Green Arrow vs. The Pirates, #4: "Aren't You Green Arrow?"

DAMNATION! Okay, fine, let's follow this through, starting with Ollie's dignity-free ass-up crawl into the Bananaboat with the assist of an unrelated pre-teen.

Lucky. Again.

So, it becomes clearer to me as I read this...  

We all know that Robin is the Boy Hostage and Aqualad is Panicky Pal. But Flapjack Red-Hat, here? He's the Competent Sidekick to the Incompetent Hero.  He's Ape to George of the Jungle, Otto to the Time Squad, Penny to Inspector Gadget, Arthur to The Tick.  Red-Hat to Green Arrow.

The nice touch is: unlike his counterparts in incompetence, Green Arrow seems to be aware of the situation.

Knowing it is the first step, Ollie.

"Aw, Ollie! I want to be THERE to see you screw up!"
"No, chum. I'm obviously about to blunder stupidly into a trap, so you need to stay here to rescue me when the time comes. Don't worry, it won't be long."

So, Ollie starts catapulting/ziplining between derelict wrecks along the waterfront, much like his love life, I'm sure.

"Strange. There's no sign of the derelict ship among all these derelict ships.
How DOES Batman do it?!"

Practicing for "Dark Knight Returns"

Didy'ever think about just setting the ships on fire one by one?
Be doing the Harbor Patrol a solid.

It's what we ALL hope for, Ollie; not to see or hear you.

As Ollie arrow-pitons his way up the Black Raider, whom does he happen upon? Pouty Pegboy, of course.

Cuz their chains didn't fit you?

"NYAH! HELP, PIRATES, KILL ME NOW, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!"

Astonishingly, the pirates spot the stage-whispering adult socialite dressed as Peter Pan before he spots them, because Green Arrow.

I think you can probably take your time with that, then.

BUT Golden Age Green Arrow spins around catlike just in time to disarm the scoundrels with his trusty bow, and, pinioning them all in the deck with arrows, exacts their swift surrender after a few nipple-twisters for good measure.

Or not.

BWAHAHAHA! Of course that's not what happens; this is GREEN ARROW. He immediately gets his ass kicked, and, seeing as how he didn't stay sunk the last time they threw him overboard, the Black Raider's crew give 'im a pair of cement galoshes; you know, like pirates do. List "cement" among the 1001 Ways To Defeat Green Arrow.

By the way, even quick-drying cement takes a socially-awkward while to set, so you have to wonder at what point Ollie finally decided it was time to say:

Adam West, eat yer heart out.

Thus died Green Arrow. End of story. Again. Check that insurance policy, Flapjack! Live-in partners always get something!

Green Arrow vs. The Pirates, #3: An Apparently Hopeless Wreck!

Having eluded the terrible torpedo of the seafaring scalawags, the Potamic Duo plan their counterattack, if "plan" is the correct word.  

Dive-bomb? You can only 'dive-bomb' something by flying at it from high above and you are in a boat on the waterline, what could you....

Oh, of course.  Green Arrow's signature move is to have the Arrowcar catapult him through unopened windows headfirst and otherwise headlong into barely-visible danger. Like an arrow.

In fact, he does it on the cover of this very issue.

Why would the Batbo-, er, Arrowcraft be any different? Sure enough:

You know why Ollie never adopted Roy?
Because Roy could reach that button easily.

Ollie proceeds to crack wise, which was the style at the time, while wreaking havoc on the pirates from a safe-distance, as befits a ranged arranger. Until he falls for a Marty McFly:

NOBODY calls him chicken.

SURE, Ollie says, since you asked so nicely, let me come down there on your level, giving up the aerial advantage that I risked my life and quite a lot of money at the boat shop to achieve, so you can easily kick my ass. Which is exactly what happens.

1-percenters, ammIright, folks?

The monocular have no love of archers.

Ouch. RIGHT in the mid-quip. Painful AND embarrassing.

Seeing how easily they defeated Green Arrow (add 'billy club' to the 1001 Ways To Defeat Green Arrow), the pirates sensibly decide that nothing more is needed than to throw him overboard like so much chum.

"So long, chum! HAW HAW!"

