The Maze Agency: "The Death of Justice Girl" and Other Stories by Mike W. Barr, Gene Gonzales, et al.

Mike Barr's "fair-play whodunit" comic series The Maze Agency (see my two posts linked below for more detail on its original run) has been revived several times since the end of its original run in 1991. The first of these revivals was a three-issue black-and-white miniseries from indie publisher Caliber Comics in the late 1990s. Picking up the first two of these isn't that hard, but the third issue often goes for silly money on the secondary market—I think because Adam Hughes drew one its two covers, though even the cover he didn't draw can still go for a lot for some reason. (Automated bot pricing?) Thankfully MyComicShop posted a $3 copy of the non-Hughes cover while I was engaged in some futile eBay bidding. (Like, it wasn't there when I started looking for it, hence me going to eBay to begin with, but then I went back a few days later and it was!)

The Caliber run consists of three done-in-one murder mysteries, of course: in #1, Jen and Gabe investigate the death of the actress who played Justice Girl decades ago in a film; in #2, they travel to a Catholic monastery to locate a vital witness for a mob case, and in #3, they are confounded when three different women all turn up claiming to be a model who hasn't been seen in public for decades. They are all solid mysteries of the type Barr perfected in the original Maze Agency run, though I found all the characters and clues in #3 (each potential model also has associated side characters) hard to keep track of. On the other hand, I liked #2 a lot; a large cast of suspects, but they are distinctive, so you can keep track of them all fairly easily, and some nice twists.

from The Maze Agency vol. 2 #2

I'm assuming running the series in black and white was a cost-cutting decision, not an artistic one. Certainly, issues #1 and 3 seem to have been drawn much as anyone would draw a color comic. However, issue #2 feels like it was designed to run in black and white: lots of shadows in the monastery, lots of dark brickwork. Overall, I found it moody and effective. If someone (hypothetically) created a Maze Agency Omnibus, I'd probably want to see issues #1 and 3 colored, but I think coloring #2 would diminish its effect.

Overall, Gene Gonzales is an effective penciller, capturing the likenesses of our leads; he does the first two issues and the first half of the third. Unfortunately, the second half of #3 is done by a different artist with a style that seems both rushed and inappropriately cartoony... and having your characters change physical appearance halfway through an issue is especially detrimental to a murder mystery!

Volume 2 of The Maze Agency originally appeared in three issues, from July 1997 to Apr. 1998.* The stories were written by Mike W. Barr; pencilled by Gene Gonzales (#1-3) and James Bible (#3); inked by David Rowe (#1), Ande Parks (#2), Jason Baumgartner (#2-3), and Larry Shuput (#3); and edited by Joe Pruett (#1-3) and James Pruett (#3).

This is the antepenultimate in a series of posts about Mike W. Barr's The Maze Agency. The next covers volumes 3 and 4 from IDW and Scout. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Maze Agency vol. 1 #1-5 (1988-90)
2. The Maze Agency vol. 1 #6-23 (1989-91) 

* The indicia dates on issues #2 and 3 are both just "1998," no month given. Some Internet sources give the months as Jan. and Feb. 1998, respectively, but I think this is just arbitrarily placing the issues in the two earliest slots in 1998. John Jackson Miller's Comichron includes issues #2 and 3 on his sales charts for Feb. and Apr. 1998, and given that issue #1 appears on the sales chart for July 1997, we can infer that Caliber was one of those publishers where the indicia date matches the sales month.

"One day, Grant Emerson was just an ordinary teenager—until he suddenly discovered that he possessed explosive powers that he could barely control [...]. Now Grant uses his amazing powers as the super-teen DAMAGE!"

Damage was a 1994-96 ongoing comic series, part of what was a bit of a "super-teen" boom at the time (e.g., Impulse, The Ray, &c.). I have only read one previous issue of it, its contribution to the Siege of the Zi Charam crossover, which also involved The Darkstars. My impression was not very flattering: I had the vibe that it was one of those Imageesque 1990s comics, lots of "attitude" and explosions and bulging muscles. I would never have read it if it wasn't for a comment on my review of The Young All-Stars, where the mysterious CE of Collected Editions asked if its Iron Munro appearances "address or tie up anything from Young All-Stars." Iron Munro appearances!?, I asked. And it was duly added to my ever-expanding reading list. (This series of posts has just about ended its second year, and is on its twenty-fourth regular installment; I currently estimate it will run at least twenty more!)

