good time to think about secret identities since Green Arrow's comic isn't really providing me with a lot to say.

The best part of most secret identities is to have a personality that is so different from the super hero's personality that people would never suspect the two are the same. So Oliver Queen is a lazy, rich philanderer who doesn't take any responsibility for anything. Green Arrow is, well, not that.

Bruce Wayne is a socialite. A moneymaker. Also a philanderer? Batman is a grim, dicky, buzzkill.

Clark Kent is a klutzy human with bad vision. Superman is an agile, strong alien with X-ray vision!

See how they work? It doesn't matter that the only difference between Superman and Clark Kent is a pair of glasses! Even if they look exactly alike, nobody could ever believe that that schlep Clark is a hero!

How come it's only male super heroes I can think of here? I don't remember what the differences were between Diana Prince and the Amazon Princess. Oh! The name! Totally different! And maybe glasses also? And business skirts versus tights!


She's seriously contemplating it!

There's a lot of workplace drama going on in this comic. The two people in the above panel are the only two people who know Oliver Queen is Green Arrow. The guy is Jax, his weapon's inventor and also a pacifist. So he has to come up with cool non-killing arrows like the Boxing Glove arrow and the Hypodermic Needle Arrow and the Arrow that Stops in Front of Your Face and Blinds You With an Intense Flash Arrow. The woman is his computer blue tooth information specialist, Naomi.

In that panel, Naomi is trying to get Jax out of her hair. I'm not sure how talking about Wonder Woman's boobs drives him off, though. That's a conversation to stick around for!



The woman in this panel is Adrien, Green Arrow's personal assistant and liaison to Emerson. He counts on her to deal with Emerson and get most of his job done. So this is probably a worst case scenario for Oliver. He can't save the person he needs most at work without making Oliver Queen look like a royal douchebag. And possibly making it so she doesn't give a shit if she helps him or not.



I put up this panel because it says a lot about what happens when a new writer comes on to an existing project (is 3 issues enough to call it an existing project?). Naomi and Green Arrow were humorless and all about the job in his run. Were there a joke or two? I honestly can't remember because all I remember is her blaming video games and Ollie being mad at attention whores. But Giffen brings the levity. So now these two characters are absolutely different people than they were under Krul.

Does that make Giffen a bad writer? Should Giffen have continued to write the character Krul had recreated? It's arguable. But I wouldn't have wanted to see more of Green Arrow refusing to kill people while being an absolute misogynistic bastard. Unless it was funny! I don't mind misogyny and pacifism if there are some good jokes thrown in! And Green Arrow has always been quite the chauvinist. But Krul just had Ollie being preachy and judgmental and entirely blind to his own faults.

Okay. That actually sounds like a super hero comic that can tell a good story. But seeing what Krul did with Captain Atom and how he lost the only good thread he had almost immediately, I'm sure Krul had no forward thinking plans for this aspect. And since he quit the title, that probably proves my point.

Where was I?

Green Arrow fights this big toxic monstrosity that I guess is called Midas. He seems to be the Toxic Waste Elemental to Firestorm's Fire Elemental and Swamp Thing's Plant Elemental and Animal Man's Animalental.



He's too much for Green Arrow to handle so, of course, Green Arrow promptly handles him. And then Blood Rose shows up to put a pistol to his head.

Thus ends Green Arrow #5!