After this quick disposal, they continue their getaway by hiding their crappy near-derelict ship among a bunch of others such ships THAT INEXPLICABLY CLOG THE WATERS OFF STAR CITY WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH THIS PLACE I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

Shouldn't the Harbor Police DO something about this?
What do we PAY them for?!

Just as they did Green Arrow.

Thus died Green Arrow. Requiescat in mare; ave maria, plena Reginae. End of story.

Green Arrow vs. The Pirates, #2: Tomato Volcano!

When last we left Green Arrow & Co., they were puttering around the waterfront in the  awesome and highly visible-to-crooks ARROWCRAFT, enjoying the salt air and hoping that their luck would hold out. That is, that they wouldn't run into any pirates and could look forward to an early dinner and cocktails at The Salt Line.

As luck would have it, however, something terrible happens!

Me, on a shopping trip with my chum.

An armored car with money-hating drivers is driving through a local trans-riparian tunnel, when...

Cousin It, old man! Good to see you!

It's attacked by a TOMATO PASTE AVALANCHE (#nextquartetname)! 

Actually, that's water from Star City's West River overhead. Now, if you ask me, the fact that your city's rivers run red with blood or toxic pollution or crimson dinoflagellate luciferin is a WAY bigger problem then the Pirates of Penzance on your periphery, but, hey, I'm not the mayor of Star City. I mean, what kind of idiot would want THAT job?

Oh. Right.

Anyway, I suppose any number of Star Citizens drown in delicious pasta sauce so that the pirates can get their hours in toward their deep diver certifications. 

Scuba gear surely would have sufficed but, oh yeah, it hadn't been invented yet.

Robbing stuff underwater was the height (depth?) of cool for Golden Age villains. All the greats did it. The Riddler.  Two-Face. The Octopus. Captain, um, whoever this is. Kilg%re?  Something like that.

Meanwhile, the boy in red is ECSTATIC to hear that the tunnel has blown up, killing scores of people and giving him the chance for 

FLAPJACK. That's Green Arrow's chum's name; how do I keep forgetting that?

"I"M EVEN DRESSED TO MATCH THE DISASTER!"
"Steady, chum..."

But the pirates are prepared to meet them... armed with TORPEDOES! Which they somehow fire from an ancient sailing ship! Did they use a big archery bow because Star City? I bet they used a big archery bow.

There's a reason Speedy's not called "The Boy Detective".

Luckily for him, Ollie is armed with MORE than just impeccable grammar, and an arrow hitting a torpedo is enough to cause

A TOMATO VOLCANO!

Oh, well; scratch 'torpedo' off the list of 1001 Ways To Defeat Green Arrow.

Green Arrow vs. The Pirates, #1: Something Ought To Be Done!

It begins in the great seaboard city that Green Arrow calls home.

"Robber-Craft" is the name of my next quartet.  Or maybe "Flaming Destruction".

He calls it 'home' because it doesn't have another name. At least not yet; this is early Green Arrow.  Hilariously this pirate ship is... quite literally a pirate ship. Not a modern ship for plunder, a robber-craft, as it were.  It's just a crappy bedraggled sail-driven schooner with the cast of "Penzance" aboard. 

Is this anachronistic approach endemic to backwards-thinking Star City?  I mean, its crimefighter uses a bow and arrow.  Are the newspapers made on Gutenberg presses?  Do they use candles instead of lightbulbs, and if so are they made from tallow? It would explain much.

Speaking of anachronisms, the pirate ship naturally has on it an Unwilling Cabin Boy:

"Unwilling Cabin Boy" was a GREAT movie. If you get the chance, watch it.
Alone, of course. Or with a very close friend.

"Slight but spirited boy"? That's from the ad for Piratical Peg Boy that Johnny answered, I assume: "Slight but spirited boy wanted for position on pirate ship. Maybe several positions."

Front cover illustration for the "Unwilling Cabin Boy" DVD.

I've read Treasure Island, by the way, and pirates are not glamorous in the stories told about them, if you are paying any attention.  They stink, are unshaven and badly nourished, and are covered in a hodgepodge of bad tattoos; they are the Carnies of the Sea.

