Workshop: "Writing Green Arrow (Oliver Queen)" by Merfilly
Thank you again, jen_in_japan, for hosting this comm and letting me speak on my second favorite archer, Oliver Queen.
Just a quick warning to anyone reading this looking for current canon...while I may touch it, I have a disagreement with both Green Arrow: Year One and Green Arrow/Black Canary. In many ways, the character I have seen since Winick took on the book has been touch and go with his history. It happens, and is very easily explained, considering Winick's tour is post-resurrection. Death, if anything, should have a right to change a man.
Introducing...
Car. Plane. Gadget for every gimmick, gimmick for every trap. Sidekick. Costume. Rich lifestyle, with a need to do good.
Cool your bat-jets, folks...that's really Green Arrow I'm talking about.
He made his debut in More Fun Comics, back in November 1941. He ran in the book from issue 73 to issue 107, after which the superheroes of the title moved over to Adventure Comics instead. Creators Mort Weisinger and George Papp defined him, and opened the door for years of comparison to Batman almost from day one.
Like Batman, Green Arrow is merely human. He has, since the first days, relied on the use of a bow and arrow, employing several 'trick' arrows, arrows that ranged from a boxing glove to a cryogenic arrow. All of which, it should be noted, he invented himself. He might have been following in Bruce's shadow, but he had the brains to do it with, a facet that is sometimes, sadly, lost.
It's worth noting that Green Arrow began with his sidekick, Speedy. As storytelling progressed, it was decided GA had been active before Roy came along, but we had to wait quite some time to learn their separate origins.
Historical data
Oliver's history has been victim to subtle retcons over the years, but the gist is still the same...and made it mostly intact onto Smallville. He's the millionaire heir to Queen Industries, his parents having died when he was young, and he wound up playing Robinson Crusoe on his very own castaway island without a volleyball for a best friend.
To survive, he drew on his resourcefulness, made himself a bow and some arrows to hunt. Then there is conflict (pirates, hippies, drugrunners...take your pick) and he escapes back to civilization a much changed-man who chafes at the injustice of the world. He picks up the inspiration of Robin Hood, and soon becomes the latest of the costumed crowd to run amok on the bank robbers and kidnappers.
Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths, Green Arrow was the much younger lover of Black Canary, the man she left her world, that of the JSA, for. Arrow's involvement in the League was argued as reasons to bar her from joining, by Hawkman, whose own girlfriend had been refused, but it was argued right back that Canary did not overlap her boyfriend's powers. Just goes to show the sexism there, as Ollie most certainly overlapped the other rich boy on the League.
Post-COIE, though, paints us a new story. One of a man behind the scenes at first, willing to avoid the limelight of financing the League, and taking his time showing just who he was to the five founders. The fact he already had Speedy with him in his first meeting with the League is a subtle retcon of the DC universe as a whole...between the two Crisis events, Speedy, not Robin, is the first sidekick, a factor often ignored or tossed aside on the thought that Robin was already running around in Gotham, just not worldwide. Ollie did eventually get invited to be the sixth member of the League.
According to the Black Canary mini series, we now have a new history of Ollie with the League. Both of them were 'rookies' when Batman is already established on the team...and that rings poor when every Bat-fan knows how long it took the League to convince the Bat to be on the League even unofficially, let alone a deciding member. It's also not holding up within DC continuity, as there have been other titles to suggest Oliver's place as the sixth member remains secure.
Speaking from his own book, Ollie came back to his wealth from that island, and balanced corporate heir with do-gooding, as well as raising a thirteen year old boy who was full of hero worship for him. It really wasn't enough to hold the character up in the light though.
So they stripped him of his money, his company, and eventually, his ward. They got a liberal man-for-the-people hero that Batman had never been, and that grittier image stuck hard. Long before Miller repainted our other rich-boy-with-issues, we had Oliver Queen penniless, learning what America really was in a hard hitting look at normal life, and finding out his teenage ward was a junkie.
Mike Grell took what Denny O'Neill had begun and got DC to give him the character for a Mature, No-Powers book. We got an Ollie who killed, who contemplated real-world issues, aged, and who otherwise showed every flaw and merit in close, graphic detail.
With lots of pretty, naked him and Dinah.
Those flaws started adding up too quickly. The long-time relationship with Dinah Lance (now the younger of the pair) came to an end in the face of infidelities and long absences, setting Ollie on what can only be termed a self-destructive spiral. He toured the world, looking for his place in it, trying to forget the woman who he'd driven away.
