Because I'm slowly working my way through Mike Grell's shockingly good Warlord series, I decided to re-read his Green Arrow story, that I hadn't read since its initial three-issue release almost 36 years ago.

And honestly? Yeah, it shows how great Grell is with Warlord.

I'll go on record right now as saying, with some notable exceptions (Alan Moore's Watchmen, Tom King's Mister Miracle, Frank Miller's first Batman: The Dark Knight Returns), I'm really not a DC fan. And this series, while trying really hard, won't be the one to sway me.

Unlike Grell's work on his creative baby, Warlord, that he conceived, scripted, and drew, he's now playing in the larger DC sandbox with an established history, so it felt slightly more forced, though he took a good angle...Oliver moves cities and because of the physical move, he begins to also question where his life is going and some of the decisions he's made to get him there.

There's also, of course, the shadowy (pun intended) villain of the piece, as well as two plots, both involving people showing up dead.

Grell's trying to make a point with the drug smuggling, money laundering, justice system, and the jaded public that's happy to turn away and ignore all these injustices. He sort of gets there, but not completely successfully.

Then there's the art. With Warlord, I'm constantly struck by Grell's impeccable design and layout sense on page after page. But here, it's somewhat less successful. Once again, Grell used the DC prestige format to experiment with his art as well, combining his excellent pencil and ink linework with coloured pencil sketches and even what appears to be watercolour painting. At the same time, he utilizes a lot of double page spreads that aren't, unfortunately, always obvious—at least to me—which lead to reading, then re-reading the dialogue in the correct order. I will say, though, that the actual art itself is simply stunning.

So, in the end, while I applaud Grell for what he was trying to do, it was only partially successful.

Not really sure why this is considered an iconic Green Arrow story. This just feels average in every way. : ( )

A collected miniseries of Green Arrow issues from the eighties. Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance move to Seattle where Oliver begins to feel his age a bit. He tries to hunt down a serial killer while Dinah is on the trail of a drug ring. Bad things ensue, and a mysterious archer more skilled than Oliver is also on the scene. Great stuff here (though, jeez the violence towards women) and fantastic art. Also cool to see which elements of this story influenced Arrow. ( )

The definitive Green Arrow story. ( )

A very dark tale about drugs, prositues, and the underworld of Seattle in general. Green Arrow is juggling a lot of different murderers and bad guys and he actually kills a couple of guys too.

The art for the story is also dark and it's also more towards the artsy side of the spectrum than the comic-booky side of it. Lots and lots of shading and shadows to go with the tone of the story.

It's a good series which gets Green Arrow back to his roots a bit, bows and arrows, not punching bag and other special arrows. ( )