Penning the issues in Green Arrow’s Vol. 3: Against the Wall must have been difficult given Green Arrow’s circumstances in the Absolute Power event series, but Joshua Williamson handles it well. I never felt Against the Wall struggled to meet what was set out for it, and further Williamson continues to populate his work with such lovely callouts to DC history near and far. It’s a nice ending to the good start of the new Green Arrow series.

[Review contains spoilers for Green Arrow and Absolute Power]

The Green Arrow volume differs from the other Absolute Power tie-in books I’ve read so far in that Against the Wall spans from before Absolute Power to after it, into DC All In. Most other trades — Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman — end after their Absolute Power issues and before DC All In, generally the start of new storylines and a natural jumping-on point. But since the end of Williamson’s run stepped a foot into DC All In — one of two stories in the DC All In Green Arrow #17 — it means in this Absolute Power tie-in book we also see Amanda Waller imprisoned after the event and get our first glimpse of the new Justice League Unlimited satellite before the first Justice League Unlimited collection is even on the stands.

It’s one of a few different things outside the Green Arrow series itself that the book has to navigate. Another, of course, is Oliver Queen’s heel turn in Absolute Power, in which Green Arrow seems to be siding with Waller but it turns out he had himself mind-wiped by Martian Manhunter before going undercover. Mark Waid’s Absolute Power needs only to check in with a more-ornery-than-normal Green Arrow every couple of scenes; Williamson’s Green Arrow series has to make an actual story out of him.

Fortunately, in consolidating Team Arrow from various continuities into one present unit, Williamson’s got at times seven sidekicks on the page, sufficient to fill enough space that Williamson doesn’t have to oversell Arrow’s “I’m doing what had to be done” routine (enough also for the creative team to sometimes draw the wrong Arrow sidekick in a conversation). But moreover Williamson sends the book on some interesting tangents — resurrecting Tomorrow Woman, last seen more than a decade ago, and offering an origin for the otherwise one-note villain Bright — that buffet the book while it’s generally biding its time. Though this volume too feels like it eventually devolves into fisticuffs to fill space, it’s not so egregious as the lame Batman/Catwoman caper in Dark Prisons.

This volume also serves to patch some holes where Waid left Absolute Power open for interpretation. In Absolute Power, Batman removes the Amazos' chronal healing powers by way of a nondescript McGuffin, which we later learn Green Arrow was “fiddling with.” Here, Williamson ties that back to the end of 2018’s Justice League: No Justice, when Green Arrow received a box from Martian Manhunter with something inside capable of taking down the Justice League, teased later in 2019’s Green Arrow Vol. 8: The End of the Road but then never mentioned again. That’s a big dangling plot thread Williamson’s taking care of, what readers would expect at this point would be lost to history, and — like giving name to an all-but-forgotten background character in Superman Vol. 3: The Dark Path — further Williamson’s reputation as the architect of a more cohesive and complete DC Universe.

That extends to Williamson’s Green Arrow 2024 Annual finale, a remarkable tale of Oliver hunting an arsonist over the years, which includes callouts to about every major era of Green Arrow, sometimes switching time periods even within the same page. There are the ones you might expect — Golden Age, Mike Grell, into the Chuck Dixon era. But we get more esoteric from there — the disheveled, amnesic Green Arrow from the start of Kevin Smith’s Green Arrow: Quiver, the guardian of the Star City forest from J.T. Krul’s Brightest Day-era Green Arrow run — until Williamson’s master stroke, adding in the New 52 Green Arrow.

We saw this in Williamson’s Green Arrow Vol. 2: Family First, too, portraying Roy Harper’s New 52 partnership with the Outlaws as if it were of the same provenance as his time with the classic Teen Titans. As I’ve said before, the DCU is supposedly operating now under the auspices of “everything happened,” but few if any writers are seeing that to fruition quite the way Williamson is. That also includes references within the main story to Oliver and Amanda Waller working together previously in the Justice League, which I couldn’t place until I realized that, too, was a New 52 event grafted on to Absolute Power’s here and now.

That annual ends with a wondrous forward-looking sequence (reminiscent of the same at the end of Bryan Q. Miller’s Batgirl series) where Williamson teases a variety of enticing, imaginary Green Arrow stories — versus “Ambassador” Vertigo, teamed with Kamadi, etc. But given that Williamson is one of the architects of what DC does next, some of these might not be so imaginary — this is the second time that Williamson’s mentioned the Source Door, for instance. Of course, with Williamson having cameoed the Psyba-Rats last time around, what I really want is to see him make good on this Green Arrow-led Bloodlines sequel, with Oliver leading the original New Bloods against rampaging alien parasites.

Arguably in a book where the lead is for the most part mind-controlled and nothing really changes from beginning to end, we could see Joshua Williamson’s extended-miniseries Green Arrow as just biding its time until the new team takes over. But there is just so much Williamson has been doing recently and is doing in Green Arrow’s Vol. 3: Against the Wall that shows abiding affection both for the Arrow characters and the DCU — how, again, can anyone possibly depart this comic unhappy?

[Includes original covers]