Green Arrow – Part Two

In 1987, with the release of the Mike Grell storyline The Longbow Hunters and the series that followed, Green Arrow took on an even darker edge than before. In the storyline, Dinah is captured and tortured to the extent that she loses her famous sonic cry and is made sterile. Green Arrow teams up with a woman named Shado to save Dinah and eventually murders Dinah’s attackers, going against a long standing Green Arrow tradition of using trick arrows to prevent killing. Shado drugged Ollie in order to conceive a son with him, a child she named Robert.

 

Eventually, the events depicted in Longbow Hunters began putting an enormous strain on Dinah and Ollie’s relationship, particularly after they tried to conceive a child and discovered they could not have one. After discovering Ollie kissing a woman in their apartment, the two broke up because Dinah felt she could no longer trust Ollie.

 

Even though the break-up of Dinah and Ollie was the last Grell issue, life continued to rain bad news on Oliver Queen. Shortly after the break-up, his longtime best friend, Hal Jordan, went crazy and tried to remake the universe. Ollie shot Hal in the chest to prevent him from doing so.

 

Following the confrontation with Hal, Ollie went on a spiritual retreat that took him back to Star City, where he met a young man named Connor Hawke, who was revealed to be Ollie’s son. It has since been retconned that Ollie knew about Connor all along and had in fact abandoned his son at birth, the most recent (and kindest) explanation being that Ollie felt that being a superhero was more important than being a father.

 

Shortly after meeting his son, Ollie sacrificed his life to prevent a bomb from detonating and destroying Metropolis. During his short “death,” Ollie’s son Connor stepped into the Green Arrow role.

 

Thanks to the god-like powers of his old friend Hal Jordan, Ollie did not stay dead for long. In order to get his life back, Ollie would have to fight demons vying for his body, which sounds pretty awful, but he was able to once again gain wealth and a new sidekick, former prostitute Mia Dearden, out of the ordeal.

 

While in the hands of Brad Meltzer, Ollie took a road trip with Roy to work on their relationship and was revealed to be one of the driving forces behind a number of secret mind wipes of various villains and Batman. These mind wipes, revealed during Identity Crisis, eventually led to a complete breakdown of trust between superheroes that had to be rebuilt during Infinite Crisis and its aftermath.

 

Also following his resurrection, Ollie hooked back up with Dinah before they broke up again. Then, without so much as a solitary date, Ollie asked Dinah to marry him and the couple finally said their I-dos last year after years of being on-again, off-again.

 

Of course, during the ceremony, Ollie was kidnapped and replaced with an evil doppelganger who tried to kill Dinah during the honeymoon, Olllie was taken away by evil Amazons, and Connor was shot. Considering all the ups and downs in the history of the Green Arrow character, that twist on the happily ever (for now) ending shouldn’t surprise anyone.

 

Essential Storylines:

 

~ The Longbow Hunters

~ Green Lantern/Green Arrow: Hard Traveling Heroes

~ Archer’s Quest

~ Zero Hour

~ Identity Crisis

~ The Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special

~ Emerald Allies

~ Quiver

 

Tagged as: Arrow, Green, Part