And met his son. Connor Hawke. Originally, he had no idea who the kid was. Met him in the ashram he had sought out for meditations, and they grew uneasily into friendship. Connor knew, but Ollie did not for a long time.
Then this nasty thing happened. Actually, it began around the time Dinah had left him. It was when Superman died and was reborn, because right around then, his absolute best friend forever, Hal Jordan, went bug-screwy-nuts.
Considering GA and GL had just had an adventure the issue before the one where this happened, is enough to make my fan-teeth itch. See the Hal Essay and you might know why I have issues with the handling. That Oliver Queen was not more involved in efforts to save Hal from himself is the rest of my grievance, given their canon near-inseparability since the 70s.
Eventually the bug-screwy-nuts Hal decided to remake the universe into the multiverse and undo the sacrifice of his other best friend, Barry Allen. This didn't set well with Ollie in the least, and when he had to, he fired what he believed to be a lethal arrow.
That, fellow fen, is when Oliver Queen died, in my own brain. The issues following Zero Hour were a meltdown that would eventually (not so long, as Supes still had the long hair) lead to his death in his own title, saving Metropolis from devastation with Superman right there.
Why'd he have to die, then, if Supes was on deck? Because Oliver Queen chose to die, rather than sacrifice being Green Arrow. The only way out of the plane, rigged with a dead man's switch and armed as a bomb, was to let Superman take his arm off.
Ollie let go of the switch instead.
Fast forward a little bit. Hal Jordan gets kicked in the conscience by Kyle, the baby Lantern. Comes home and saves the solar system...but does one selfish act before he does it at the cost of his life. He resurrects Oliver Queen, but with amnesia and from about 'ten years' (DC time) in the past.
Final Night was published in 1996.
Green Arrow relaunched in 2001 to explain the details of the resurrection. Five years, folks, between setting up his return and actually doing it. Why? Because Kevin Smith wanted the title, and was tied up forever. The Green Arrow title had come to an end, even with Connor Hawke as the Emerald Archer in 1998.
With the relaunch, came retcons. Minor ones, to start, and a return to old favorites. Connor and Ollie getting to know each other was written in great fashion. A new Speedy, this time a girl. Dinah/Ollie goodness. Roy and Ollie finding new ground with each other. Shifts in everything.
Personality and Interactions
Over all, Ollie's a charmer. He's a witty man, with good looks, and charisma. If you look at him in the Golden Age, he comes off as patronizing toward Roy on a lot of occasions, but no worse, normally, than Bruce toward Dick. By the Silver Age, his appearances were focused more on the League and Dinah Drake Lance, the widow from that other world, who was older and wiser than him in a lot of ways. By the modern age, he was still given to words like 'kiddo' (his most endearing poke at the fact he was the elder of post COIE Canary/Arrow), but had developed a more guarded personality. Never as closed off as the Bat became, he was less trusting in the Grell book, a facet Dixon and other writers made use of in the 25 issues that led to his death following Grell's departure.
Since Ollie's return...especially OYL, he's been presented as a man who looked in a mirror darkly and didn't really like what he saw reflecting back at him. He's more mature than he was during the 80s, less grim than he was in much of the 90s. Family, first and foremost, seems to drive him. He's still a charmer...but he's got to have a reason to charm you.
Top of my head, the people who rank high in his life are Hal Jordan, Roy Harper, Dinah Lance, Mia Dearden, and Connor Hawke. Hal's still his best friend, and Dinah...regardless of how you feel about it, is his canon wife right now. Connor is the son he never had a chance to know, and Mia is the girl he's bound and determined to do right by. As far as Roy goes...they've gotten over a lot of the pain and seem to have actually fallen into a true father/son vibe that is very far from the buddy pair they were in the golden age.
Other notables of his life have included Bonnie King, aka Miss Arrowette. According to a throwaway panel in a Young Justice Comic, and a lot of fanon, Cissie King-Jones (Arrowette) may be his illegitimate daughter. Bonnie was a Star City heroine captivated by the Archer. Eddie Fyres is a notable ally/antagonist of the Grell era, being a CIA spook who got Ollie in deep trouble. Repeatedly. And who then later looked over Connor closely.
Possibly the most complicated relationship to dwell on is Shado, the Yakuza bow-mistress who raped Oliver in the throes of a fever, and conceived his son, Robert. (Forgive me, but I fail to recall Robert's Japanese name, revealed in the Connor Hawke Miniseries.) Ollie is very torn by her, between attraction, fascination, and betrayal.