The series opens with some pretty typical teen superhero stuff: Grant feels awkward in school, mostly because his parents move around a lot for work (his dad works for the Symbolix Corporation*), so he's never in one place for long. There's a mean jock, a nerdy friend, and a hot girl all in his supporting cast. Then he discovers he has superpowers... and then his parents are killed... and then he learns they weren't his parents at all, but raising him as an experiment for Symbolix. Soon Grant inadvertently blows up his high school, plays a key role in Zero Hour: Crisis in Time, gets exiled from Atlanta, learns he's the result of a genetic experiment by Vandal Savage, and joins the Teen Titans! The seeming Spider-Manesque premise of the opening couple issues is nothing but a feint.

Unfortunately, I think I would have enjoyed the feint more than I did the actual direction of the series. It becomes too much about what Grant's origin was... a question that really does not matter to him as a character! I mean, once you know he was a genetic experiment from Symbolix, does it matter what character was his natural-born parent, or who his genetic donors were? Ultimately, we find out that he was the child of the Al Pratt, the Golden Age Atom, and his wife Mary; Mary died in childbirth and Vandal Savage spirited away the child Al never knew he had and infused him with the DNA he'd collected from about twenty other members of the JSA and JLA. This takes two different storylines to figure out, but it's totally irrelevant. Like, does it matter if he has Martian Manhunter DNA? How could it? Especially given Al Pratt died during the Crisis in Time, so Grant will never know his real parents.

On top of that, the origin is pretty distasteful in the way it disposes of Mary Pratt, turning her into a female victim to give angst to its male lead. This is something the series excels at, because Grant's would-be girlfriend is brutally murdered to give him something more to angst about. I was like, "Wow, this is textbook fridging"... and then a couple issues later Kyle Rayner turns up to commiserate about his girlfriend was brutally murdered to give him something to angst about! Don't worry, though, by the end of the series Grant has hooked up with her hot college-age sister! (The nerdy friend is also brutally murdered.)

I did like the character of Wyldheart, another Symbolix experiment who is implied to be a foundling from New Genesis, but she vanishes after issue #8. (The DC wiki tells me she will pop up over a decade later in a JSA All-Stars story, but that's it.) The last few issues have Damage having visions of a mysterious figure, but who this is is never explained. There was obviously a lot of stuff this series wanted to do that it never got to in its twenty-one issues.

Too much of the series is given over to long fight scenes, which I quickly found dull. There's also a confusing proliferation of mediocre 1990s "xtreme"-style villains. You know the type. I just ultimately found little in this series that interested me, despite a promising start. The issue I liked the most was #7, "Control...", where Grant is put on trial for the destruction he caused in his opening story arc. It's one of the few times this series slows down and examines Grant as a person and lets us see how events are actually affecting him without incessant boring fight scenes. I also liked the issue where Grant visits his (adoptive) uncle in prison... who turns out to be the supervillain Doctor Polaris! Again, we get some nice conversations that focus on the characters. More like these, and I would have liked this series a lot more.

As for Iron Munro, Arn Munro of The Young All-Stars? In the opening story arc, he's based in Tampa (where I live!), working as an agent for the U.S. government. He gets involved in Damage's problems, and Grant briefly thinks he might be the child of Iron Munro and the original Phantom Lady, who we learn eventually became romantically. (No mention is made of any of Arn's teammates, not even Helena "Fury" Kosmatos, who he was romantically involved with last we saw.) Both characters ran afoul of perennial All-Star Squadron and Golden Age Wonder Woman foe Baron Blitzkrieg, which was a nice callback. For a few issues, Iron Munro even gets a cover feature! I was pretty amazed that five years on, anyone remembered him enough to use him, even if just as a red herring. Given he's fifty years older than last we saw him, though, he's a pretty different person. It is a nice touch that his files are code-named "Gladiator."

