Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part LVII: The World of Flashpoint featuring Batman

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2012 (contents: 2011)
Borrowed from the library
Read August 2016

The World of Flashpoint featuring Batman

Writers: Brian Azzarello, J. T. Krul, Jimmy Palmiotti, Peter Milligan

Artists: Eduardo Risso, Fabrizio Fiorentino, Mikel Janin, Alejandro Giraldo, Joe Bennett, Tony Shasteen, Alex Massacci, John Dell, George Pérez, Fernando Blanco, Scott Koblish

Colorists: Patricia Mulvihill, Ulises Arreola, Kyle Ritter, Ander Zarate, the Hories, Tom Smith, Brian Buccellato
Letterers: Clem Robins, Patrick Brosseau, Dave Sharpe, Travis Lanham, Rob Leigh

I don't know if these World of Flashpoint books are getting better or if I'm just acclimating to their style and purpose, but I think this volume was the best of them so far. It doesn't have the best individual story in it (that's probably "Project Superman"), but it has three decently enjoyable tales and only one real dud. The reading sequence I devised/picked/was given continues to work well, too: the Booster Gold story in the previous volume alluded to the fact that there was something not right about this timeline's Batman, and in this volume we get to see what that is.

If you thought Batman was grumpy, wait until you see his alternate universe Batman dad.
from Flashpoint: Batman: Knight of Vengeance #1 (script by Brian Azzarello, art by Eduardo Risso)

"Knight of Vengeance" is a gritty noir tale from Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso. Azzarello excels as this kind of thing. I'm not sure there was really a story here, but it provides an effective series of snapshots of this universe's Batman and Joker, who manage to be even more broken than those of the primary timeline. We see Batman's crime-fighting empire and criminal(!) empire, his relationship with Jim Gordon (yay!), and the dark twisted night that changed everything for him. Batman alludes to the existence of the primary timeline in a conversation with the Joker; I suppose I'll get to see how he knows about it when I reach the main Flashpoint book. Eduardo Risso on art also impresses. I don't think I've ever seen any of his work before, but his simple style works really well for communicating the darkness of this story. Less a tale and more a demonstration of the need to change this world back, "Knight of Vengeance" leaves me more eager to get to the main event.

Faster than a DC Bullet: The End of Green Arrow, Part V: Green Arrow: Salvation

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2012 (contents: 2011)
Borrowed from the library
Read June 2012

Green Arrow: Salvation

Writers: J. T. Krul, James Patrick

Artists: Diogenes Neves, Vicente Cifuentes, Oclair Albert, Agustin Padilla

Colorists: Ulises Arreola, Michael Atiyeh
Letterer: Rob Leigh

Well, this is it. The final adventure of Green Arrow. After this story, the DC Universe was rewritten, and the new Green Arrow is by no means the same as the old Green Arrow. Having read this book, I can once again truthfully claim to have read every Green Arrow collection there is. (And Green Arrow, in a roundabout way, is the character responsible for getting me into comics.)

Given the character's long and interesting history, this is a disappointing way to go out. Salvation says little about Green Arrow himself, getting more and more sucked into (what I assume are, anyway) elements of Brightest Day. There's a lot of fighting in the forest, the Demon Etrigan shows up, as does the Phantom Stranger, but who knows why. Then the forest comes to life, then Swamp Thing's there(???), and then it's all over for some reason. I've no idea what happened or why, and I think it actually ends twice. Then Galahad leaves (boo), and it's all over. Ta-da! The characters and mysteries that Krul set up in Into the Woods are all but gone: no crusader lady, no reporter guy, and the plot about the Queen taking over Queen Industries is not even touched upon.

There's three issues after that, but they're a fill in by James Patrick where Green Arrow helps a U.S. Marshal bring in a crazy Protestant minister. The minister himself is a dull, ranting villain with an unbelievable plot, and the story is made worse by a completely random Batman cameo-- who drops in to give Green Arrow some trick arrows. If we're so far from the trick arrows these days that Green Arrows can't make his own anymore, then this isn't a Green Arrow I want to read about. How can Green Arrow not make his own arrows!?

The U.S. Marshal lady is set up as a recurring character too, but of course she won't be back either. Green Arrow walks away and that's the last anyone will ever see of him again...

