The best of the bunch

The Owl trade
Dynamite Entertainment
Creators: J.T. Krul, Heubert Khan Michael, Alex Ross, Vinicius Andrade and Marshall Dillon
Release date: 2016

This book was a happy coincidence. Three other trades caught my eye while surfing the web a few months ago. I added this trade only in an effort to raise my purchase total to a level that would net me free shipping. The other three trades ended up being mere eye candy without much substance. But this gem ended up making the entire purchase worthwhile.

The story springs out of the Project Superpowers concept Dynamite used to bring back a number of characters that were no longer in print and free of any copyright constraints. I read the initial series from 2008 and wrote about it here, but in a nutshell, a huge number of golden-age comic characters were locked away in an urn for half a century before being released back into the modern world. Following the initial series, a Volume 2 version was published alongside a number of limited series spotlighting many of the characters in solo adventures.

This trade collects the four-issue limited series focused on the Owl, a vigilante from the early 1940s. Much like Batman, the Owl has no special powers or abilities in his original incarnation. Rather he had a costume meant to shock and frighten criminals and a number of themed gadgets that helped the hero keep his advantage and defeat his foes. By day, the Owl is Yorktown police detective Nick Terry, and he is frequently joined in his later adventuring by Owl Girl, his real-life girlfriend and confidante, Belle, a newspaper reporter.

Like most of the other costumed heroes trapped for decades inside the urn, the Owl emerges slightly changed. His costume is more dramatic and modern-looking, and the Owl now has some new abilities that help him stun and subdue the more jaded criminals of today. This series focuses on Terry’s efforts to fit back into society and help mankind while haunted by the past he has lost. Owl Girl was not trapped inside the urn as the Owl was, thus robbing this hero of the happy ending and possible family he’d been fighting for. His story is very much one of a man out of time trying to find his place.

Complicating matters for the Owl, is his discovery that the criminals aren’t the only ones who have changed in his absence. A new brand of hero flies through the night skies over Yorktown. And the Owl fears this new crimefighter is no better than the criminals she maims and kills with abandon.

This trade was a joy to read, and I’m glad I finally discovered it. If you aren’t familiar with Project Superpowers, everything you need to know to follow this story is right here in these pages, and J.T. Krul weaves a truly engaging tale. The artwork, while not the best I’ve seen, isn’t bad. I especially like how Heubert Khan Michael switches up his style for the flashback scenes of the Owl’s earlier life, giving those panels a true golden-age feel.

Will My Green Arrow Please Stand Up

Rather than a specific issue or story line, today I decided to talk about the wandering failure that the New 52 has wrought upon one of my favorite characters, Green Arrow, aka Oliver Queen.

I first became aware of Green Arrow in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he participated in Justice League of America stories or his own solo adventures in World's Finest Comics. I missed out on the new "relevant" Green Lantern/Green Arrow series created by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams in the mid-1970s, but the new costume and personality these two creators gave to the Emerald Archer influenced his characterization for the next decade, at least, and the hero I was reading owed much to their work.

Going back and reading reprints of the O'Neil and Adams stories in 1983 is when I grew to really appreciate the character and come to see him as one of my favorites. That affection grew and was nurtured by the Green Arrow miniseries that same year by Mike W. Barr, Trevor von Eeden and Dick Giordano and was cemented by Mike Grell's fantastic Longbow Hunters series in 1987.

Having said that, I don't know why I didn't immediately pick up the Mike Grell ongoing Green Arrow series that followed Longbow Hunters. I swear, I really did love that series right from the start. At this point, I did have a local comic shop I frequented regularly for my comics, but I was not online much and hadn't even heard of Previews at the time, so maybe I simply wasn't aware of the existence of the ongoing for a while. Whatever the reason, I started in on that series about two years into the run reading forward each month as well as backward when I could find copies of the back issues I'd missed.

I was very sad to see Ollie killed off in No. 100 of that series, then being written by Chuck Dixon, and while he was a very different character, I enjoyed the adventures of Ollie's son, Connor Hawke, as the new Green Arrow. I'm not nearly as big a martial arts fan as Dixon seems to be, so some of the Connor GA stories were less to my liking than others, but I stayed with the series until it ended with issue No. 137.

