Red, White, and Blue Arrow, 1

 Riddle me this! What is worse than 

Answer:

Four of him.

What's this? Has Geoff Johns time-travelled to the Golden Age so that he could create a spectrum of archers, one for each color?

Nope, this is Adventure Comics #133, in which Speedy tells Green Arrow he's over-the-hill and needs to be replaced, so they hold try-outs for his replacement.  I'll say this for Green Arrow; that's definitely a story you wouldn't find Batman and Robin doing!

Your definition of "glorious" may vary.

It begins, as many Green Arrow stories do, with Green Arrow bringing a bow to a gunfight.

"Yeah, G.A.; it's almost as if using weapons that require expertise and strength to produce only one tenth as much force as those that can be used easily at a greater distance by an amateur were somehow tactically unwise."

Naturally, Green Arrow proposes to solve the problem with one of his dumb arrow-based stunts, which immediately backfires.

"Leaving Speedy as a decoy" says so much.

"Aqualad is my decoy!"
At least Aquaman is more self-aware about it.

Unsurprisingly, this stupid "ladder of arrows" stunt G.A. used to pull all the time finally goes South, and Speedy plummets to his death.

You know, being saddled with the guilt of a dead sidekick would be much more on-brand for Green Arrow than Batman.   Except I suspect Ollie is not capable of guilt. "Ugh! Now I have to go back to the Rez and get ANOTHER one."

Fortunately, Speedy's REAL ability isn't archery; it's PARKOUR.

As we learned from the CW. Roy can do parkour WHILE outrunning a TRUCK.

Thus Speedy saves himself by, um, rolling.

Translation: Roy has known for years that Ollie would eff this stunt up at some point.

It's like I always say, folks: always get your crime-fighting orphans from the circus.  They come pre-equipped for such situations.

This bracing brush with death helps Speedy to finally realize that his adult partner is dangerously incompetent.

"Yeah, G.A., it's almost as if traipsing around fighting crime on rooftops in a Robin Hood costume with a dilettante millionaire amateur anthropologist and archery enthusiast was somehow tactically unwise!'

Ollie, of course, feels he's not to blame.

It's like watching the scales falls from Roy's eyes.

Rotten wood or no, the "ladder of arrows" stunt is stupid and dangerous.

Pictured: how to safety scale a wall.

In case you never noticed, every time Batman'66 throws a bat-line so that he can Robin can scale a wall, THEY SHOW HIM TESTING THE SECURITY OF THE LINE before they climb.  Always buckle up!

Speedy's doubt is immediately freshly fed by G.A. flubbing a smoke arrow shot

and blaming it on the wind.

Old Man Yells At Cloud.

Unlike the rest of us, this is Roy's first realization that Green Arrow just may be incompetent, which torments him into sleeplessness.

"Knowing that G.A. in his prime never made any slips".  I'm just going to put THESE here as a reminder of Green Arrow In His Prime:

Roy has a case of rose-colored glasses so severe that he may think his own costume is grey.  But he realizes that, as Ollie's only friend, it falls on him to inform Ollie that he is, in fact, incompetent.

There is much I could say about Ollie's decor. I will say none of it.

Fortunately Ollie facilitates the necessary confrontation by asking for it.

Neither will I make an "awfully hard" joke.  That is for lesser wits than mine.

"No secrets between us remember? I mean, unless you are doing drugs. You BETTER keep that from me because I have a ZERO sympathy policy."

Awfully hard it may be, but Roy gets right to it and wastes no words.

"THAT CAN'T GO ON."
Meanwhile, nearly 80 years later...

Okay, now I'll address the decor.  I think it should always be remembered that Ollie is rich amateur anthropologist, which means that he's a classy packrat, who picks up knick-knacks from any culture and shoves them into some display in his overcrowded apartment.

Anyway, to his credit, Ollie is self-aware enough to IMMEDIATELY understands that Roy's saying he's washed up and needs replaced. AND ROLLS WITH IT!

"This week, on Hoarders..."

Man, I bet the souvenir stand operators just salivate every time they see Ollie coming and put on their best fake obsequious foreign accents to dump their excess unsalable tchotchkes on this rich rube: "Oh, um, SI, memsahib, we have-um heap big sale on velly velly rare objectos!"

Ollie doesn't mind being put out to pasture but is determined that his legacy will be preserved! THERE MUST NEVER BE ANOTHER GREEN ARROW!

Actually, I think Ollie had the right idea.

Ollie's solution therefore it to create THE RED, WHITE, and BLUE ARROWS!

More on this idea tomorrow!

Gaslighting Green Arrow

 This is why I don't read old JLA stories:

The Blackhawks. The Challengers of the Unknown. Plastic Man. Vigilante and Stuff. The Original Robotman. Congorilla. Rex the Wonder Dog. Flash. Superman. Batman & Robin.  Wonder Woman. Aquaman.  And, naturally, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen.
Just looking at that gives me a headache.