* Not, as I thought based on the lettering in the first couple issues, the Symboux Corporation. A sloppy handwritten "LI" can easily look like a "U"! I figured they were French.

This post is twenty-fourth in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers The Justice Society Returns! Previous installments are listed below:

1. All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
2. The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
3. All-Star Squadron (1981-87)
4. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)
5. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)
6. Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)
7. America vs. the Justice Society (1985)
8. Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)
9. Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)
10. Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]
11. Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)
12. All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)
13. Steel, the Indestructible Man (1978)
14. Superman vs. Wonder Woman: An Untold Epic of World War Two (1977)
• Wonder Woman: Earth-Two (1977-78)
15. Secret Origins of the Golden Age (1986-89)
16. The Young All-Stars (1987-89)
17. Gladiator (1930) ["Man-God!" (1976)]
    
18. The Crimson Avenger: The Dark Cross Conspiracy (1981-88)
19. The Immortal Doctor Fate (1940-82)
20. Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice (1951-91)
21. Armageddon: Inferno (1992)
22. Justice Society of America vol. 2 (1992-93)
23. The Adventures of Alan Scott--Green Lantern (1992-93)
    

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Star City, Part VI: Green Arrow: Moving Targets

Comic trade paperback, 252 pages
Published 2006 (contents: 2004-05)
Borrowed from the library
Read August 2009

Green Arrow: Moving Targets

Writer: Judd Winick
Pencillers: Phil Hester, Tom Fowler, Eric Battle, Tommy Castillo
Inkers: Ande Parks, Rodney Ramos, Jack Purcell
Colorist: Guy Major
Letterers: Clem Robins, Rob Leigh, Pat Brosseau, Phil Balsman

The sixth volume of the Green Arrow series is the thickest yet, encompassing a few story arcs. In the first, "New Blood", Oliver Queen has to deal with the aftermath of City Walls in more ways than one-- a new crime lord named Brick has arisen to replace those killed off in that story, and Mia is becoming the new Speedy more and more. The latter of these plot lines is quite good-- and the reveal of Mia's HIV-positive status is handled fantastically well-- but the former I find hard to buy. Brick has a tough hide, yeah, but I have hard time seeing why he's so dang hard for two Green Arrows to beat. (Also: Brick keeps on saying he'll do something really awful if GA interferes again, but GA keeps on doing things... and Brick suddenly stops caring.) In "Teamwork", Mia joins the Teen Titans, a story which for some reason has Mia taking the exact opposite stance on being HIV-positive as in the previous story. Okay, then. The final part of the book is taken up by "New Business", where Constantine Drakon and the Riddler take on Team Arrow, and the Outsiders show up. It was fun to see Drakon again (his opening scene was fabulous), but otherwise, this is a bit of an explosion-and-punching fest. Roy "Arsenal" Harper steps into the role of GA-dependent-character-beat-to-within-an-inch-of-his-life-to-prove-the-situation-is-serious in this one, giving Connor Hawke a break for once.

The biggest event of note here is that penciller Phil Hester and inker Ande Parks leave the title for good after "New Blood". Sometimes you don't quite realize what you've got 'til it's gone, and though I always sang their praises, their skill was sure made apparent by appearing right alongside their replacements. The sense of mood is all gone, panels are busy, and people are impossible to tell apart. Worst of all are the facial expressions; everyone here looks angry and ugly.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Star City, Part V: Green Arrow: City Walls

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2005 (contents: 2004)
Borrowed from the library
Read July 2009

Green Arrow: City Walls

Writer: Judd Winick
Pencillers: Phil Hester, Manuel Garcia
Inkers: Ande Parks, Steve Bird
Colorist: Guy Major
Letterers: Sean Konot, Clem Robins

