Ande Parks

Sounds of Violence collects the second part of Kevin Smith's run on Green Arrow, issues #11-15. Despite containing only about half as many issues as the previous volume, it still packs a satisfying punch. It consists of what are really three separate stories, but all three concern one thing: Oliver Queen's relationship to the people around him. If you read my review of the first volume of this series, you'll know that what I liked was Oliver's depiction as a great hero but a not-so-great man show more who tries his best. This volume continues that trend.

We're not going to handle these in quite the order they happen in the book; the second chapter, "Feast and Fowl" reignites Green Arrow and Black Canary's relationship, despite both of their wishes. It's a somewhat typical "feisty couple" story; the two bicker a lot and then end up in bed with one another after a workout. I'm a bit confused as to why the news reported that Green Arrow and Black Canary were fighting when they did it all in their civilian identities, but what the hey... I do like seeing the Riddler get smashed to a pulp. Also fun in this story is Green Arrow's fight with Hawkman-- you know that when Black Canary frets the two will be fighting with each other that they will be best buds, but Smith goes on to reverse his reversal in a great moment later on where they do end up fighting. Or rather, it's a great moment if you think women can't speak for themselves in their own relationships and desires, so it's also great when Black Canary knocks the two bickering men out. Though she does it naked, of course. It's a good story, though not really central to the book.

The first chapter, "Ultimate Speedy", is about his relationship with Mia Dearden, the teenage ex-prostitute he took in during Quiver. Mia wants to be the new Speedy, Green Arrow's sidekick, but Oliver doesn't think that's such a good idea; he doesn't want some kid cramping up his style. But as Mia points out, Roy Harper was Speedy to Oliver's Green Arrow back when he was fifteen years old, so what gives? What Oliver realizes as he cleans the streets with his son, new Green Arrow Connor Hawke, is that he likes having a younger person around to show the ropes, likes having someone admire him, likes being a father. But if he's going to actually admit that to himself... he also needs to actually act like a father for the first time in his life, and that means being responsible towards Mia. So no, she actually can't be the new Speedy, as much as both of them want it. It's a nice moment, unexpected in a superhero comic, though I'd worry that Mia's status as a civilian doesn't cause writers to not know what to do with here. I know she became Speedy later on, once Smith was off the title, and I hope it's not crap like when Byrne wrote a whole issue of Alpha Flight explaining why Heather Hudson couldn't be the new Guardian... and then as soon as he was off the title, Bill Mantlo made her the new Guardian because he didn't know what to do with such a unique character. But here, it's a nice little character vignette, showing us an Oliver Queen coming to terms with the idea of being a father for the first time in his life.

This is important to the last (and longest) story of the volume, "The Sounds of Violence". Here, the Green Arrows come up against Onomatopoeia, one of the creepiest comic-book villains I have seen in a long time. This guy's gimmick is that whenever he does something he verbalizes its sound effect first: so he says, "blam" and then he shoots you, "BLAM!" And that's all he says. You can't even see his face; he wears a full-head mask. Phil Hester's art really sells the moments where he just stares at Green Arrow, unanswering. We don't see why he does what he does, either; he's an indecipherable mystery. A simple but disturbing concept. An excellent villain to show the depths of feeling in the Oliver/Connor relationship, as Connor falls victim to Onomatopoeia. The scenes with Oliver and Onomatopoeia in the hospital room together, Oliver's arrow in the villain's mouth as Connor is operated on by desperate physicians, is fantastic. Though one wonders why Oliver just doesn't kill Onomatopoeia anyway, given that he's a known murderer surely going to resist arrest. The story here is simple-- a series of fight scenes interspersed with Ollie's regrets-- but it works really well. Smith has created a compelling set of characters in the past dozen issues, and he really capitalizes on that here.

