Chris Condon makes a splash with his first ongoing DC Comics series. In Green Arrow Vol. 4: Fresh Water Kills, Condon delivers an Oliver Queen story that ought make Mike Grell fans happy, all street level and detective work and practical effects. Deviating, perhaps nicely, from what we’d usually expect from a new series writer’s first story, there are no grand conspiracies that I could discern, no overarching villain on the prowl, just Green Arrow, a new police sidekick, and a predictable but affecting mystery to solve.

Notably, the “Fresh Water Kills” storyline spans seven issues but never feels long. Really it’s over by the sixth, but Condon takes an entire final issue for epilogue. Even again when it seems like “Fresh Water Kills” is mostly self-contained, Condon spends four full pages in the last chapter checking in with the culprit before Ollie ever makes the scene. That is to say, Fresh Water Kills is methodical, it’s meticulous, and it reads like a cross between DC’s 1980s mature readers titles and a TV cop drama, helped in no small part by artist Montos.

Pressure will definitely be on for Condon’s Green Arrow to become something other than what it is, but I hope he can resist that as long as possible.

[Review contains spoilers]

At a time when “left” and “right” are very much in the news, that Fresh Water Kills calls Green Arrow outright a “leftist-radical superhero” is inadvertently edgy, or at least edgier now than when Condon first wrote it some months before. Though I don’t think Oliver Queen would find much to disagree with in modern liberal platforms, the very use of the phrase (and later Ollie’s called a “leftist journalist”) feels very much a harkening back to the “hard traveling” Green Arrow of the 1970s, in the shadow of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, than anything today. So too the problem du jour that Condon pits Ollie against, the poisoning of a town by a chemical company, which sadly remains a modern concern but — as drawn in Montos' rough linework — here feels more a piece with the 1960s Silent Spring awakening.

Though interestingly, while Condon’s story is decidedly Grell-esque, it turns on what feels a largely untapped (and maybe due for a collection) Green Arrow era, the just-before-Crisis miniseries by Mike Barr and Trevor Von Eden. The offending chemical company is Horton Chemicals, which Ollie ran for a short time as part of the murder mystery in that Green Arrow mini. There’s also some discussion, again, of Ollie as a “journalist,” a reference to his 1970s role as a columnist for the Daily Star. If any of this has been referenced since the great Kevin Smith revival, I don’t recall it, so my impression is Condon is retreading ground that’s not already well tread (as opposed to, say, “Snowbirds Don’t Fly”) and I appreciate that.

The “retro” feel of the book extends to Green Arrow’s new costume, which dumps the glossy futurism of Joshua Williamson’s run and even the trademark hood for a half cape (a cape! For Green Arrow!) and, for the first time I can recall, a mask over Ollie’s nose and mouth. If it’s a fairly large departure, I do appreciate the nod toward Ollie actually trying to hide his secret identity (versus the latter seasons of Arrow, when basically everyone knows) and an acknowledgment that Ollie’s distinctive beard probably isn’t that hard for most people to spot on the Emerald Archer. His new police partner is fine as far as sidekicks go, but I was sorry at the suggestion at the end she’s figured out Ollie and Arrow are one and the same.

What impressed me most about Condon and team’s depiction of Green Arrow, however, is how they really seems to dig in to Ollie’s weapons being a bow and arrow, and not just a catch-all do-anything utility belt. Letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou adds “tk tk” sound effects to every scene of Ollie drawing back his bow; it’s wholly unnecessary, but also the kind of detail that suggests the team putting a lot of thought into it. When Arrow runs outside and then stops to line up a long-range shot, we really see it, and moreover, the panels are arranged such that the fact that there’s too much interference to shoot is palpable. Later, Condon has Ollie firing arrows up a pole in order to climb up and spy on the proceedings; it’s a “practical effect,” so to speak, that I don’t think other writers would have taken as much trouble with.

See also, too, the climactic fight between Arrow and the Fresh Water Killer(s), with the unhinged “Get him!” obscured by the smoke from the art. Again, all credit to Otsmane-Elhaou and Montos; I would say I liked Montos' zombie aliens in Green Lantern: War Journal, but I might think his regular people in dire straits are even better.

It’s perhaps a credit to the versatility of the Green Arrow character that he can be used equally comfortably in something like Williamson’s Green Arrow Vol. 1: Reunion, all time travel and retroactive continuity, and also in Chris Condon’s gritty Green Arrow Vol. 4: Fresh Water Kills, though indeed I’m pretty sure I know which one feels more like “Green Arrow” to me. As noted, this is somewhat a done-in-one — I don’t expect the Fresh Water Killer to be bothering Star City again time soon — and I wonder if my instincts are right about that. If so, again, Condon’s Green Arrow becomes something like an episodic cop show, with a different crime to solve each week; if indeed that’s Condon’s plan, you won’t hear me complaining.¹

[Includes original covers. Really, DC, no variants?]