Another decent installment in the ongoing saga of the Green Arrow. The real highlight of this volume is Oliver's relationship with Mia, who seems to be growing up despite his best efforts. They have to hack it out over both Oliver's infidelity and her desire to take a more active role in crimefighting; the latter of these reaches an excellent climax, and I look forward to seeing what is done with this in future volumes. The main plot of the book, a group of overly legalistic demons taking over and sealing off Star City, is a good one, though I think the pacing is off a bit; one less chapter of eventually-irrelevant buildup about the Joker, and one more chapter about the heroes trying to hold together their coalition army of cops and criminals would have been better. Oh, and the short story that opens the volume with Connor Hawke bonding with Roy Harper manages to be utterly cliche and unfunny. And it's contradicted by the main story, which states that Roy is still so injured as to be in hospital. Some good art could save it, but for the first time in these GA volumes, we get someone other than Phil Hester and Ande Parks on art duties (though they're back for the main story, and as good as ever, of course), and Manuel Garcia has no ability to draw attractive faces.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Star City, Part IV: Green Arrow: The Archer's Quest

Comic hardcover, 175 pages
Published 2003 (contents: 2002-03)
Borrowed from the library
Read July 2009

Green Arrow: The Archer's Quest

Writer: Brad Meltzer
Penciller: Phil Hester
Inker: Ande Parks
Colorist: James Sinclair
Letterer: Sean Konot

This is the only trade left in the Green Arrow series not penned by Judd Winick. Despite being volume 4, it actually collects the issues that ran before Straight Shooter, which is just kind of annoying, as it plainly takes place before them. The first three volumes focused on Oliver Queen's growing relationships with his family of Dinah "Black Canary" Lance, Connor "Green Arrow" Hawke, and Mia Dearden; this one gives some much-needed focus to his connection to Roy Harper, his former sidekick "Speedy", now known as "Arsenal". The two of them hit the road to recover some artifacts Queen left behind after his untimely demise. Unfortunately, the story never quite comes together: why does Queen think recovering these things is urgent now, as he was plainly fine with them being where they were before he died? (I do like the whole bargain he set up with the Shade for after he died, though.) And why does he have to be so sneaky about it? If he just teleported up to the JLA satellite and asked for his old trick arrows, surely they'd just give him them? Some of the sneakiness is explained by the final revelation of the book, but not all of it. And as for the final revelation, I'm undecided as to what I think about it; I feel like it undermines Quiver somewhat, but I'll reserve judgement until I see what (if anything) is done with it later on. Meltzer gets Oliver Queen himself, though; I especially like the almost-not-proposal to Dinah, and the final touch in his relationship with Roy is great, as is the moment where Oliver and Connor decide that they can both be Green Arrow. The story may be somewhat problematic (what's with the thing that randomly pops out of a wormhole and eats Catman?) but as a character piece, it's first-rate.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Star City, Part III: Green Arrow: Straight Shooter

Comic trade paperback, 136 pages
Published 2004 (contents: 2003)
Borrowed from the library
Read June 2009

Green Arrow: Straight Shooter

Writer: Judd Winick
Penciller: Phil Hester
Inker: Ande Parks
Colorist: Guy Major
Letterer: Sean Konot

This is Judd Winick's first contribution to Green Arrow, a series he would write for the rest of its run (minus a few interludes). There's some continuity from the first two volumes in that Phil Hester and Ande Parks continue on the art duties, but even without that, it would be a smooth transition-- Winick seems to get Oliver Queen, the man who wants to do the best he can, but still can't avoid who he is. I like how Winick melds some of Green Arrow's typical social justice concerns into a superhero format; the monsters he fights here are imported workers who have had substandard healthcare. Overall, it's a fun, successful story, aside from the very convenient appearance of Superman when Green Arrow gets in over his head at one point. I also really like the villain he introduces here, Constantine Drakon, though I'm already tired of seeing Connor Hawke get beat up to prove the situation is serious.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Star City, Part II: Green Arrow: Sounds of Violence

Comic trade paperback, 118 pages
Published 2003 (contents: 2002)
Borrowed from a friend
Read June 2009

Green Arrow: Sounds of Violence

Writer: Kevin Smith
Penciller: Phil Hester
Inker: Ande Parks
Colorist: James Sinclair
Letterer: Sean Konot

DC Universe Timeline: Three Years Ago
Real World Timeline: 2001?

