Noteworthy Issues: Green Arrow #1 (April, 2023)

So, I read DC’s Dark Crisis crossover not that long ago.  It had its moments, but by and large, didn’t grab me.  That story ended with the usual plot hooks to carry readers over to new series, and one of them had to do with the fate of Oliver Queen.

He didn’t come back from where he was.

Issue:  Green Arrow #1, April 2023

Writer:  Joshua Williamson

Artist:  Sean Izaakse

The Plot:  Oliver Queen is lost to another universe.  Can his family find him?

Commentary:  OK, so the Dark Crisis had Pariah, harnessing the Great Darkness, trying to “fix” the multiverse in a plot that involved, among other things, locking each member of the Justice League away on a separate Earth that was somehow each member’s idea of heaven or something.  Oliver Queen wasn’t a Justice League member at the time, but he tagged along anyway and got his own personal paradise or an approximation thereof.  The League did escape these pleasant prisons (part of Pariah’s plan as it turned out), but as they worked to return to their own Earth from the confines of that other universe, Oliver Queen was accidentally left behind in another, unknown universe.  His family–Roy “Speedy” Harper, Connor “Green Arrow” Hawke, and Dinah “Black Canary” Lance–made it their mission to find him.

And that’s more or less where this issue comes in, giving more details to that premise as Team Arrow is looking for a way to find Ollie and bring him back while he is having his own adventures jumping around the multiverse.

That set-up is basically all there is to know at this point without giving too much away.  Williamson recounts Ollie’s origin story, brings back a long missing Arrow Family member, and drops an ominous hint that Ollie may have more going on beyond how he’s lost in the multiverse.  How long he’s there, I can’t say, but it looks like he won’t be coming back for at least the first storyarc.

And…I can’t say I am all that interested in continuing.  How three vigilantes can traverse the multiverse seems to be something that the issue doesn’t get too deeply into, especially as Team Arrow spends most of their page time either welcoming the absent member back or fighting a gang made up of Gotham-area bad guy’s henchmen when they’ve been out of a job for too long.  It’s colorful, but doesn’t quite feel like a Green Arrow sort of adventure.

This is the Dawn of DC though, and it sounds better than how Hal Jordan is apparently flat broke right now.

Grade:  C+