Faster than a DC Bullet: The End of Green Arrow, Part IV: Green Arrow: Into the Woods

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2011 (contents: 2010-11)
Borrowed from the library
Read June 2012

Green Arrow: Into the Woods

Writer: J. T. Krul

Pencillers: Diogenes Neves, Mike Mayhew

Inkers: Vicente Cifuentes, Guillermo Ortego, Mike Mayhew
Colorists: Ulises Arreola, Andy Troy
Letterer: Rob Leigh

Since we last saw Green Arrow standing in the middle of the devastated Star City in Justice League: Rise and Fall, a forest has magically appeared. I guess I'd know something about it if I'd read Brightest Day, but it works without that-- it's a mysterious occurrence anyway, so seeing it happen isn't particularly useful. Officially exiled from Star City, Green Arrow is hiding out in the forest, using it as a base of operations to fight the good fight. It's a good idea, making Green Arrow into a Robin Hood figure; it feels like it merges the patrolling hunter aspects of the character emphasized by Mike Grell (in The Longbow Hunters) with the mystical ones brought to the forefront by Kevin Smith (Quiver) and Brad Metzler (The Archer's Quest).

But J. T. Krul doesn't really capitalize on this setup. Oliver is given a new supporting cast-- a plucky charity worker, a crusading journalist, a man who thinks he's Galahad of the Round Table-- and a new set of villains-- the mysterious "Queen" who takes over his old company, the police commissioner who put him on trial-- but the book doesn't focus on this new setup enough. Green Lantern shows up, and there's some guff about a magic tree, the Martian Manhunter shows up for no readily apparent reason, there's more stuff about the tree, and he leaves too. To someone who hasn't read/isn't reading Brightest Day, it doesn't seem to have much of a point or hook. (Incidentally, there's a discontinuity with Krul's own Rise and Fall in that Hal and, implicitly, the rest of the League seem okay with Ollie whereas they were butts to him in that book, but it's a discontinuity I'm happy to have.)

When the story does focus on the new setup, it's not very interesting; the villains are kinda dull. The Queen has a connection to Oliver's past, and the book does a little with it (there's a beautiful flashback issue drawn by Mike Mayhew), but not enough. Her faceless goons are boring, and haven't we seen more than enough sexy female assassins in Green Arrow stories? I'd like to see a set of stories about raging liberal / ferocious hunter using his forest base to retake Star City for the forces of good with his band of heroes (how awesome does that sound?), but the book dances around that idea.

All that said, Diogenes Neves is the best artist to draw Ollie since Cliff Chiang sadly left, and it's least stupid take on the character since Tony Bedard's Road to the Altar and (the beginning of) Judd Winick's The Wedding Album. Not great stuff, but there's some real potential once Brightest Day is over and the title can go its own way.

Faster than a DC Bullet: The End of Green Arrow, Part III: Justice League: Rise and Fall

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2012 (contents: 2010)
Borrowed from the library
Read June 2012

Justice League: Rise and Fall

Writer: J. T. Krul

Pencillers: Diogenes Neves, Mike Mayhew, Fabrizio Fiorentino, Federico Dallocchio, Geraldo Borges, Kevin Sharpe, Sergio Arino, Fabio Jansen

Inkers: Mike Mayhew, Vicente Cifuentes, Ruy José, Federico Dallocchio, Marlo Alquiza, Mark McKenna, John Dell, Scott Hanna
Colorists: Nei Ruffino, Andy Troy, Michael Atiyeh
Letterers: John J. Hill, Sal Cipriano, Rob Clark Jr.

Rise and Fall is a direct sequel to Cry for Justice, though the timelining is a bit wonky: Blackest Night happens between the last chapter and epilogue of Cry for Justice (and the last chapter of Five Stages happens during Blackest Night). Despite the intervening events, everyone is acting like Roy Harper was only attacked and Star City only just devastated by Prometheus-- so they're searching for him. Only Green Arrow, as anyone who read Cry for Justice knows, has secretly already killed Prometheus.

This book deals with the repercussions of that-- in perhaps the stupidest way possible. Green Arrow is found out, arrested, and revealed as Oliver Queen, and quickly put on trial by a Star City court for murder. Why? First, Oliver killed Prometheus in a location outside of our own universe, where I suspect a Star City court has no jurisdiction. Secondly, this is like putting SEAL Team Six on trial for killing Osama Bin Laden... only Prometheus killed more people than Osama Bin Laden, and has consistently been portrayed (no matter how stupid I might find it) as someone who just by living is immensely dangerous.

Then, he is found not guilty, but sentenced to exile from Star City anyway, as though this is a thing that could actually legally happen.

All of this is made worse by the fact that the rest of the Justice League acts like complete dicks to Ollie, as though they cannot understand his actions at all. Oh come on! Now, there's an interesting story and potential real drama to be created from a setup like this, but it's not going to be found when the Flash shouts things like, "Well, I never liked you anyway, Green Arrow!" Also, Green Arrow somehow moves so fast that the Flash can't catch him. Yeah, I don't know either.

Also, Green Arrow and Black Canary break up. I'd complain that such an action is horrendously out of character for both of them, but comic book writers are so bad at marriage-- and especially this marriage-- that we're probably better off.

