Red, White, and Blue Arrow, 2

Ollie is SO into the idea of retiring and finding a replacement; it would give him more time to spend in curio shops looking for Genuine Cultural Artifacts to stuff in his house.

Ollie's thinking, "JEEZ, kid, what took you so long to force me to retire? Why do you think I hired a sidekick ten times more competent than myself?"

Ollie may be a terrible crimefighter but he is highly adept at moving the plot along, because (SOMEHOW) he has a bunch of candidates competing to replace him THE VERY NEXT DAY.

So, you are about to learn something very important about Golden Age writers.

Do these guys have names? No?  Okay, NPCs Red, White, and Blue it is.

You probably have a host of questions at this point.  How were the candidates found?   How did this happen so fast and without the underworld finding out?  Just how many g-d archers ARE there in Star City and why?  How did Ollie get those costumes made in a day? Is there some ideological or moral test to pass or is it all skill-based?

But the plain and ugly truth is: Golden Age writers DO NOT CARE.  Golden Age writers are not interested in exploring a concept or justifying its use; their only interest is in EXPLOITING concepts.  They are not stewards of the conceptual environment, in which story ideas are like natural wealth.  They are consumers; they lay waste to the forests of the mind, heedless of story potential they are destroying just to get lumber for some dumb little outhouse of a story.  They couldn't care less that they are wasting the potentially poignant concept of "a fading hero struggles to find his successor with the aid of his sidekick" on this slapdash nonsense.  Because it's the Golden Age. They have no fear of running OUT of ideas, so they think nothing of wasting them as soon as they occur to them.  Once you understand this about Golden Age writers, every  Golden Age story makes a lot more sense-- or at least it's much easier to understand why it DOESN'T.

Editor's Note: Roy eventually gets over his aversion to the name "Red Arrow".

Roy immediately takes advantage of an opportunity to test Red Arrow's lack of self-preservation (a key quality of Green Arrow's).

There is a whole Untold Tale of those trial jumps and I'd love to have seen it.

Then a lesson in gun safety (specifically, that guns are not safe).

Ye gods, their costumes look so hideous together, I'm surprised the crooks don't simply faint from fashion dissonance.

The crooks try for a getaway, but Red Arrow is undeterred by Speedy's warning that his planned shot is impossible.

Except for it's impossible to describe how much more hideous Red Arrow's costume is than Green Arrow's. Some things simply don't reverse well.

In addition to lacking self-preservation, Red Arrow also has Green Arrow's lack of realism; he's looking like a good successor so far!

Even the crooks realize this guy is better than Green Arrow.

Roy is duly impressed by Red Arrow's performance.

I dunno, though; he might be UNduly impressed.  All that jazz, including the bolo shot, seems to me like bog-standard Green Arrowing.  But part of reading a Golden Age story is accepting all statements at face value; if you are told It Was Amazing, then it was amazing, no matter how many times you have seen It before.  The stories don't work unless you play along.

In any case, you'd think Red Arrow has clearly proven himself a more than capable successor for Green Arrow (more capable THAN Green Arrow, in fact!) and that he can be Speedy's new partner, contest over.  But that's not how the Golden Age works, and we will darned well put White Arrow and Blue Arrow through their paces, too, before a decision is made...