Green Arrow a Hero in Crisis as the DCU Attends Roy's Funeral

DC's latest crisis has just kicked off, and the first repercussions of it are felt in the pages of GREEN ARROW #45, as Oliver Queen and the various members of the Justice League, Titans, and Birds of Prey attend the funeral of Roy Harper -- aka Arsenal and former sidekick and ward to the Green Arrow.

The ceremony takes place on a remote butte, where friends and family give their eulogies while Oliver continues to blame himself -- and the Justice League -- for everything that happened to Roy, from his addiction problems to his ultimate murder at the Justice League's so-called Sanctuary where heroes go to get help and support for their personal problems. Ollie's upset enough to throw a punch at Clark, and threaten to use his ultimate trump card against the Justice League.

And then we return to mourning, as if none of that ever happened, and Oliver finds a measure of peace through the words of one of Roy's fellow friends in recovery.

This is the first supplemental issue to the HEROES IN CRISIS event currently happening in the DC Universe. If you're interested in the main murder mystery, this issue adds nothing to it. It's all digression from the main plot, focused on the impact of the events rather than the forwarding of them. That's not a bad thing, and these impacts are important stories to be told. And if this actually has a longer, deeper impact on the character of Green Arrow and drives his story from this point further, then this issue will have served its purpose.

The dialogue was, in places, a little stilted, by which I mean the character spoke as if they were scripted rather than having natural conversations--ironic, I realize, as they are, of course, scripted. But for the most part Julie Benson and Shawna Benson deliver a story that should be a pivotal, character-changing moment for the lead character.

The art, however, is a completely different kettle of monkeys. Faces look squashed, figures look more sketched than drawn, and the colors wash out most of what details may have existed beneath them. The group shots should have been a collection of easily identifiable faces, but I could not recognize the majority of them until they actually announced themselves, and that simply shouldn't have been. Javier Fernandez has turned in better work than this. Perhaps he was going for a different feel with this being a funeral issue, but it didn't connect with this reader.