Red, White, and Blue Arrow, 4

 When last we left Speedy and Blue Arrow, they were plunging to their rocky cliffside doom, having been outwitted by some cheap hood named "Bronco Bates" with the old "there ain't no balcony" trick.

"Muttley! DO SOMETHIIIING!"

Obviously, they are goners.

Fortunately, Blue Arrow is oblivious to the obvious.

Can Blue Arrow make such a miracle shot?

Hm... No.  I'm pretty sure you DO like to brag, Blue Arrow, given that this is the first thing you say, even before swinging to safety.

Again, this seems to me like bog-standard Green Arrowing, but, based on Golden Age principles, if you are told something is a Miracle Shot, then it IS a Miracle Shot. One that is not only life-saving, but one which enables a surprise counterattack against Bronco Bates and his baleful buddies.

"Blue Arrow! You're back!"
"Yes, I almost broke it!"
See, B.A., THAT would have been witty.  
This is why you won't be in the JSA. 

So Blue Arrow is: exceedingly confident, gives solid smack talk, is stupidly gullible, and makes crazily expert shots on the regular.  I guess we have a winner!

At least that's what Blue Arrow thinks; Speedy has another idea, however.

"Say WHUT?!"
Awesome catchphrase, Blue Arrow.

I will not mention the little dervish doll, or the clay pipe, or the Made in China pot. But I will note that these multicolored archers seem to have been given deep access to Arrow Stuff (including the Trophy Room), which is in Ollie's house. Or apartment. Or Arrowcave.  The Golden Age was very vague about such things.  Are they all told Green Arrow's secret identity?  How would you handle such logistics without or before giving away the secret identity?

Well, we'll never know, BECAUSE...

Speedy has decided to slowly denude Blue Arrow with repeated shots that whiz tantalizing close to his body. As a test of his... bravery. 

"And, trust me, I am watching your body closely to see whether your muscles are quivering!"
Sure, Roy.  Whatever helps you sleep at night.

Wait, why is Blue Arrow wearing green underwear? OH, NO....

IT WAS EARTH ALL ALONG!

Yup.

There never WAS a Red, White, or Blue Arrow.  Each one was just Ollie, dickishly deceiving Roy, while -- AMAZINGLY -- wearing a full Green Arrow costume UNDER his Other Colored Arrow costume.  Honestly, that's more impressive than any of those trick shots.  At least explains why Ollie gave the "other" Arrows unfettered access to his Arrow Stuff.

But then who were those guys at the archery contest?

... Good question, Roy.

Turns out they were NPCs that Ollie just willed into existence, like they were bystanders generated by a special power on his Heroclix card.

Their names are unimportant; only my deception matters.

This is dizzying in its implications.  Does OLLIE have an archery club, and, if so, isn't that unhealthy for his secret?  Does GREEN ARROW have an archery club and how has that never been a plot point before or since?  Does Roy not KNOW the people in this club well enough to see through the disguises? Does Roy not know OLLIE well enough to see through the disguises? When, why, and how did Ollie become a master of disguise and mimicry (while falling to his death)?

Is Ollie being a dick, teaching Roy a lesson, like a Silver Age Superman hoodwinking Lois Lane "for her own good"?  Is Ollie becoming wisely humble, knowing that he needs to earn Roy's trust again?  Can you earn someone's trust by deceiving them? Is this the incident that leads Ollie to inspire the "Green Arrows of the World" group eight years later?  Is this the initial crack in an obviously broken relationship whose disintegration will eventually lead Roy to dissipation in an opium den? What IS going on here?

Regardless, the lesson YOU must learn is: Golden Age writers do not care. They are about tricking you and subverting expectations, not creating logical sequences of events.  They used this potential rich and resonant story concept -- a sidekick comes to the difficult realization that his mentor is slipping and forces the selection of a replacement -- not for pathos but for unrealistic and childish trickery.  The Green Arrow writers patted themselves on the back for fooling a bunch of ten-year-old readers and then left for an early three-martini lunch at Delmonico's, confident that no one will be questioning their wisdom or their morals after reading this story, let alone 70 years after it was written.

Red, White, and Blue Arrow 3

We left Speedy with a very successful Red Arrow, who seems to have proven that he's not only as good as Green Arrow "in his prime", but possibly BETTER.  Terrific, in fact.