(The stories in this book pick up shortly after Quiver. Green Arrow is still reestablishing himself as a force on the streets of Star City, and still coming to terms with his relationships with Black Canary, Mia Dearden, and his son.)

Sounds of Violence collects the second part of Kevin Smith's run on Green Arrow, issues #11-15. Despite containing only about half as many issues as the previous volume, it still packs a satisfying punch. It consists of what are really three separate stories, but all three concern one thing: Oliver Queen's relationship to the people around him. If you read my review of the first volume of this series, you'll know that what I liked was Oliver's depiction as a great hero but a not-so-great man who tries his best. This volume continues that trend.

We're not going to handle these in quite the order they happen in the book; the second chapter, "Feast and Fowl" reignites Green Arrow and Black Canary's relationship, despite both of their wishes. It's a somewhat typical "feisty couple" story; the two bicker a lot and then end up in bed with one another after a workout. I'm a bit confused as to why the news reported that Green Arrow and Black Canary were fighting when they did it all in their civilian identities, but what the hey... I do like seeing the Riddler get smashed to a pulp. Also fun in this story is Green Arrow's fight with Hawkman-- you know that when Black Canary frets the two will be fighting with each other that they will be best buds, but Smith goes on to reverse his reversal in a great moment later on where they do end up fighting. Or rather, it's a great moment if you think women can't speak for themselves in their own relationships and desires, so it's also great when Black Canary knocks the two bickering men out. Though she does it naked, of course. It's a good story, though not really central to the book.

The first chapter, "Ultimate Speedy", is about his relationship with Mia Dearden, the teenage ex-prostitute he took in during Quiver. Mia wants to be the new Speedy, Green Arrow's sidekick, but Oliver doesn't think that's such a good idea; he doesn't want some kid cramping up his style. But as Mia points out, Roy Harper was Speedy to Oliver's Green Arrow back when he was fifteen years old, so what gives? What Oliver realizes as he cleans the streets with his son, new Green Arrow Connor Hawke, is that he likes having a younger person around to show the ropes, likes having someone admire him, likes being a father. But if he's going to actually admit that to himself... he also needs to actually act like a father for the first time in his life, and that means being responsible towards Mia. So no, she actually can't be the new Speedy, as much as both of them want it. It's a nice moment, unexpected in a superhero comic, though I'd worry that Mia's status as a civilian doesn't cause writers to not know what to do with here. I know she became Speedy later on, once Smith was off the title, and I hope it's not crap like when Byrne wrote a whole issue of Alpha Flight explaining why Heather Hudson couldn't be the new Guardian... and then as soon as he was off the title, Bill Mantlo made her the new Guardian because he didn't know what to do with such a unique character. But here, it's a nice little character vignette, showing us an Oliver Queen coming to terms with the idea of being a father for the first time in his life.

This is important to the last (and longest) story of the volume, "The Sounds of Violence". Here, the Green Arrows come up against Onomatopoeia, one of the creepiest comic-book villains I have seen in a long time. This guy's gimmick is that whenever he does something he verbalizes its sound effect first: so he says, "blam" and then he shoots you, "BLAM!" And that's all he says. You can't even see his face; he wears a full-head mask. Phil Hester's art really sells the moments where he just stares at Green Arrow, unanswering. We don't see why he does what he does, either; he's an indecipherable mystery. A simple but disturbing concept. An excellent villain to show the depths of feeling in the Oliver/Connor relationship, as Connor falls victim to Onomatopoeia. The scenes with Oliver and Onomatopoeia in the hospital room together, Oliver's arrow in the villain's mouth as Connor is operated on by desperate physicians, is fantastic. Though one wonders why Oliver just doesn't kill Onomatopoeia anyway, given that he's a known murderer surely going to resist arrest. The story here is simple-- a series of fight scenes interspersed with Ollie's regrets-- but it works really well. Smith has created a compelling set of characters in the past dozen issues, and he really capitalizes on that here.

