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Green Arrow: Quiver by Kevin Smith, Ande Parks, and Guy Major

“Hero coming back from the dead” type of stories are lame. They did that with Jean Grey, they did that with Superman, and they did it to whole other bunch of characters that it just gets plain boring. When somebody dies in the superhero world, they should stay dead. The one exception to this is Green Arrow and only when it’s done by the great Kevin Smith.

I gave up collecting comics on a monthly basis almost 2 years ago and go the trade paperback route. While this was a good move (storage-wise at least), it always pained me when a comic I’m dying to read is out on the market and I just refuse to buy it until the collected version comes out. Garth Ennis’ “The Punisher” was one of these, and when it was announced that Mr.Smith would be doing arrowhead’s adventures, I knew it was going to be a looooooong wait for a collected edition to arrive.

Well, my eternity of waiting is finally over. I received the “Green Arrow:Quiver” hardcover edition last week. It is in a handsome green hardbound edition with no outer jacket.

My thoughts on the book: This series is a testament to Kevin Smith’s love for comics. It shows that he has a great knowledge of DC continuity, referring to events that happened in The Final Night, Zero Hour and other DC events. If one had doubts about Kevin being a good comic writer (even after the excellent Daredevil storyline he did), this will change their mind. This resurrection would have been a disaster if it wasn’t handled in the right way, and he handled it perfectly. The reason why he came back to life doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense (at least in a spritual-physical point of view), but it was still very entertaining. Oliver Queen’s interaction with the other heroes in the DC Universe was very natural. The reunion with the JLA, the rekindling of old flames with Black Canary, and the first meeting with his son, the new Green Arrow – they were all great moments filled with a true sense of human emotion. My favorite part was Batman and GA’s banter in the batplane:

(from memory, so it might not be a word for word quote)

GA: “Great Batplane, I used to have a plane called the Arrowjet just like it. I also miss the Arrowcar. You know being in your batcave reminds me of my own digs – the Arrowcave.”

Batman – “Don’t you ever have an original idea?”

That exchange was so classic – people always say that arrowhead is a rip-off of Batman, and admittedly he is. The trick arrows, the millionaire playboy alter-ego. The main difference is their personality. While Batman is a dark character that deals mainly with crime, GA is more of a political activist and targets the bigger fish.

The art is decent, but not breathtaking. It serves well enough to get the point of the story across, but I really don’t see this art team becoming one of the premier art teams.

If there’s one thing that will make non-comic readers shy away from this book, it’s the deep references to DC continuity. Several of the sequences in the book make a lot of reference to past DC events, most notably Final Night and Zero Hour. If you’re a non-comic reader, the book is still very readable, but you’ll be missing some background information.

I never really cared too much for Green Arrow, except during the Neal Adams-pencilled team-ups with Green Lantern. I tried reading Mike Grell’s “The Longbow Hunters”, but found that boring. Kevin Smith though has made this book about a second-rate character into a must-read. The wait for the collected book was definitely worth it.

Green Arrow: Quiver – 4 out of 5 stars.