Desaturated Arrow here has Ollie-level overconfidence.

Together the archers notice that there's "nothing much doing in the city".  Which, well... it's Star City.  What do you expect?  So effective has Green Arrow been -- in his prime -- that all crime has been driven past the city's edge!

Ollie always used the 'slow' gate, because he didn't realize it referred to cars.

But only and exactly to the edge of the city, since the very toll-gates on the bridge are currently being robbed!  

What are the odds?

I make fun of the Arrowcar catapult because it's absurd, but using it this way when there's no vertical distance to transverse is especially idiotic.  Jeez, bridge trolls, just SHOOT them while they're inbound.   Instead they whoosh away in their bandit car.

A siren arrow? Who's going to be dumb enough to fall for that?

Well, now we know how dumb you have to be to be a crook in Star City.

This silly trick turns our bridge tolls back to run over dem two arrow characters down with their car.

That reminds me; isn't Green (or Red, or White, or Blue) Arrow exactly the WRONG name?  Why isn't he simply called Green ARCHER?  Who names themselves after the weapon they use? I mean, Wild Dog doesn't call himself "Stray Bullet", does he?

I would totally support him if he wanted to, though.

Anyway, the archer bros have to come up with a plan to stop a vehicle barreling down on them.

Spike Arrow is Green Arrow's tough cousin from the wrong side of the tracks.

Aren't ALL arrows "spike arrows"? In any case, it's a solid plan and works handily, giving Roy another chance to disrespect Ollie.

"when he was good."
Dang, Roy is casually savage. I love that about him.

A desperate crook risks a deadly jump from the bridge, but White Arrow is equal to the emergency.

Not only is White Arrow sensational, you can wear him with anything.

You may notice that the set-up for the White Arrow's outing was given less 'screen-time' than Red Arrow's. This is a very typical and efficient pattern in Golden Age stories where events (such as crimes, villain encounters, etc.) often come in threes.  If the first event is, say, three panels, the second will be two, and third will be one.  Once you know this 3-2-1 trope, you'll notice it in lots of Golden Age storytelling.  Based on this pattern, Blue Arrow should come on with little to no intro.

BOOM.

"No, no, it's my eyes!" really seems like a comment that would have been more appropriate when hideous Red Arrow appeared, but I guess not everyone likes blue.

B.A.'s got the swagger and is efficient.

And he's on point with his trick arrow use!  As good as Green Arrow...
was when he was good.

Unfortunately, Blue Arrow is also as GULLIBLE as Green Arrow:

As you'll recall, The Octopus got Ollie with a similar trick.

Roy, being astute (and second in line) manages to stop himself in time by grabbing on to the door. Blue Arrow, sadly, plummets to his doom on the rocky cliffs below.  Red Arrow was deemed insufficiently visually distinct from Speedy and so this is how White Arrow came to replace Green Arrow, who was never heard from again.

Or WAS he...? Find out tomorrow...

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...

The 'Round-The-World Crimes, #3

Having pulled off his theft of the Zok Movie Studios payroll as his "visit to Spain", Bull's-Eye is on to his next target: the Red Fez Cafe!

In Star City's famous Little Morocco neighborhood, of course.

"So I figure Bull's-Eye's world tour will take place right in town!"  Boy, nothing gets past you, does it, Ollie?  I don't know why Bruce says all those things about you.

Bull's-Eye is really the master of smack talk.  The Joker's too busy throwing flunkies at Batman to say anything other than, "Get him, you fools!"

I love the idea that Star City has "many colorful foreign sections." I would definitely write it that way. But nothing usual; only ethnic neighborhoods you never actually find: Uruguaytown; Moldovaville;  Little Yakutsk; Vatican Avenue. After all, Star City deserves some unique and charming character, and Green Arrow sure doesn't provide any.

Bull's-Eye's visit to the Red Fez seems desultory, merely a pit-stop to make sure Ollie can catch up with him. His real target lies elsewhere...

I'm just not going to ask how Ollie knows the manhole outside of the Red Fez leads to Chinatown.  But I'm sure it's due to some disastrous dinner date at the Red Fez.  