After a few dark nearly-Green Arrow-less years, it was announced that Kevin Smith was going to bring Oliver Queen back from the dead in a relaunched Green Arrow title in 2001. Smith was joined by artist Phil Hester, and while I was less impressed with Hester's more cartoony art at the time, I was glad to have the character back. Smith left the title after 15 solid issues, and we were treated to one of novelist Brad Meltzer's first comics-writing turns with his excellent "The Archer's Quest"  and then after a few issues, Judd Winick took over the writing chores. Winick is one of those hit-or-miss writers to my tastes. I really like some of his books while others just leave me feeling meh. But he did a good job at the helm of Star City's resident bowman and stayed with the title for the remainder of this run and into the 2007 Green Arrow and Black Canary relaunch. That title had the added plus of fantastic art by first Cliff Chiang and then Mike Norton. The Green Arrow and Black Canary series finished its second half with excellent writer Andrew Kreisberg and then J.T. Krul on the final three Blackest Night and Cry For Justice tie-in issues.

All of that background is to show I have a history with the character, reading Green Arrow's adventures, and for the most part, enjoying most of the tales he is featured in. I don't agree with everything that happened in Justice League: Cry For Justice or the subsequent Fall of Green Arrow, but I liked both titles and could see Oliver acting and reacting the way he was portrayed in those stories. Less to my liking was the 15-issue Green Arrow: Brightest Day series where Oliver is all about his forest, but I think most of that series stemmed from editorial dictates and might not be where series writer Krul would have taken Oliver without the whole Brightest Day framework, which I liked with regards to other characters. I base this, in part, on the fact that another writer finished the final three issues of that series. I also haven't read Green Arrow: Brightest Day again since it was new; maybe my opinion of it would improve with a fresh look.

Then along comes the New 52, and everybody and everything is rebooted back to square one. Except Batman and Green Lantern, which were seeing a great deal of popular story lines already, so the rebooting wasn't quite so evenly distributed. But I was all set to accept a new, younger Oliver Queen as Green Arrow. A fresh start didn't have to mean disaster. And the first three issues of the New 52 Green Arrow were good with story by Krul and art by the incredible Dan Jurgens. Oliver has a bit of a team working behind the scenes to assist him, but subtracting a few years and changing up his costume were pretty cosmetic; I could still see this as the hero I liked, just a slightly different guy from a slightly different dimension or something.

The problem was, those three issues didn't last. Issue No. 4 saw a creative change to writer Keith Giffen, who was replaced by Jurgens by issue No. 6. Then we got Ann Nocenti, who's run on the title lasted until issue No. 16. But her run on the book was all about horn-dog Ollie who thought more with his groin than his brains. This guy wasn't really a hero so much as a screw-up. With each creative change, I liked the character less and less. And there seemed to be a lot of creative changes.

Jeff Lemire's run (issue Nos. 17-34) was very dark for my tastes and centered way too much on the mysticism of the various clans he introduced into Oliver's back story. Then elements from the CW television series "Arrow" started to creep into the book. Now, I've watched "Arrow" since the beginning, and I very much enjoy the show and Stephen Amell's portrayal of Oliver Queen. I'm very happy the show has lasted into a third season, and I'll be happy to see it continue for several more years. But it is the television version of Green Arrow. That guy exists in an equally valid, but alternate dimension from the guy I like to read about in the comics. Television and comics are two different media; they have different strengths and weaknesses, and I believe they are best served by different approaches. I love watching the TV show, but I don't want to read the TV show in my monthly Green Arrow comic.

So, why do I keep buying the monthly comic if I don't like what they're doing with the character and haven't for basically the last 30 issues? I guess that means I have more money than sense, but my wife would be quick to remind that we don't have that much money. So maybe I just don't have any sense. But the creative teams change on this title so often, every time I convince myself to just drop what I'm not enjoying, I think, "But wait, a new team and direction are coming next month; maybe it really will get better." Except so far, it hasn't.

I hope the comic will find its niche now that Andrew Kreisberg is back writing the character as I enjoyed his work on the title pre-New 52. But Kreisberg is also one of the producers of the CW televison series. I'm hopeful, but concerned as well. But I'm still buying the title each month hoping for the best. At least, for now ...

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