Following HJF1's lead, I made the foolish decision to read JLA #144 from 1977, from which I used a panel in the immediately previous post.  It's a "secret origin" story for the Justice League of America.  It's insanely unnecessary but it does have two nice points; it posits American anti-everything paranoia in the 1950s as the reason the Martian Manhunter kept himself under wraps for so long AND gives an actual logical reason why the JLA is called the Justice League OF AMERICA (to calms the fears of a paranoid populace).  

It also makes a fool out of Green Arrow, but, of course, plenty of stories do that.

But in the Bronze Age (and PARTICULARLY Bronze Age JLA), the only kind of kill was overkill. So instead of just having the other JLAers showing up for a call to action they had to throw in the Junk Drawer Brigade pictured above.

SO, how big a loser do you have to be to get dumped by the friggin' Blackhawks and the Chinatown Kid?

I knew what would come next.  The circumstances of the plot would be stretched to what lengths necessary to enable EACH guest-star to make a unique contribution to the plot.

Like Lois Lane, who uses deductive reasoning (rather than "reporter's instincts") and her woefully outdated outfit to sniff out some Martians.

Actually, Lois Lane DOESN'T sniff out a Martian. Who she really sniffs out is:

Adam Strange, who is almost captured by Congorilla.
Because OF COURSE Adam Strange has to stick his nose in even though they AREN"T EVEN IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE.
Go back to yer dirty, stinking Rannies, Adam.

Back to his Rannies.  Everything's a big joke to you, isn't it, Great Earth Savior?

But you know who DOES sniff out some Martians?

I bet you saw THAT coming.

I guess it makes sense that Green Arrow never knew this story; it's not like it was made public in the media.

Except for Roy Raymond who blasts out a worldwide call to gather forces to fight The Martian Invasion. Because just when you think a story can't get MORE annoying, horrible ROY RAYMOND pops in. I guess that's why so many losers answered the call to action; who ELSE watches Roy Raymond, TV Detective?

So Ollie,

who was off in his own private Idaho at the time

was completely unaware of a Martian Invasion, just because he was VACATIONING on desert isle in the South Seas? smh

It's just as well, because Ollie would have been emotionally crushed when he was not picked for the A Team

All the actual superhero icons, with Roy Raymond to pick up Rex's poop.

or even the B Team

Although I'd love to have heard the Blackhawks say some choice, multi-accented things about Green Arrow or dump him in the garbage can with Jimmy Olsen.

and was sloughed off to the Scrubs:

Four muscled-headed oafs who should be dead. Orville Peck, a brain in a can, Congo Bill, and a woman vain enough to think she can land Superman wearing clothes from 20+ years ago.

And the last thing anyone wants to see in Green Arrow cry.

Hobbes' Choice

There is much to react to in the New History of the DC Universe: inclusions that laudable, regrettable, tragic, and absurd.

But not much that is as laugh-outloud funny as this is:

One of these things
is not like the others.

Like most decent people, I ignored the whole "Leviathan" crossover, knowing full well that its after-effects on continuity would be zilch.  But, as a result I sadly missed the fact that it included Green Arrow among "the world's sharpest detectives".  

Tee hee.

Ollie may be the world's sharpest archer (or just have the world's sharpest arrows), but as I have noted here repeatedly "Ollie is no detective".  I'd like to think he just overheard something about this group and decided to add himself to it whether he was up to snuff or not.

Just as he did with the Justice League of America.

Batman and Robin? Obvs.  The Question? Makes sense; like Lois Lane, he's an investigative reporter, besides it's built into his name and his whole schtick. Manhunter, a crusading D.A., who also covered the "Mark Shaw" angle of it all.  Plas, whom foolish writers dismiss as a goofball, was (and may still be) an FBI agent for most of his comics career.  But... Green Arrow?

The ability to use a calendar does not make you a detective.  And it doesn't take a detective to know when Hal Jordan messes up.

He never even noticed his ward had become a junkie.
Really now.

I suppose the rationale was that the Leviathan thing was a big conspiracy and Ollie is the kind of person who goes for that sort of thing, but... yeah, no, the Question has that angle covered.  

If that group really needed a seventh, there are innumerable better or more natural choices.  If you just needed a Real Detective, you had Tim Trench, Slam Bradley, Jason Bard, Jonny Double, The Human Target, et al.  If you needed a "super-" detective you had the Elongated Man, Detective Chimp, Sam Simeon, et al.  If you needed another A-lister besides Batman, there was Flash, Martian Manhunter, or even Hawkman.

I'm not sure Hawkman would have been my choice, but there is precedent, and at least one version of him IS a police officer.

I can only assume Ollie was chosen by default. They DIDN'T want someone too super-powerful (Plas doesn't really count and neither does Manhunter, because I mean "super powerful enough to give the group too much of an advantage").  They wanted a "street level" investigative team, with enough of an anti-authoritarian bent to get their hands dirty but enough clout to cover their keisters. 

And if you're trying to keep things quiet, Hawkman isn't your first choice.

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.