Roy is awesome; probably has the entire Chinese calendar of festivals memorized, in Chinese.   Let's hope Speed Saunders is there at the festival, examining a bloody corpse in the street, and Ollie trips over him on the way out of the sewer.

Ah, yes.  The Feast of the Purple Dragon. I never miss the one here in the District.

Bull's-Eye, a planner, has already weaponized the purple dragon itself as his mean of robbing the Chinatown bank (which, as always, is closed on the Feast of Purple Dragon).

In comics, flames will melt ANYTHING.
Except Superman, of course.

This is the moment Ollie's been waiting for: the chance to do some high wire acrobatics on an arrow line. He lives for that.

Poor Roy, passive-aggressively trying to rein Ollie in at every turn, to no avail. "So, this is a bank robbery and there are already police here armed with guns, so maybe we could hang b--"
"TALLY-HOooooOOOOO!"

Meanwhile, Bull's-Eye is making good his exit via the back alley.

Oh, fer-- you're not REALLY going to fall for this, are you, Leapo?

Well, look at that. A giant target that Bull's-Eye didn't put there just happens to be in the alley blocking his getaway.  What an odd coincidence <eyeroll>.

The Green Arrow's maneuvers at this point are solid; he goes OVER the bank, having reasoned Bull's-Eye escape route is in the back.

Unless Roy suggested it off-panel. Possibly in Chinese.

Fisticuffs are a lot more effective than arrows in close quarters.

"This is too much!"
HAW! I love Bull's-Eye.

Bull's-Eye fed-up reaction at this point is priceless.  And familiar. Where have I seen this scene before...?

Oh,  yeah. Guess Frank Miller's a Bull's-Eye fan, too.

SHOOT HIM, LEAPO, SHOOT HIM!

Sorry; wrong comic.

SHOOT HIM, LE-- Oh. I guess not.
Apparently The Green Arrow is better prepared than The Batman today.

Clearly, Bull's-Eye is not prepared for the unlikely event of The Green Arrow having a brain in his head; he's got no rockets up his leg-sleeves this time!  But there is one obvious (and thematic) exit available to him; the giant target!

No toon can resist the old "Shave and a Haircut"!

Bull's-Eye can't resist jumping THROUGH the bull's-eye as a means of escape; it's just too on-point.

But...WHAT'S THIS?!

<sad trombone noise>

LMAO. Nice one, Ollie.  Somehow, in the amount of time it took Bull's-Eye to jump into the sewer outside the Red Fez, you:

• determined he was going to rob the Chinatown bank;
• deduced his likely avenue of exit;
• acquired or manufactured a giant bull's-eye sign;
• hung it in the alley behind the bank;
• alerted the police to park a paddy-wagon behind it;
• and returned with Roy to the rooftop of the building across the bank.

Yeah; no; I ain't buying it.  It's a nice idea, and if this were a Batman story, the writers would have found a way to give Batman the time to do all that.  But this is a The Green Arrow story, and he was simply allowed to catch Bull's-Eye because there were only two more panels left and it was time for the writers to head to their local Red Fez for some highballs.

Although the Joker has certainly fought The Green Arrow,

The Joker #4, 'natch.

we've never had the chance to see Bull's-Eye go up against The Batman. HOWEVER...

Yeesh; prison life was hard on Leapo.  Somebody must have cut his nose off. My money's on the Penguin.

in 1961, he WAS the person who inspired another criminal to become "The Blue Bowman" to fight Batman.

But we aren't going to waste any time on Phil Cobb.  
Bull's-Eye he ain't.

The 'Round-the-World Crimes, #2

Having been disparaged in the newspaper as a "local yokel", that baleful buffoon, BULL'S-EYE, has resolved to commit a series of " 'round-the-world" crimes ... without ever leaving town!  

A plan, which seems only to EMPHASIZE the newspaper's point, not refute it.  
But I do have not have a Golden Age brain.

Naturally, Bull's-Eye has to advertise this plan to the word (and to The Green Arrow).

"The Green Arrow will stop him!"
We are all of us born into this world with the trusting innocence and naiveté of a Star City citizen.

Now that The Green Arrow and his sidekick know Bull's-Eye new M.O., they conduct an exhaustive analysis of his potential targets, warn those places and make arrangements to be immediately contacted directly in case of a Bull's-Eye attack.  Meanwhile, they methodically search all the abandoned warehouses, which, by law, all villains must hide out in.

