I’m getting so close to DC’s next big event that everything I’m reading right now ties into it — and for Absolute Power in particular, repetitively. I had really been looking forward to Suicide Squad: Dream Team, but the “righteous hero versus Amanda Waller” material wasn’t all that different than in Titans: Beast World before it. The very same is true of Joshua Williamson’s Green Arrow Vol. 2: Family First; equally I think it shows that the issues here are the unplanned six-issue extension to this miniseries, which eventually became an ongoing.
That said, Williamson is doing a plethora of cool stuff here — unexpected call-outs, unexpected cameos, and a bar none emotional core. I wondered — maybe still wonder a little — what the point of Family First was meant to be, but there were pages that sure had me smiling.
[Review contains spoilers]
There is overarching plot, of sorts, in Family First — Green Arrow Oliver Queen venturing to rescue parter Arsenal Roy Harper from servitude to Amanda Waller. But it takes a minute to get there, and in the meantime, in the first issue for instance, we have Oliver touring the DCU, surprised at the League’s disbandment since his supposed death. If there was ever a character to jaunt around telling DC’s icons they made a dumb choice, it’s assuredly Green Arrow, but I can’t overlook Williamson is also poking holes in a plotline at least partially of his own making. It really didn’t make sense for the League to disband after Dark Crisis (the audience wasn’t privy to that conversation, at least), and Williamson’s Oliver telling everyone “I don’t buy it” only makes that even more incongruous.1
[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]
True, too, the second issue here also ties in to the search for Roy, but in a really roundabout way — Oliver and son Connor dealing with Onomatopoeia, a villain from Kevin Smith and Phil Hester’s Green Arrow run, and drawn by Hester. It’s a fine issue (as is the one before, drawn by Williamson’s Flash collaborator Carmine Di Giandomenico plus Trevor Hairsine), but at that point we’re two issues into a six-issue trade and a lot of it feels like scene-setting. No doubt adding issues requires some recalibration, but there’s a clear sense here of recalibration. Not to mention that the book ends with Oliver fighting the villain Merlyn a second time (after their climactic match in Williamson’s Green Arrow Vol. 1: Reunion) and puts Oliver right back on the same beach where Vol. 1 ended, as if to put the pieces back in place according to the original plan.
But it remains, fortunately, that overall Family First is just a delight, much like Reunion. The very first page nods to the Joe Kelly JLA era, if that gives you a sense of the kind of deep cuts Williamson is working with. There’s images of Arsenal in his debut New Titans purple costume, from Batman Plus Arsenal and Brad Meltzer’s Justice League of America, and in the New 52 hanging out with Outlaws Red Hood and Starfire. Here too is Speedy Mia Darden, lost in the transition to the New 52, and there’s also a strangely extended sequence where Williamson combines Merlyn’s classic and New 52 (Arrowverse-inspired) origins. All of which is to say, among other things in Family First, Williamson takes it upon himself to streamline and make linear Green Arrow’s long history, fulfilling Dark Nights: Death Metal’s “I remember it all” promise in a way most other DC franchises haven’t.
Too, though it was there on the page, I hadn’t quite realized the timing of Oliver’s “death” in Dark Crisis and Roy’s return meant that neither knew the other was alive, making for a couple emotional scenes I hadn’t expected. Oliver hugging Mia was also sweet (there’s a lot of hugging in Williamson’s Green Arrow). Also Williamson bringing John Diggle back on the scene, that Team Arrow is hunting the files from Heroes in Crisis' Sanctuary, and the Psyba-Rats(!) make a cameo.2 Who can possibly depart this comic unhappy?
Family First seems to add important bits to “Countdown to Absolute Power,” looking at how Waller returned from Earth-3 and suggesting other powers at play. But as mentioned, there’s the typical “Work for me/I’ll never work for you” conversation here between Waller and Oliver, same as we’ve seen elsewhere. Good that Waller’s getting the spotlight, understandable that every individual title has to acknowledge Absolute Power on its own, but this has been Waller’s schtick for almost 40 years. My hope is that DC finds a new paradigm for Amanda Waller once this is all said and done.
Joshua Williamson’s final volume of Green Arrow will contain almost all Absolute Power tie-ins. It’s not unreasonable for the title of the architect of DC’s last major crossover to have a heavy presence in their next, though at the same time, again this seems to me material created directly for the purpose of having more material. No matter; if Williamson’s finale is anything like Green Arrow Vol. 2: Family First, I’m excited for it. (More Psyba-Rats!)
[Includes original covers]
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