This book also contains a story about Green Arrow's old sidekick, Speedy-cum-Arsenal-cum-Red Arrow-cum-Arsenal again trying to put himself back together after his daughter died in Cry for Justice. This story is also stupid, for so many reasons. It features:

• heroin doing things that I suspect it cannot actually do
• a drug treatment facility where they just strap you on a table in an empty room and leave you there
• a significant plot point being Arsenal's inability to get it up
• Arsenal cradling a dead cat while fighting Batman

Really, Chris Sims says it better than I can, though.

The art ranges from inconsistent (one chapter is drawn by three people who have apparently not consulted each other on whether or not Green Arrow's mask hides his pupils) to stiffly posed (Black Canary looks like she came out of Maxim at times) to just flat-out terrible for most of the book, though the Arsenal story looks surprisingly good, aside from the superround butts and boobs. I don't know who drew it, though, because there's no credits on individual chapters. Bleh.

Faster than a DC Bullet: The End of Green Arrow, Part I: Green Arrow and Black Canary: Five Stages

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2010 (contents: 2010)
Borrowed from the library
Read May 2012

Green Arrow and Black Canary: Five Stages

Writers: Andrew Kreisberg / J. T. Krul

Pencillers: Mike Norton / Renato Guedes / Diogenes Neves

Inkers: Bill Sienkiewicz / José Wilson Magalhães / Ruy José / Vicente Cifuentes
Colorists: David Baron / David Curiel / Chuck Pires
Letterer: Sal Cipriano

From May 2009 to April 2010, I worked my way through every Green Arrow trade paperback and collection ever published, the first time I had ever done so with a comic book character, but something I would go on to do with Gotham Central, Y: The Last Man, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, and Jessica Jones, and am still doing with the Sandman. In August 2010, I popped back in for another Green Arrow story that had been published since that April, but since then five more have been published, and not only that, but those five represent the last gasp of the character as I know him, as he was completely rebooted by DC last year. So here it comes: The End of Green Arrow...

I never warmed to Andrew Kreisberg's Green Arrow and Black Canary-- he penned two previous volumes, Enemies List and Big Game. Part of what alienated me was that he sidelined Black Canary in what was theoretically 50% her own title; part was that his new villain Cupid was just pathetic. So I went into Five Stages expecting to be disappointed, and to my surprise, found that Kreisberg's last volume is his best. Not that that takes much. Cupid gets a backstory, and we find out that she's not a random housewife with a Green Arrow fixation, but a trained military operative who snapped on a mission. Though dressing men up as Green Arrow and raping them is still perhaps more than I want to read about, this went a long way to making her work more for me. Especially nice was a set of flashback stories about Cupid's days with COBALT, drawn by Renato Guedes, who has a nice clean style-- I liked it a lot more than Mike Norton's scratchy work on the main title.

It's also nice to see Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Mia working together as a proper team, though this must be the third time in the course of this series that Green Arrow and Black Canary have renewed their commitment to one another despite Ollie's dickishness. (They seem to do it once per writer.) There's some pleasing banter (I like it when Green Arrow put on his "Robin Hood" cap), and they seem to actually all like another. Still no Connor Hawke, though.

It's not all good. There's a lot of generic superhero quipping, which gets on my nerves. "I hope you fellas don't think me unpatriotic," says Black Canary as she kicks some COBALT goons, "but for all I know... you're not my army." Um, what? Who says that?

The worst part of this book is when Lieutenant Hilton, the Star City Police Department cop who has liased with Green Arrow throughout this storyline, gets a knife in the back of his head. At first I was bummed, because he was a likable character, and Green Arrow and Black Canary could really use a recurring cast. But he's not dead! Somehow he's still alive... but if the knife's taken out, he'll die?

what is this i don't even

But it gets worse from there-- the doctors send Hilton home from the hospital with the entire knife still in his head, not even cutting off the hilt and putting a bandage over the whole thing. Then he kills his family and some cops and renames himself... The Hilt. Ugh, really? Who does that? Why do something so implausibly stupid to a decent character? Especially since this was Kreisberg's last issue on the title-- unsurprisingly, the Hilt never made another appearance. Thank God.

I can't in good conscience recommend that someone read any of Kreisberg's run on Green Arrow and Black Canary, but if you read the first two, at least continue on to this last volume, since it's the least bad one.

The proper story of Five Stages ends with Hal Jordan summoning Ollie and Dinah up to the Justice League headquarters to lead into the events of Cry for Justice, but there's one last chapter, which actually takes place after (most of) Cry for Justice, during Blackest Night. Written by J. T. Krul, it sees Oliver as a Black Lantern. Maybe all this would be interesting if I'd read Blackest Night, but I haven't. At least Connor is in it.