Green Arrow #39

Has Ollie suddenly forgotten how to use a bow?

Last issue ended on the most original cliffhanger ever devised in comic book history! The bad guy had put a bounty on Green Arrow's head and turned the local authorities against him! Holy shit! Why has nobody ever thought of that before?! And get this twist: the bad guy has everybody thinking he's the good guy and he's helping the city when really he's hurting the city and Green Arrow, who everybody now thinks is hurting the city, is actually trying to help the city! Oh, it's so clever it makes my butt hurt.

What's more, Oliver Queen, once a billionaire, has lost all of his money! Um, again! And now to top off all of his troubles and tribulations, Felicity Smoak is being arrested for trademark infringement due to speaking like a Joss Whedon character without express written consent of the NFL.

And to top off the top off, Oliver's current penis cozy, Zehra, is behind his bankrupture!

Speaking of Oliver Queen Penis Cozies, can just one woman in the Arrow television show keep him out of her vagina? I think his sister Thea is the only vagina he hasn't been in and I'm including his mother because, you know! I have a feeling Oliver is eventually going to find out that Thea isn't a blood relation and they're going to fuck up against the glass window of her apartment as Felicity watches from the street with one lone tear rolling down her cheek.

Oh! I've forgotten to mention the name of the bad guy: King! Get it! It's King against Queen! Ah ha ha ha! Ow! My butt!

"I am the bad guy! Argh! I love being bad! Being good is dumb!"

"I am the good guy! I say clever rejoinders! I wear a good sweater! Being bad is stupid and bad!"

Oliver asks Zehra how she could do this to him and she points out that she's into winners and not losers. Ollie gets the hint and walks out on her before she also calls him a broomhead. The "L" on the forehead with her finger and thumb was harsh enough.

Felicity is arrested and thrown directly into jail because she rolled doubles three times in a row. She's really enjoying her time in prison because she gets to wear an orange jumpsuit that is definitely orange no matter how much Felicity insists that it isn't. And I know orange because I successfully navigated kindergarten. Barely.

Felicity's cellmate is a huge Guns N' Roses fan. She's also Cheetah the Cheetah Lady. How come when Cheetah turned into a Cheetah Goddess, she grew a tail but not four more breasts?

"We are the stupid sheep citizens! We need saving but we'll be ungrateful when we get saved because duh! Duh! Der!"

Diggle thinks the populace is dumb, does he? Well what about how dumb he is!

"Impermeable"! Who does he think he's talking to? Aquaman?

Some guy helps Oliver break into prison to save Felicity. Should I know who he is? Is he that Manhunter guy, Mark Shaw? He did get his New 52 secret origin in Cheetah #1! And he also appeared in the television show Arrow. But he didn't have blond hair in Cheetah #1, so maybe it's just some guy that I'm not supposed to know. Or I'm supposed to know and I just haven't been paying close enough attention. Whoever he is, he knows Green Arrow is Oliver Queen (it seems almost everybody does at this point).

And thus the day is saved and Felicity gets to say one of those awkward double entendre things she loves to say.

Later, Diggle, Ollie, and Felicity go to meet their chess pieces so they can battle King's chess pieces.

I get why Lex and Bruce are here because they're part of the Billionaire Boys Club. And Katana and Emiko are Outsiders, so they have to help out as well. And I guess that's Naomi making her return? Maybe? And I guess Cupid is here because she thinks she loves Green Arrow. But why the fuck would Roy come back? Isn't he still pissed at Oliver for stealing his ideas?!

Green Arrow #39 Rating: No change. It's good to know that in a DC Supermax prison, nobody fucking cares about the prisoners. Don't worry about isolating Cheetah even though she's got the powers of a Cheetah God and dangerous claws and hungers for flesh and is completely angry at everything all of the time. I'm sure a roommate will do her good! And hey, why not let the inmates of a Supermax prison wander around outside of their cells and eat their meals in a cafeteria like normal people because they aren't hardly super dangerous at all! I guess everybody at the Supermax has crown tattoos on their wrists. At least the art is on par with the writing! (That means it's crappy too!)

Green Arrow #37

Must the cover of this comic book always depict Green Arrow ninety feet in the air with his bow cocked?

Last issue, Felicity Smoaks joined Green Arrow's team because she knew his secret identity and pointed out how she was hired to kill him. I bet the real reason Oliver allowed her to join was that he's already fallen in love with her. And by "fallen in love with her," of course I mean "physically attracted to her to the point of distraction that will constantly eat away at his mind until the relationship is finally consummated and then the magic will suddenly have fled from the relationship." And by "magic" I mean "the need to have sex with a person that you have yet to have sex with." All Disney movies end before the relationship can be consummated not because Disney movies are rated "G" but because that's the moment "true love" becomes "That's it?"

