Green Arrow 71

Seeing Red part 3

Judd Winick has almost managed to undo the considerable good work he did prior to Crisis by lurching from extreme to extreme. The book's previous subtle social commentary and conflicted view of our hero has long been pushed aside in favour of grossly over the top social commentary (Gay marriages for all!) and BIG! ACTION! SCENES! with our now perfect Green Arrow. A welcome return to action from Speedy is offset by the departure of Connor, and it's simply not an even tradeoff.

Anyway. Our current storyline sees Brick, (who's a criminal mastermind remember), deciding that the best way to defeat Green Arrow, an undeniably B lister is to team up with the Red Hood, the one guy in the world guaranteed to bring the wrath of Batman.

The far more interesting B story is Deathstroke and Drakon's whacky adventures as they very slowly make their way towards Queen. It's an interesting problem. Drakon should murder Arrow. Slade should murder Queen (hell he took the JLA out), there's no conceivable way Queen can win this on his own or with assistance from his normal team. But that's for 2 months away.

In the now, our 2 heroes trade opponents leading to Batman facing Brick, a guy he has no history with, and Arrow facing Red Hood, a guy who should mop the floor with Arrow in a fist or sword fight.

Batman's fight is a rehash of every Solomon Grundy fight ever, except Bats gets to show less personality than a cinderblock. Green Arrow's fight is a pretty boring draw. There's just no reason for this team up at all. Red Hood's aim is to clean up drugs. Exporting his mayhem to Star City and assisting Brick is not the way to do that.

As such it's hard to view this as yet another disjointed and contradictory chapter in the return of Jason Todd as opposed to a Green Arrow book. If you're looking for a great book featuring a revived sidkick, get Marvel's Winter Soldier. If you're after some great Green Arrow stuff, grab the pre-crisis work.

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