Green Arrow #6

Is one of Rose's powers 'Pigeon Shield'?

Finally back to Green Arrow, the worst comic book of the New 52! That's just my opinion and I could be wrong about that since Captain Atom is really, really bad as well. And that comic is still being written by J.T. Krul who sucks at writing. I should have allowed Green Arrow to climb up a rung just because J.T. Krul left the book.

At the end of the last issue, Green Arrow had knocked Midas unconscious but was then left with Blood Rose holding a gun to his head. Will she pull the trigger? According to the cover, they're going to at least have to change scenes to an abandoned apartment full of birds before anybody dies. So my guess is that Green Arrow isn't killed in the first panel of this issue.

How exactly are these costumes designed to show every single ripple of muscle on the human body but never show a single nipple, cock, or camel-toe?

Green Arrow seems to think he's immortal because he's pretty damn glib with a gun stuck to the back of his head. And why wouldn't he think he's immortal? He came back from the grave at least once! It'll probably happen again. Although being shot in the head seems to make you dead forever if Ted Kord is proof of anything. And Green Arrow doesn't have Flash's instinctual super speed to allow him to move at just the last second if Rose decides to pull the trig....

Er. Um. Well, that sucks. For the few people who like Green Arrow!

Luckily for Green Arrow, Blood Rose doesn't shoot to kill. She's after Oliver Queen and doesn't want to bring down the wrath of a real super hero like Superman by killing Green Arrow. You know what? That may be the best excuse used by a villain ever to not kill a hero they had the drop on. "Green Arrow sucks! He uses a bow and arrow! No reason to piss off Batman or Stormwatch (who?!) or Superman by offing this chump!" Although if they only knew his secret identity! Oh, the sarcasm! Er, I mean, irony!

Blood Rose and Toxic Waste Dump (or Midas, I guess) leave Green Arrow on the ground and walk away to plan how to kill Oliver Queen. Since Green Arrow is wired and the next page shows that Naomi heard how they wouldn't kill him for fear of bringing Superman down on them, I also wonder if Naomi could still hear them as they walked away talking about Oliver Queen being the real target. Of course, this may have already been revealed in one of the past comic books and I just don't remember it.

And then Page Four all by itself makes me like the Green Arrow comic so, so, so much more. With Giffen and Jurgens doing the co-plotting, the characters sound real. They're having real discussions instead of spouting rhetoric and fascist bullshit. By Odin, they're actually making me like them!

Spoiler for Justice League #8!

I skipped a panel in-between these two sets of panels where Green Arrow just stares blankly in response to Naomi's "Of course he did, you did, right?" bubble.

Green Arrow has some sort of bio-scan thing set up into his glasses and it took readings of Midas and Blood Rose during his encounter with them. I wonder if Green Arrow walks around irradiating everyone with his scanning technology. Or is it some kind of magnetic resonance thing? Does he go around screwing up every electronic item he looks at?

The scans show that Blood Rose isn't human. She has no organic traces in her body. Green Arrow asks, "A robot?" What the fuck else is she going to be? Oh, maybe a ghost? Nobody discusses what the fuck Midas was. But Naomi was able to lock on to Blood Rose's energy signature (does she leak Plutonium?) so that Green Arrow can track her down.

After the ad, Green Arrow breaks into Blood Rose and Midas's secret hideout. Green Arrow seems to be able to fire arrows as fast as Blood Rose can shoot bullets. Maybe Green Arrow is that elf from the movie, Hawk the Slayer? He eventually shoots Blood Rose with an electric arrow which seems to shut her down for a few seconds. But during that time, Green Arrow is scooped up by Midas! But Green Arrow stabs him in the leg with an unexplained arrow and it burns Midas and forces him to drop Green Arrow and retreat. Green Arrow's in-house tech guy came up with the idea which isn't explained immediately.

The chemicals in the arrow are used to clean up toxic waste.

Green Arrow shoots another arrow which explodes in a cloud of the toxic clean-up chemicals. Midas heads for cover while Blood Rose chases after Green Arrow. But now that Green Arrow knows he's facing a robot and not a person, he doesn't need to hold back. He blows her up with an exploding arrow.

After that, Oliver tracks down Midas with a small gift.

Dude. That's messed up. Super villains have feelings too!

Green Arrow asks Midas, "You built her?"
Midas says, "No. I love her. Go Now. It is over."
Green Arrow: "I'll be the judge of that."
Midas: "No, you will not."

And then a self-destruct sequence begins counting down and Green Arrow gets out before he goes up in a ball of flame with Midas and what's left of Blood Rose.

Afterward, Naomi wants to know what Blood Rose's grudge against Oliver Queen was and how Ollie knew her. Ollie has no idea since, as he says, he'd remember meeting a robot.

Yeah! And maybe we'll find out who she was in a later issue or in a one page epilogue at the end of this issue!

Looks like it's a Stormwatch moon out tonight!

While Green Arrow is drinking his energy drink (or beer?) on the roof, he's being spied on by a group of people. I don't know who they are because the panels are just the view from their high tech binoculars. But they're talking with each other about how hot Green Arrow is. So they must be the girls on the cover of Issue #7 who are swarming Green Arrow. The seem to be called The Skylarks.
And then an epilogue just like I guessed because I know comic books!

Except this epilogue was two pages instead of one.

The epilogue doesn't explain who Blood Rose and Midas were. But it does show that they've survived. And that they're headed to Metropolis. Hey! That's a coincidence! Because Dan Jurgens and Keith Giffen are also going to Metropolis as the creative team of Superman! So I guess we'll learn more about these characters over there.

Holy shit. This Green Arrow issue was hundreds and hundreds of percentile points better than J.T. Krul's crap he crapped out all over his crappy scripts to have the artists draw. I don't know if the good Green Arrow stuff will continue since a new creative team heads up the next issue. But at least I've got some hope! I'll even raise Green Arrow up two ranks because this issue was so much better. Plus it gives the new creative team some room to fall without having to drop down beneath the steaming pile of Captain Atom.