This issue begins with the Seattle Police being told by "The King" to stand down and not help Green Arrow battle Merlyn. What could the cops do to help anyway? They're not armed with bows! You don't bring an inferior weapon like a gun to a bow and arrow pony show.

Nice. Make fun of the burn victim's scars, you ableist cunt!

Do you see all of that traffic Merlyn and Mia are running over? Or flying over? Or arrowing over? Well, that shit won't stop Diggle as he drives up to pick up Oliver and chase them down. Two blocks past the bridge, Arrow finds Merlyn and Mia on top of Seattle's monorail (which has really revitalized the city, if you ask me!).

Heh. I mentioned the monorail before actually reading this part where Felicity mentions the monorail. It's just such a fantastic boon for the city and for people that hate walking five blocks!

Green Arrow and Merlyn have begin an exciting battle atop the monorail which will take them to the Great Wheel and hopefully culminate atop the Space Needle! And then Merlyn can fall to his death and land on top of the Experience Music Project Museum where nobody will be able to tell that his corpse wasn't part of the architecture.

As they battle, Merlyn recognizes Oliver even though Oliver is wearing a hood and goggles. But Merlyn's face is so scarred that Oliver probably won't recognize him. Plus Oliver is probably drunk.

Merlyn gets away and Oliver saves Mia who proves that she's going to be a feisty sidekick when she mouths off to him at every opportunity.

Meanwhile, Katana is chasing down The King and beating down priests. I almost didn't recognize Katana due to her coherent dialogue. I am disappointed that she didn't give me some Wikipedia facts about priests or the church though.

Katana: "Maybe now you'll reconsider my question. Whose orders are you following?"
Priest: "I devote my life to him. Not you."
Katana: "Your God won't save you now."
Priest: "Not the Lord. The King."
Katana: "So you must be a member of the Church of England which King Henry VIII, in 1534, declared himself the head of?"
Priest: "No, but even if I was, the Church of England was reunited with Rome in 1555 under Queen Mary I and King Philip!"
Katana: "Yes, but then Queen Elizabeth I rejected the Pope's authority with the Act of Supremacy of 1558!"
Priest: "Which, once again, was turned about some months later with the...."
Katana: *STAB STAB CUT STAB STAB KILL*

Mia's dad turns out to be a guy named John King. I wonder if he has any connection to this King guy everybody is following! What a coincidence! John King just happens to be the third richest man in the country behind Luthor and Wayne. Poor Ollie! He could have been one of the top three if he hadn't lost his business to that guy in Hong Kong. Unless he lost the business to his dad's partner when everybody thought he was dead. Unless he lost his business for one of the other half dozen reasons I can't remember right now and might possibly be making up to make it seem like there were more than two reasons for his losing his business. And what about the Kords? They've got to be in the top five richest assholes in the United States, right?

Wait. Why did Ollie take his hood and goggles off? Do cute blonde girls get a pass on the whole secret identity thing?

John King is also an incredibly bad person who murdered his wife in front of Mia, his daughter. I'm correct in assuming that makes him incredibly bad, right?

Oliver, Diggle, and Felicity wind up at one of King's fundraisers later that night. It's aboard a blimp! Why fight on top of a monorail or a Ferris wheel or the Space Needle when you can fight on top of a blimp. With sharp, pointy arrows!

Hey! "Prodigal" is actually being used in its definitive sense of "wastefully extravagant" here! Probably on accident though since it's also working in its generally accepted usage of "long absent" which is due to the adjective being misapplied to the wrong aspect of the son in that Bible story.

King lets Oliver know immediately that he knows Ollie is Green Arrow. Oliver is not very happy being that John King is not a cute blonde girl. Well, that's what he gets when he recklessly gives away his secret identity to people he's working with and then allows them to leave his organization. I bet Naomi and Henry are selling all of his details to underworld organizations to fund their tropical retirement.

Kreisberg really likes the idea of Green Arrow battling other people that also think they're saving the city. So Oliver isn't just battling thugs to keep the city safe; he's generally battling other powerful people that want to control the city and keep it "safe" in their own way. So in the television show, he's battled Merlyn and Brother Blood. Now in the comic book, he's battling John King who is really just another aspect of his television show rivals.

