Open Mike Night: Green Arrow Rebirth #1

Green Arrow: Rebirth #1

Written by: Benjamin Percy
Art by: Otto Schmidt
Colored by: Otto Schmidt
Lettered by: Nate Perkins of Blambot

Published by: DC
Cover Price: $2.99

Mike Weaver: The return of Green Arrow and Black Canary...as a partnership...to the DC universe!  In this issue, Oliver tries to track down a string of disappearances of homeless people, only to come across Black Canary researching the same thing.  They meet up and bond a little, then go on to solve the case, heading to a massive homeless squatter camp where they meet the “underground people”.  The underground people have been rounding up homeless people to sell at auction, and coincidentally make a big push into the Jungle homeless camp just as Black Canary and Oliver arrive.  They manage to take one prisoner and get him to reveal where the auction is taking place.  Green Arrow and Black Canary bust up the auction together, and by the end, a sense of mutual respect and maybe a little more starts to develop.

This issue did a great job of setting up both characters as a #1 issue should, establishing a threat, then having the heroes work together to solve the threat.  I do think that it may have benefitted from stretching the threat to multiple issues, but at the same time, I like a quick resolution and a complete story.  

Mike Maillaro: What was unique about this comic in terms of the Rebirth books that came out this week (Superman, Batman, and Green Lanterns) is that it gave a strong done-in-one story.  I guess Batman did too, but that particular book was disappointing anyway because it didn’t follow up with any of the teases we got in DC Rebirth related to Batman.

In Rebirth, one of the things that really upset Wally was that in New-52 Ollie and Dinah don’t have any relationship at all.  I guess you can basically blame the TV series Arrow for that.  But in this comic, they seemed to go back to basics.  No more clean cut Ollie, he’s got the goatee back.  He’s spouting liberal talking points, and he’s finally back with Black Canary.  For this long-time Green Arrow fan, I could not have been happier.

I do agree that this story seems like it COULD be much bigger, and I am hoping we get some follow-up.  If Ollie and Dinah managed to solve all this in just a few pages, it’s hard to imagine how this criminal enterprise was able to get away with all this in secret in the first place…

Weaver: The easy answer...and it’s a bit too easy...is that no one cares about homeless people, so you can set up a homeless people abducting business pretty easy.  But people do care about homeless people, two heroes are both pursuing the same gang in this story alone.  There’s a lot about the bad guys’ set up and plan that struck me as poorly thought out, but they accomplished their main goal: bringing the heroes together and promoting understanding between them.

I liked a lot of the small touches in the art here...the Arlo Guthrie reference on the woman’s guitar in the opening, the design of the jungle...but the art in general, I’m not as sure that I liked it.  Basically, details good, overall art, average.

Maillaro: Yeah, I felt the same way about the art.  It wasn’t bad, but it just didn’t have a lot of details.  From the Underground people to the Jungle to the auction, there was a lot of different things to see here, and none of them were drawn in a real memorable way.  I did like the way he drew Ollie and Canary, but they are a bit of a departure from how they have looked the last few years in New-52.  

Weaver: Departing from everything New-52 related is probably a good thing.  Although, I guess, there’s still that transition continuity that needs to happen.

Maillaro: I do think that it may have been too quick to have Ollie and Dinah seem to fall for each other in the end, but I will chalk it up to destiny and fixing a mistake.  So I won’t hit the book too hard for that.  4.5 for the story, 3.5 for the art.

Weaver: I don’t think it was totally gaga falling for each other yet, but they did move pretty fast.  I’ll give the story a 4, because I can’t easily forgive the quick wrap up of what seemed a poorly thought out villainous scheme...and yet...the story does make up for that, a lot.  3.5 for the art from me, also.

Final Scores

Summary: Of the four Rebirth books that came out this week, this was probably the best of the batch.  Did a great job establishing the new status quo for Green Arrow and Black Canary.  You get a nice full story here, though it might have been a little too easily resolved.  And the art is kind of generic.  But, the characterizations are spot on, and it's great to see Ollie and Dinah back together!