Review: Green Arrow Vol. 1: Reunion trade paperback (DC Comics)

Reader, I finished Joshua Williamson’s Green Arrow Vol. 1: Reunion in one sitting. It is unusual as a Green Arrow book, being far more cosmic than I imagine my ultimate Green Arrow book to be, but I think Williamson parlays pulling Oliver Queen out of his element to an opportunity to better focus on his individual character. And surely the promised “reunion” of the “Arrow family,” if in fits and starts, is enough to draw any DC aficionado in.

It reads like a “Rebirth” (the Green Lantern: Rebirth kind, not the “whole Rebirth era” kind). And even if it is not a perfect “Green Arrow: Rebirth,” it is so in that “celebration of a character” genre, chock full of callouts and cameos, I couldn’t help but eat it up.

[Review contains spoilers]

Williamson makes clear the story he’s telling almost right away, spending little time with an Ollie stranded in space and time before focusing on Black Canary, Arsenal, and Connor Hawke, themselves newly reunited, before then officially returning to the fold Arsenal Roy Harper’s (formerly deceased) daughter Lian.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

This is a long time coming, however you slice it — the culmination of Williamson’s storylines since he first teased Lian’s resurrection at the start of the Infinite Frontier era in 2021, if not also the reconciliation of what many consider an act too cruel for comics — young Lian’s death in Justice League: Cry for Justice — some 15 years ago, shortly before the advent of the New 52. Since that time, members of the Arrow family have come together but rarely with all their histories intact; in resurrecting Lian, Williamson rather officially rolls the Arrow family back to their last, best point.

Williamson balances the theme of family — Roy regaining Lian, Ollie regaining and remembering Connor, and so on — with the Arrow family’s constant trend toward isolation. Inasmuch as family has constantly been a focus, Ollie is perpetually imperfect — cheating on Black Canary Dinah Lance, abandoning infant son Connor, not being the father Roy needed, all of it ultimately symbolized by the always-looming island where young Ollie was once stranded.

This is crystalized in the book’s central mystery, the idea that some preternatural force demands the Arrow family not be together. We see here Williamson meshing Ollie’s long-time characterization with the continuity humps of the New 52 erasing Connor, Lian, and the Green Arrow/Black Canary relationship. I know “Rebirth” material when I see it and that’s it — the external, the internal, and the meta all reconciled in the span of a six-issue arc.

It’s clever, though in the denouement I think Williamson stumbles. Maybe there’s more to come, but if I’m understanding correctly, arch-nemesis Merlyn figures out when Green Arrow is time-traveling, time-travels himself, and puts a teleporter in front of Ollie with a faux message from his future self warning of “the Great Disaster” if the Arrow family is together. Ollie therefore enlists both Amanda Waller and Parallax(!) to ensure the Arrow family is constantly separated.

A lot, to be sure. It requires, first of all, cosmic shenanigans from Merlyn, which are not completely unheard of but kind of a stretch — and additionally, this “go through time and change your life/force you to change your life” business sounds an awful lot like the same scheme in Williamson and others' Flash runs, where it’s far more germane. But additionally, it’s improbably successful — Ollie indeed puts systems in place to separate his family, including leaving Lian perpetually unable to reunite with her father, based only on a spurious message from his doppleganger and no other proof.

That’s silly, if not grounds for another fracture in the Arrow family. Williamson manages to duck that by the culprit being Ollie at some other point in the timeline and not “our” Ollie, though for me at least this is dangerously close to some of the inscrutable decisions Williamson had Barry Allen make. At least here Ollie is in his right mind, just making seemingly obvious questionable decisions. I’d mention, too, that Williamson plays Black Canary a bit dim as well — see her perpetually questioning Roy in the bar fight scene; I might be all the more concerned by this if I thought Williamson was doing another 100 issues a la Flash, but we know already his tenure ends after the third volume and Absolute Power tie-ins.

But that questionable wrap-up is mostly in the final issue, and before that point there are so many great things: Connor and Lian, Count Vertigo and Brick and Cheshire, Phil Hester drawing Green Arrows from many eras, and appearances by Parallax and the Legion of Super-Heroes, well depicted by artist Sean Izaakse. I vacillate whether the last is cool or controversial — on one hand, it’s just great that DC hasn’t forgotten their most recent Legion, but on the other hand, there’s many more characters I’d have like to see Green Arrow encounter (many on the wraparound cover, including John Diggle, Red Arrows Emiko Queen, Speedy Mia Darden, even Arrowette). If we must go cosmic, either an appearance by the Seven Soldiers of Victory or a trip to see Warlord in Skartaris each would have had more relevance. (Still — the Legion!)

If it falls apart in the end, however, it’s a lot of fun getting there — plenty of mystery, plenty of Easter eggs (my favorites: a Black Canary band shirt and that Lian was present in the “dead cat” moment — if you know, you know). I can sure see why this book took off like gangbusters, and of course I’m in the bag for the next.

[Includes original covers]

Rating 3.0