Yes, Roy; knowing how and where a criminal is going to strike IS a great help in crimefighting.  Next time you see Bull's-Eye, perhaps you can politely ask him to somehow indicate where his next target it. Oh, wait, I forgot; HE ALREADY DOES THAT..

Nah, just kidding.  They do none of that because The Green Arrow is not a detective.  They just cruise around town in the gigantic Arrowcar, hoping they see one of Bull's-Eye signs that indicate where he will strike.

Or wait for the police to tell them where to go.
I'm sure there are a lot of police in Star City eager to tell The Green Arrow where to go.

I am enthralled by the name "ZOK" studios, one of the most counterintuitive in-story business names I have even seen.  Sure, nowadays, you might name a movie studio "Zok" as part of positioning its brand as a wacky outsider, a producer of exciting and unusual films.  But this is August of 1947 and one does not do that.  Movie studio names must reflect Size, Height, or Quality: Mammoth, Zenith, Utmost, Superior, Colossal, Apex.

And we all know EXACTLY where Apex Studios is.

I guess all the good names were taken by decent studios in serious cities like Coast City and Apex City, leaving Star City with only crappy names left like "Zok". So Zok-ward head the Quivering Duo, where Bull's-Eye is attacking the set of a bullfighting picture.

There's an interesting detail here I want to focus on.  At first, the film-makers are distressed at the interruption of their film-making. UNTIL...

"Relax! It's just that baleful buffoon Bull's-Eye!

They thought that they had reason to be upset; UNTIL they realized it was "just Bull's-Eye".  So either the Star City public doesn't take Bull's-Eye seriously (can you imagine?) or they are simply ON HIS SIDE, which is a measure of the popularity of The Green Arrow.

Points to Zok Motion Picture Studio for hiring culturally authentic actors.

Jeez, Bull's-Eye works that "costs a dime if you miss" bit to DEATH.  One day, I'd like to see Ollie take him at his word and, suddenly remembering that he's extremely wealthy, just unload a dump-truck of dimes on him, likely killing him with comic book irony.

It worked on Rocky Grimes, after all.

I'm actually impressed by what The Green Arrow does next. He ignores Bull's-Eye, who is clearly just trying to draw all the attention to himself, and focuses on stopping the henchmen, who are meanwhile robbing Zok Studios.

Payroll. It's always payroll.  Being a crook in the Golden Age was SO EASY.  No wonder they ran around Issuing Challenges and Daring The Authorities To Stop Them.

This, however, is where Bull's-Eye shows he's actually a clever villain rather than just a dumb crook. One of the readers of this blog is a long-time friend with whom I have worked many times, including producing some very complicated (but wildly successful and profitable) stage productions, and we have been asked repeatedly for The Secret of Our Success.  Naturally, there were many factors, but we always simply point out that, unlike everyone else, we assumed that some things would go wrong, and we PLANNED for it.  So, too, Bull's-Eye:

Bull's-Eye already ASSUMES The Green Arrow will catch his stooges.  In fact, he's counting on it.

I love the fact that riding a bull, and directing its course, is child's play for Bull's-Eye.  Bull's-Eye isn't the Joker's rival; he's the Joker's IDOL. Poor Joker; he'd love to be a carefree, laughing crime-clown, but he lives in Gotham City.  There, you have to rack up a substantial body count before the police, let alone, Batman will give you any attention.

"Not yet, Dick; the body count is still single-digit.  We mustn't dilute our brand."

Bull's-Eye merrily rides the bull through a fence and away from the studio, BUT The Green Arrow is also prepared with his anti-bull arrows!

We don't actually see The Green Arrow stop the bull, which happens between panels.  I assume Ollie, who, always remember, is a American tribal anthropologist, and Roy, who, always remember, was raised within such a tribe, simply shot it dead and justified it by making sure they used every part of the bull, letting nothing go to waste.  Regardless, Bull's-Eye was even prepared in case the bull got shot!

He has ... rockets up his legs and flying squirrel wings in his costume?  Bull's-Eye's the BEST.

How does he land safely? Please; dude invented parkour, while being shot at. He's ain't called "Leapo" for nothing.

Tomorrow: The Green Arrow gets two more shots at The Bull's-Eye!