Everybody just wants to be the one in control.

Oliver, Felicity, and Diggle get thrown off the blimp by King and his peasants. Luckily Oliver called in a favor earlier and Hal Jordan has arrived to save their lives. I guess that's why Ollie looked so calm as they were falling to their deaths. I'm disappointed Hal catches them in a net instead of a catcher's mitt though. Who knew Hal Jordan could receive text messages while in deep space? That's a great provider he's got.

Green Arrow #37 Rating: No change. Are Ollie and Hal about to go on a road trip to discover the real America and its real problems that can't be solved with a simple punch in the mouth?! I think this is the closest we'll get to those days. Well, this and a mention of a mugging on the corner of Adams and O'Neil.

Green Arrow #36

Does Green Arrow always have to be in the act of shooting an arrow on the cover? I get it! He's an archer!

The last issue ended with Felicity Smoak telling Green Arrow that she had been hired to kill him. We know from the television show that she's the best hacker in the entire universe and would never be caught hacking into whatever she's hacking into. So as soon as Diggle says he's found traces of a hacker, we (the readers! Not the Royal 'We'!) know it's all a setup. Felicity obviously just wanted to meet Green Arrow and get his cock all up in her. That's sexy romance literature language for making love. The only other option is that Felicity is a huge badass mercenary death monster and she's about to kill Oliver Queen!

This issue begins with Mia Deardon pickpocketing people on the streets of Seattle. She's the person some person named Mr. King is trying to hunt down. So I guess she's important somehow. Maybe she has diamonds in her stomach. Her friend Trevor calls her "Speedy" so we know where this is going! Right? Maybe you should tell me.

Anyway, Mia's pursued by some business suited thugs but is saved when some guy who knows her mother murders them all. It's practically a coming of age story by Charles Dickens or maybe Edgar Allen Poe.

Oh look! It really is Felicity! Because Oliver points out she talks a lot! Just like on the television show!

Felicity casually mentions that she knows Green Arrow's secret identity because Kreisberg has to get her onto the team as quickly as possible! We've already watched how she joined the team on the television show and we don't want to rehash all of that! Especially since it took so long. And hopefully Kreisberg will avoid the huge mistake he and his writers made on the television show by making Felicity a love interest of Oliver's. Jesus Christ, television writers. Does Oliver need to have a relationship with every woman on the show that he isn't related to? And that might not even be a limit! I bet Thea puts the moves on him at some point since she's only half related to him!

Felicity tells Oliver that only she and some street girl can help Ollie catch whoever hired her to kill him. And that's that! She's on the team! And I don't mind that they trust her so easily since who wants to read three months worth of comic book stories where they dance around that fact that she's inevitably going to be on the team anyway? I'm sure Diggle or Ollie will eventually whisper to the other one, "Are you sure we can trust her?" And the other will say, "What choice do we have?" And that will be the end of that!

Meanwhile the man that wants Ollie dead is playing John Lithgow's character from Dexter.

Mixed with a little bit of the "Brother" Blood character from the television show. I guess Oliver always has to battle other people that have a vision to save the city. But in the wrong way!

Mister King mentions Bethany Snow and Channel 52 News, so I guess that puts Ambush Bug in current continuity! Ha ha! In your face, DC Comics! Now I know he's out there somewhere!

Mister King tells his henchmen to hire some guy that will be able to kill Ollie and Mia and the guy she was saved by, Mack Morgan. Who will the assassin be?! I doubt Deathstroke will be headed over to this comic book for this job. Maybe it'll be that guy Stillborn that tried to kill Deathstroke when Rob Liefeld was "writing" that series.

See? Talks like she's from Sunnydale! Oh, I, um, mentioned that last commentary, didn't I?

Judging by the arrow, the killer must be Merlyn. Notice how nobody is shocked that this guy was assassinated by an arrow? The whole archer schtick is way overdone in Starling City Seattle.

With Felcity's help, Diggle and Green Arrow track down Mia and rescue her from King's men. But just when they think they're going to get away and gather up the evidence to convict King of whatever horrible things he's been up to, King's assassin arrives so that they have to have another think.

Merlyn's face is probably messed up from that time the oil rig exploderated all over Ollie's wild oil rig party.

Green Arrow #36 Rating: No change. I guess Merlyn wound up on an island adjacent to the island that Oliver washed up on where he learned how to use a bow and arrow but just a little bit better than Oliver did. I don't think Seattle should be full of archers. Its heroes should be fire dancers and Burning Man refugees.