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| We never get to see the interesting parts, like how Ollie got the Arrowcar past the turnstiles or had to slowly back the Arrowcar (which isn't latched to the tracks) OFF the coaster. Whenever Ollie does something too ridiculous, the artists just refuse to draw it (like the Boomerang Arrow) |
... the Red Devils try to dispose of their only real threat: his sidekick.
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| Realizing that the boy's death upon impact would be gruesome, Ollie resolves to shoot him through the head before he hits the ground; "It's the only humane thing to do." |
Purely by accident, Ollie's shot becomes a lifeline that allows Speedy to coast to the ground. Upside-down, face first into a tree. Beggars can't be choosers.
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| Okay, fine; BUTT first. |
The Red Devils escape by acrobatting themselves down from the rollercoaster.
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| How four supremely physical acrobats were getting their ass-kicked by an adolescent with no circus aerialist training I'll never understand. Heroes; always adopt a circus aerialist. |
But Green Arrow has more important things to do than finding the people who just tried to kill his sidekick.
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| "Just make sure you stay in the shadows, kid, we're only a few pages in and you're already making me look bad." |
Why? Because Ollie has just discovered: THE ALPHABET.
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| Thought I was kidding, didn't you? |
I think Ollie's foes, consciously or not, try to make things easy on him. They know -- LORD knows -- he's not detective. So, rather than give him clues in the form of complex, multilayered puzzles and wordplay, they keep it simple with stuff like, say, killing their victims in alphabetical order. Ollie gets graded on a curve.
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| Proving, again, that the Octopus is the perfect Green Arrow foe. |
After singing the first verse of the Alphabet Song to determine the next victim, Ollie bursts in his windows and is highly disrespectful to his staff:
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| "SHUT UP YOU ORIENTAL FLUNKY I'M A COLORFULLY CLAD MILLIONAIRE ANTHROPOLOGIST JUST DO AS YOU ARE TOLD AND CLEAN UP THAT STUFF I MADE YOU SPILL!" |
Ollie is crestfallen that he's too late because now he has to DRIVE back to Gayland, where there probably aren't any open windows for him to catapult through. How TEDIOUS.
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| "I was afraid of that. UGH. Now I have to walk down the stairs like a normal person. Somehow, I blame you for this, Wing." |
As they approach Gayland, the archers see Faber The Next Victim, about to be dropped from the parachute drop ... in a faulty parachute!
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| Ollie has REMARKABLY good eyesight. Even for a super-expert archer. |
TOMORROW: Ollie and the boy meet the devilish foursome in the woods near the Fun House.
"Maybe it was accidental, maybe not, maybe they're reading off a list they got from the IRS. Who can know? Like the man said, Roy, criminals say the darnedest things. And if my hunch is wrong, Carl Faber is definitely the victim after this next one. Or the perpetrator. Or, what if this has nothing to do with Gayland at all and they all dated the same person in high school? Ever think of that, sidekick?" I'm honestly disappointed that the Arrowplane isn't a lemon-yellow crumpled heap underneath that pretzel-shaped loop. And that nobody smacks Ollie for failing to realize that "Green Arrow" has fewer syllables than "never mind that."
ReplyDeleteWait, what's Manservant-Man doing with a plate of hors d'oeuvres, if "the master" left? And who decided that an apartment with exposed wood beam ceilings needed a coat of mottled-urine paint? With that insistence on a schedule and design sense, it wouldn't surprise me if Chinese-Alfred (Fen-Zhi Zhi?) is all four devils and has been killing the others to throw everybody off the trail of his entirely justifiable execution.
No, "never mind that" is the appropriate response. If Ollie says "Green Arrow," he's going to inevitably hear "Who?" And then he's got a good ten minutes of explaining to do.
ReplyDeleteWorse, the frightened inhabitant of whatever domicile Green Arrow has chosen to invade at a ridiculously high velocity might actually know who Green Arrow is. Then they might say "Uh, that's fine and all, but shouldn't you have brought that kid?"
Ollie's ego can only take so much.