Other portrayals
Green Arrow in Justice League Unlimited, like most of the animated heroes, is a much more 'white hat' character. He gave up his company after the Bat invited him to the League and talked him into staying...or after he laid eyes on a Pretty Bird, at least. He's still got issues somewhere, as evidenced by Speedy's brusque comments his way in one episode's cameo, but he's got the real feel of a Knight in Shining Armor...no offense, Sir Justin.
Oliver Queen on Smallville came about after a long, losing battle to get Bruce Wayne allowed. And, no offense, Bat fans, I think the options available to Oliver Queen make more sense for him than they would have for Bruce. He's got murdered parents and a thirst for vengeance when we first meet him. He's robbing the rich (Lex's pals), and using the proceeds for justice...or in theory, anyhow. He's far more wiling to go to violent measures than Bruce is typically portrayed as willing to do. He's a CEO of his company, and he's slowly building this motley band of heroes who may one day be the Justice League....
He only enjoyed one appearance on SuperFriends, alas...
Questions? Recommended authors
I've tried to keep this brief. I'd be glad to handle questions in comments though.
If you really want good portrayals of Oliver Queen, I beg you to go look at gottaluvit123's fic. I tend to live in awe of her Oliver. greeneyelove also handles him quite nicely.
Brad Meltzer introduced the first of the retcons that really impacted the way Ollie is handled to date. He let it be written in that Oliver Queen had known about his son from the beginning. This seems to directly contradict everything Connor Hawke's creator intended (Chuck Dixon, folks...man seemed to hate Roy Harper, but gave us a great character in the form of Connor). And it made Ollie into a form of coward and heel he'd never really been depicted as.
Judd Winick finished the job begun in undermining Oliver's sense of noble character that had been semi-regained in his rebirth. Though Dinah had slapped a still pretty much amnesiac (soulless, actually, and lacking a decade of experience) Oliver with the events that destroyed them, the two had hit it off fairly well. Within the first arc Winick wrote, Oliver Queen cheated on the woman of his dreams, reducing him back to where he'd been in issue 75 of the prior series. He lost Dinah...a fact that would not be made clear for over a year's worth of publication.
And then comes Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis and One Year Later, and we've been force-fed a very abrupt reunion in that relationship, a mayorship that must have been bought, and a lot of other changes, including the coma and kidnapping of his son...who he quit looking for, supposedly, because he found a sidekick.
You might say I'm bitter, looking at that summary of the past few years of canon.
Just a quick warning to anyone reading this looking for current canon...while I may touch it, I have a disagreement with both Green Arrow: Year One and Green Arrow/Black Canary. In many ways, the character I have seen since Winick took on the book has been touch and go with his history. It happens, and is very easily explained, considering Winick's tour is post-resurrection. Death, if anything, should have a right to change a man.
Introducing...
Car. Plane. Gadget for every gimmick, gimmick for every trap. Sidekick. Costume. Rich lifestyle, with a need to do good.
Cool your bat-jets, folks...that's really Green Arrow I'm talking about.
He made his debut in More Fun Comics, back in November 1941. He ran in the book from issue 73 to issue 107, after which the superheroes of the title moved over to Adventure Comics instead. Creators Mort Weisinger and George Papp defined him, and opened the door for years of comparison to Batman almost from day one.
Like Batman, Green Arrow is merely human. He has, since the first days, relied on the use of a bow and arrow, employing several 'trick' arrows, arrows that ranged from a boxing glove to a cryogenic arrow. All of which, it should be noted, he invented himself. He might have been following in Bruce's shadow, but he had the brains to do it with, a facet that is sometimes, sadly, lost.
It's worth noting that Green Arrow began with his sidekick, Speedy. As storytelling progressed, it was decided GA had been active before Roy came along, but we had to wait quite some time to learn their separate origins.
Historical data
Oliver's history has been victim to subtle retcons over the years, but the gist is still the same...and made it mostly intact onto Smallville. He's the millionaire heir to Queen Industries, his parents having died when he was young, and he wound up playing Robinson Crusoe on his very own castaway island without a volleyball for a best friend.
To survive, he drew on his resourcefulness, made himself a bow and some arrows to hunt. Then there is conflict (pirates, hippies, drugrunners...take your pick) and he escapes back to civilization a much changed-man who chafes at the injustice of the world. He picks up the inspiration of Robin Hood, and soon becomes the latest of the costumed crowd to run amok on the bank robbers and kidnappers.
Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths, Green Arrow was the much younger lover of Black Canary, the man she left her world, that of the JSA, for. Arrow's involvement in the League was argued as reasons to bar her from joining, by Hawkman, whose own girlfriend had been refused, but it was argued right back that Canary did not overlap her boyfriend's powers. Just goes to show the sexism there, as Ollie most certainly overlapped the other rich boy on the League.
Post-COIE, though, paints us a new story. One of a man behind the scenes at first, willing to avoid the limelight of financing the League, and taking his time showing just who he was to the five founders. The fact he already had Speedy with him in his first meeting with the League is a subtle retcon of the DC universe as a whole...between the two Crisis events, Speedy, not Robin, is the first sidekick, a factor often ignored or tossed aside on the thought that Robin was already running around in Gotham, just not worldwide. Ollie did eventually get invited to be the sixth member of the League.
According to the Black Canary mini series, we now have a new history of Ollie with the League. Both of them were 'rookies' when Batman is already established on the team...and that rings poor when every Bat-fan knows how long it took the League to convince the Bat to be on the League even unofficially, let alone a deciding member. It's also not holding up within DC continuity, as there have been other titles to suggest Oliver's place as the sixth member remains secure.
Speaking from his own book, Ollie came back to his wealth from that island, and balanced corporate heir with do-gooding, as well as raising a thirteen year old boy who was full of hero worship for him. It really wasn't enough to hold the character up in the light though.
So they stripped him of his money, his company, and eventually, his ward. They got a liberal man-for-the-people hero that Batman had never been, and that grittier image stuck hard. Long before Miller repainted our other rich-boy-with-issues, we had Oliver Queen penniless, learning what America really was in a hard hitting look at normal life, and finding out his teenage ward was a junkie.
Mike Grell took what Denny O'Neill had begun and got DC to give him the character for a Mature, No-Powers book. We got an Ollie who killed, who contemplated real-world issues, aged, and who otherwise showed every flaw and merit in close, graphic detail.
With lots of pretty, naked him and Dinah.
Those flaws started adding up too quickly. The long-time relationship with Dinah Lance (now the younger of the pair) came to an end in the face of infidelities and long absences, setting Ollie on what can only be termed a self-destructive spiral. He toured the world, looking for his place in it, trying to forget the woman who he'd driven away.
And met his son. Connor Hawke. Originally, he had no idea who the kid was. Met him in the ashram he had sought out for meditations, and they grew uneasily into friendship. Connor knew, but Ollie did not for a long time.
Then this nasty thing happened. Actually, it began around the time Dinah had left him. It was when Superman died and was reborn, because right around then, his absolute best friend forever, Hal Jordan, went bug-screwy-nuts.
Considering GA and GL had just had an adventure the issue before the one where this happened, is enough to make my fan-teeth itch. See the Hal Essay and you might know why I have issues with the handling. That Oliver Queen was not more involved in efforts to save Hal from himself is the rest of my grievance, given their canon near-inseparability since the 70s.
Eventually the bug-screwy-nuts Hal decided to remake the universe into the multiverse and undo the sacrifice of his other best friend, Barry Allen. This didn't set well with Ollie in the least, and when he had to, he fired what he believed to be a lethal arrow.
That, fellow fen, is when Oliver Queen died, in my own brain. The issues following Zero Hour were a meltdown that would eventually (not so long, as Supes still had the long hair) lead to his death in his own title, saving Metropolis from devastation with Superman right there.
Why'd he have to die, then, if Supes was on deck? Because Oliver Queen chose to die, rather than sacrifice being Green Arrow. The only way out of the plane, rigged with a dead man's switch and armed as a bomb, was to let Superman take his arm off.
Ollie let go of the switch instead.
Fast forward a little bit. Hal Jordan gets kicked in the conscience by Kyle, the baby Lantern. Comes home and saves the solar system...but does one selfish act before he does it at the cost of his life. He resurrects Oliver Queen, but with amnesia and from about 'ten years' (DC time) in the past.
Final Night was published in 1996.
Green Arrow relaunched in 2001 to explain the details of the resurrection. Five years, folks, between setting up his return and actually doing it. Why? Because Kevin Smith wanted the title, and was tied up forever. The Green Arrow title had come to an end, even with Connor Hawke as the Emerald Archer in 1998.
With the relaunch, came retcons. Minor ones, to start, and a return to old favorites. Connor and Ollie getting to know each other was written in great fashion. A new Speedy, this time a girl. Dinah/Ollie goodness. Roy and Ollie finding new ground with each other. Shifts in everything.