The only problem I have here is that Onomatopoeia is annoyingly lucky; why can't Green Arrow ever quite get him when he nails so many other people throughout the book with ease. Is he just that good? It seems contrived, unless the villain has super-strength or other powers, but no one ever raises that as a possibility. Why can Onomatopoeia just shoot Connor when no one else can? The conceit of these sort of superhero stories is that the bullets never hit, so it jars when one does for no apparent reason. Things can be random like that in real life; it doesn't work so well in stories. Similarly, I didn't get why Oliver had such a hard time fighting Onomatopoeia, even with help from Black Canary, given the ease in which they took down the Riddler and five goons in the previous story. But it's a small quibble; I'd happily read another story about Onomatopoeia. Wiki tells me that though he never popped up in Green Arrow again, he did make it into a Batman story (also by Smith); I'll have to seek that out.

Sounds of Violence does exactly what I'd hoped the Green Arrow series would do after Quiver: move away from the continuity-heavy background and simply tell good stories about Green Arrow and surrounding characters with the set-up Smith had established. I feel like I don't have a lot to say about this book, but that's because it doesn't have anything big to say about humanity, the universe, or even Green Arrow himself. It sets itself modest goals of telling a cracking good superhero story with strong characterization and snappy dialogue and exceeds those goals well. Though this is the last Green Arrow comic James owns and thus the last you'll see featured in Faster than a DC Bullet, I'm interested enough in the series that I'll be continuing onwards with it, into the trade paperbacks that followed Smith's run on the title.

Note that this originally appeared on my old LiveJournal and included pictures back then. Sadly, the pictures are lost in the mists of the Internet.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Star City, Part I: Green Arrow: Quiver

Comic trade paperback, 226 pages
Published 2002 (contents: 2001-02)
Borrowed from a friend
Read May 2009

Green Arrow: Quiver

Writer: Kevin Smith
Penciller: Phil Hester
Inker: Ande Parks
Colorist: Guy Major
Letterer: Sean Konot

DC Universe Timeline: Three Years Ago
Real World Timeline: 2000?

(Harold Leeds was awarded "Civil Servant of the Year" on April 25, 1999, and it's implied that that was relatively recently. The individual comics making up this collection started coming out in early 2001, so that would make some sense. According to timelines I looked at, Quiver takes place the same year as the death/rebirth of Superman story arc, meaning that seven publishing years' worth of stories take place in the same year. That is insane. This story consistently refers to the events of the "hard-traveling heroes" arc of Green Lantern/Green Arrow, published in 1970-1, as having occurred ten years ago. I have a hard time buying that a story as rooted in its time as that could have transpired in the 1990s.)

In a way, Green Arrow was what started this long comics journey. But that's a long story and one I shan't be getting into right now, but that makes it appropriate that one of the comics James gave me was this, the first story of Green Arrow after his rebirth. You see, Oliver Queen had died back in 1995, thanks to some ecoterrorists, and Connor Hawke, his illegitimate son, had taken over as Green Arrow. But in 1996, during a crisis where the Earth's sun was shut off, Hal Jordan-- who Oliver Queen had previously killed or something-- brought Oliver back to life, though that was not revealed until this story, so I don't know what he got up to in all that time between. If there really was any time between.

Are you confused? So am I, and I've been looking stuff up on Wikipedia and a dozen other websites for the past half-hour trying to get it all straight. But here's the thing-- I hardly ever was while reading Quiver. Despite juggling a complex history that intersects numerous characters and stories, Kevin Smith always keeps the reader from drowning in a sea of continuity, even if there are times where you feel like you're only just barely afloat.

What works here are the characters. My only previous substantial Green Arrow experience was the "hard-traveling heroes" storyline, and this Green Arrow isn't quite that one, but that's a good thing, since that Green Arrow was more a one-note radical leftist mouthpiece for Denny O'Neil than an actual person. Smith's Oliver Queen is a hero, certainly; even as a half-crazed, just-resurrected man he builds himself a rudimentary bow and arrow and tries to stop a mugging, and once he gets his groove back, he's taking on corruption in Star City left, right, and center with some fun sequences. Green Arrow's archery shtick is nice and distinctive; he typically doesn't end up just punching things like many other superheroes.