Back cover illustration for the "Unwilling Cabin Boy" DVD.

Meanwhile, as this Stevensonian nightmare is unfolding along the waterfront of the great seaboard city, urban sophisticates Ollie Queen and that boy who unaccountably lives with him idly ponder the news.

Thinking! NOW we know what his role is!

Poor, lazy Oliver.  "The Harbor Police, what DO we pay them for?! Yas, someone REALLY should do SOMETHING. Something that doesn't involve my lifting my ass off this magenta credenza,  because my hip is KILLING me." Count dysplasia among the 1001 Ways To Defeat Green Arrow.

Eventually, the boy's sense of civic duty (or boredom, because "trapped in an apartment with Oliver Queen") impels them out of their apartment (because Ollie spends too much of his money on arrow-crap to afford a HOUSE) and into ....

"Arrowcraft" is the name of my next quartet.

... THE ARROWCRAFT! 

Gotta hand it to Ollie (or, at least, his creator George Papp). He may be a slavish and shameless imitator of Batman, but he's an ORIGINAL slavish and shameless imitator of Batman.  Batmobile; ArrowCAR. Batboat; ArrowCRAFT. Batplane; Arrow--.  Well, two out of three ain't bad.

Or, as we say in my circles, "Let's go boating for the afternoon, chum!"

Note that not only is Ollie not the World's Great Detective, he's not any kind of detective at all.  Noncommittal, he relies, as usual, not on planning or thinking (which is Speedy's job) but on dumb luck. Fortunately, he is almost as lucky as he is dumb. As we shall see tomorrow... .

Green Arrow vs. The Pirates #0: Pssstt!

I have a story to tell ye this week! 'Tis a story 'bout

The only hero upstaged by a definite article!

'n' his struggles against the wicked crew of THE BLACK RAIDER!

"Whistling Shafts" is the name of my next quartet.

This pirate yarn'll be fun fer all ages!

Clearly.

The gayest thing about Wonder Woman

The gayest thing about Wonder Woman is that she's not a lesbian.

Despite the fact that Golden Age Wonder Woman is so chockful of lesbian overtones and homoerotic fetish play,

Like... LOTS of it.

Wonder Woman was always portrayed as having a male love interest, 

Hussies favor capes.

man-damsel-in-distress Steve Trevor.

Who had his own issues.

Sure, Wonder Woman engaged in woman-on-woman fetishy stuff.

For the good of others, of course.

But all that DISC theory fetish play that her strange creator, William Marston, put her through...

LOTS.

shaped HOW she approached the subject of love (as 'sex' was coded) but not with WHOM.

It was never Real Lesbianism.

That requires Etta Candy.

Rather, it was always Show Lesbianism (tm) (two women getting freaky for the prurient interest of the putatively mostly male comic book reading audience).  And, make no mistake, Marston unequivocally wrote WW to appeal to the pervy-ness of growing boys (himself above all).

And so VERY pervy.

But for 'romance', Wonder Woman's focus was man-ward.  

"Nobody dominates Steve but ME."

Well, at least Trevor-ward.

That butt, though...!

The same could not be said of Wonder Woman's tribe, the Amazons of Paradise Island, who, well... you know.

Why bother with a caption...?

They had their playtime with one another. Centuries of it. With no apparent sense that anything was lacking; men weren't even allowed to set foot on Paradise Island.  

Told you.

Eventually, in the modern era, writers acknowledged that, yes, the Amazons form couples among themselves.

But long before that it was always pretty clear that "sisters are doing it for themselves", as the old song goes.

Now, here's the important part...

It's when you combine Wonder Woman with the Amazons that it gets really interesting.  The juxtaposition of those two facts -- that the Amazons are lesbians (even if only situational ones) and that Wonder Woman is not -- implies something very special.  It means that:

Diana, the only child ever raised on Paradise Island, was a sexual minority in her native society. 

Which is, in fact, the core experience of (nearly) every real-world gay person.  Making her experience -- being a straight person raised by and in a gay world -- the most parallel to the experience of gays who are raised by and in a straight world.

Thus, the gayest thing about Wonder Woman -- the thing that makes her a perfect icon that gays can identify with -- is that she isn't gay.