Personality and Interactions
Over all, Ollie's a charmer. He's a witty man, with good looks, and charisma. If you look at him in the Golden Age, he comes off as patronizing toward Roy on a lot of occasions, but no worse, normally, than Bruce toward Dick. By the Silver Age, his appearances were focused more on the League and Dinah Drake Lance, the widow from that other world, who was older and wiser than him in a lot of ways. By the modern age, he was still given to words like 'kiddo' (his most endearing poke at the fact he was the elder of post COIE Canary/Arrow), but had developed a more guarded personality. Never as closed off as the Bat became, he was less trusting in the Grell book, a facet Dixon and other writers made use of in the 25 issues that led to his death following Grell's departure.
Since Ollie's return...especially OYL, he's been presented as a man who looked in a mirror darkly and didn't really like what he saw reflecting back at him. He's more mature than he was during the 80s, less grim than he was in much of the 90s. Family, first and foremost, seems to drive him. He's still a charmer...but he's got to have a reason to charm you.
Top of my head, the people who rank high in his life are Hal Jordan, Roy Harper, Dinah Lance, Mia Dearden, and Connor Hawke. Hal's still his best friend, and Dinah...regardless of how you feel about it, is his canon wife right now. Connor is the son he never had a chance to know, and Mia is the girl he's bound and determined to do right by. As far as Roy goes...they've gotten over a lot of the pain and seem to have actually fallen into a true father/son vibe that is very far from the buddy pair they were in the golden age.
Other notables of his life have included Bonnie King, aka Miss Arrowette. According to a throwaway panel in a Young Justice Comic, and a lot of fanon, Cissie King-Jones (Arrowette) may be his illegitimate daughter. Bonnie was a Star City heroine captivated by the Archer. Eddie Fyres is a notable ally/antagonist of the Grell era, being a CIA spook who got Ollie in deep trouble. Repeatedly. And who then later looked over Connor closely.
Possibly the most complicated relationship to dwell on is Shado, the Yakuza bow-mistress who raped Oliver in the throes of a fever, and conceived his son, Robert. (Forgive me, but I fail to recall Robert's Japanese name, revealed in the Connor Hawke Miniseries.) Ollie is very torn by her, between attraction, fascination, and betrayal.
Other portrayals
Green Arrow in Justice League Unlimited, like most of the animated heroes, is a much more 'white hat' character. He gave up his company after the Bat invited him to the League and talked him into staying...or after he laid eyes on a Pretty Bird, at least. He's still got issues somewhere, as evidenced by Speedy's brusque comments his way in one episode's cameo, but he's got the real feel of a Knight in Shining Armor...no offense, Sir Justin.
Oliver Queen on Smallville came about after a long, losing battle to get Bruce Wayne allowed. And, no offense, Bat fans, I think the options available to Oliver Queen make more sense for him than they would have for Bruce. He's got murdered parents and a thirst for vengeance when we first meet him. He's robbing the rich (Lex's pals), and using the proceeds for justice...or in theory, anyhow. He's far more wiling to go to violent measures than Bruce is typically portrayed as willing to do. He's a CEO of his company, and he's slowly building this motley band of heroes who may one day be the Justice League....
He only enjoyed one appearance on SuperFriends, alas...
Questions? Recommended authors
I've tried to keep this brief. I'd be glad to handle questions in comments though.
If you really want good portrayals of Oliver Queen, I beg you to go look at gottaluvit123's fic. I tend to live in awe of her Oliver. greeneyelove also handles him quite nicely.
Brad Meltzer introduced the first of the retcons that really impacted the way Ollie is handled to date. He let it be written in that Oliver Queen had known about his son from the beginning. This seems to directly contradict everything Connor Hawke's creator intended (Chuck Dixon, folks...man seemed to hate Roy Harper, but gave us a great character in the form of Connor). And it made Ollie into a form of coward and heel he'd never really been depicted as.
Judd Winick finished the job begun in undermining Oliver's sense of noble character that had been semi-regained in his rebirth. Though Dinah had slapped a still pretty much amnesiac (soulless, actually, and lacking a decade of experience) Oliver with the events that destroyed them, the two had hit it off fairly well. Within the first arc Winick wrote, Oliver Queen cheated on the woman of his dreams, reducing him back to where he'd been in issue 75 of the prior series. He lost Dinah...a fact that would not be made clear for over a year's worth of publication.
And then comes Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis and One Year Later, and we've been force-fed a very abrupt reunion in that relationship, a mayorship that must have been bought, and a lot of other changes, including the coma and kidnapping of his son...who he quit looking for, supposedly, because he found a sidekick.
You might say I'm bitter, looking at that summary of the past few years of canon.