But Green Arrow's got some problems-- he's got a bit of a habit of running away from responsibilities and messing things up with those he loves: his son, Connor Hawke; his ward, Roy Harper; and most importantly, his love, Dinah Lance the Black Canary. Of course, Ollie can't be blamed for disappearing this time-- he was dead, right?

Actually, it turns out he sort of can, because he's not wholly alive. When Hal Jordan resurrected Oliver Queen, Oliver's soul didn't want to leave the afterlife, as he'd finally found peace there. So the resurrected Oliver has the body and (most of) the memories of the original, but not the soul. It's pointed out that he's fundamentally the same person, but a danger arises from this-- if Oliver's body doesn't have a soul, another soul could easily move in. The book falters a little here, as the existential questions this whole idea raises are somewhat outside the remit of a comic book about a guy in a Robin Hood costume (or at least this comic book about a guy in a Robin Hood costume), so it just tries to avoid them but still gets bogged down in a lot of DC Universe metaphysics.

Metaphysics aren't the only thing going on, though; there's also a serial killer loose in Star City. Supposedly Green Arrow is trying to stop him, but this plotline suffers from two problems. First is that Green Arrow scarcely does anything in this line. It's not his fault, really; halfway through the book and he's just only really gotten back on his feat when the Demon Etrigan shows up and brings in the whole metaphysical thing, and GA never gets a chance to go back to his "mundane" storyline until events come to a head (and turn out to be much less mundane than they'd seemed). The second problem is that the identity of the serial killer is fricking obvious from chapter two of ten at the latest. Maybe Smith thought he was being subtle, maybe he wanted the reader to figure it out, but it's really annoying waiting eight chapters for the characters to catch up. And the eventual explanation of the motives of the killer are convoluted, to say the least.

But the small falterings of the book with crazy metaphysics and crazy killers can be overlooked, because the climax brings it all together. It's not Oliver Queen the just-resurrected soulless husk who has to learn to stop running away from the consequences of his actions; it's the soul hanging out in the afterlife doing nothing but shooting arrows at an ethereal target. That Oliver finally decides to be there for his son. Green Arrow may have not had a choice about his body being resurrected, but he did have a choice about his soul, and it's a choice he makes. It's a great moment when, soul returned, Oliver Queen joins his son in kicking tail and saving the day.

The book also has some cameos from around the DC Universe: Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, the Spectre, Jason Blood, and even Deadman make appearances. Most prominent, however, is Batman. I'm not sure what to think of Smith's Batman-- sometimes he's spot-on, but sometimes he drifts into caricature. But it's real good caricature, so I'm willing to forgive it. The Justice League as a whole suffers from a similar problem (I really think they'd be able to handle Oliver's resurrection better than this), but it's most pronounced with Batman.

Sometimes I also felt a little uneasy about Quiver's portrayal of women. Wonder Woman plants one on Green Arrow's lips when she first meets him, and judging from Wally West's reaction, it's a pretty intense kiss. Well of course she would; what else would an elated woman do but give a man a little bit of tongue? Deadman also gets one off Black Canary in a moment that's played for laughs, even if she does hit him in the jaw for it. And at the end, our serial killer friend also suddenly turns out to like raping teenage girls, seemingly just to up the level of danger a little bit. On the other hand, I have few complaints about Smith's portrayal of Black Canary as a well-rounded, independent woman, as much her own person as Green Arrow. And Mia Dearden is all sorts of awesome as well.

That said, I feel a bit skeevy myself complaining that the only real problem I have with Phil Hester's generally excellent artwork is that Black Canary is just nowhere near as hot as Black Canary should be.

I think the most important thing about Quiver is that though it deals with some crazy continuity, some abstract metaphysics, and some dark themes, is that it never loses its way. This book is about Oliver Queen/Green Arrow, what makes him a great hero and a sometimes not-so-great man, and about how he learns to come through in the end. And perhaps almost as importantly, it's always fun. Whoever doesn't love the boxing glove arrow ought to be lined up and shot.

Note that this originally appeared on my old LiveJournal and included pictures back then. Sadly, the pictures are lost in the mists of the Internet.