The only problem I have here is that Onomatopoeia is annoyingly lucky; why can't Green Arrow ever quite get him when he nails so many other people throughout the book with ease. Is he just that good? It seems contrived, unless the villain has super-strength or other powers, but no one ever raises that as a possibility. Why can Onomatopoeia just shoot Connor when no one else can? The conceit of these sort of superhero stories is that the bullets never hit, so it jars when one does for no apparent reason. Things can be random like that in real life; it doesn't work so well in stories. Similarly, I didn't get why Oliver had such a hard time fighting Onomatopoeia, even with help from Black Canary, given the ease in which they took down the Riddler and five goons in the previous story. But it's a small quibble; I'd happily read another story about Onomatopoeia. Wiki tells me that though he never popped up in Green Arrow again, he did make it into a Batman story (also by Smith); I'll have to seek that out.

Sounds of Violence does exactly what I'd hoped the Green Arrow series would do after Quiver: move away from the continuity-heavy background and simply tell good stories about Green Arrow and surrounding characters with the set-up Smith had established. I feel like I don't have a lot to say about this book, but that's because it doesn't have anything big to say about humanity, the universe, or even Green Arrow himself. It sets itself modest goals of telling a cracking good superhero story with strong characterization and snappy dialogue and exceeds those goals well.

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This is the first story of Green Arrow after his rebirth. You see, Oliver Queen had died back in 1995, thanks to some ecoterrorists, and Connor Hawke, his illegitimate son, had taken over as Green Arrow. But in 1996, during a crisis where the Earth's sun was shut off, Hal Jordan-- who Oliver Queen had previously killed or something-- brought Oliver back to life, though that was not revealed until this story, so I don't know what he got up to in all that time between. If there really was any show more time between.

Are you confused? So am I, and I've been looking stuff up on Wikipedia and a dozen other websites for the past half-hour trying to get it all straight. But here's the thing-- I hardly ever was while reading Quiver. Despite juggling a complex history that intersects numerous characters and stories, Kevin Smith always keeps the reader from drowning in a sea of continuity, even if there are times where you feel like you're only just barely afloat.

What works here are the characters. My only previous substantial Green Arrow experience was the "hard-traveling heroes" storyline, and this Green Arrow isn't quite that one, but that's a good thing, since that Green Arrow was more a one-note radical leftist mouthpiece for Denny O'Neil than an actual person. Smith's Oliver Queen is a hero, certainly; even as a half-crazed, just-resurrected man he builds himself a rudimentary bow and arrow and tries to stop a mugging, and once he gets his groove back, he's taking on corruption in Star City left, right, and center with some fun sequences. Green Arrow's archery shtick is nice and distinctive; he typically doesn't end up just punching things like many other superheroes.

But Green Arrow's got some problems-- he's got a bit of a habit of running away from responsibilities and messing things up with those he loves: his son, Connor Hawke; his ward, Roy Harper; and most importantly, his love, Dinah Lance the Black Canary. Of course, Ollie can't be blamed for disappearing this time-- he was dead, right?

Actually, it turns out he sort of can, because he's not wholly alive. When Hal Jordan resurrected Oliver Queen, Oliver's soul didn't want to leave the afterlife, as he'd finally found peace there. So the resurrected Oliver has the body and (most of) the memories of the original, but not the soul. It's pointed out that he's fundamentally the same person, but a danger arises from this-- if Oliver's body doesn't have a soul, another soul could easily move in. The book falters a little here, as the existential questions this whole idea raises are somewhat outside the remit of a comic book about a guy in a Robin Hood costume (or at least this comic book about a guy in a Robin Hood costume), so it just tries to avoid them but still gets bogged down in a lot of DC Universe metaphysics.

Metaphysics aren't the only thing going on, though; there's also a serial killer loose in Star City. Supposedly Green Arrow is trying to stop him, but this plotline suffers from two problems. First is that Green Arrow scarcely does anything in this line. It's not his fault, really; halfway through the book and he's just only really gotten back on his feat when the Demon Etrigan shows up and brings in the whole metaphysical thing, and GA never gets a chance to go back to his "mundane" storyline until events come to a head (and turn out to be much less mundane than they'd seemed). The second problem is that the identity of the serial killer is fricking obvious from chapter two of ten at the latest. Maybe Smith thought he was being subtle, maybe he wanted the reader to figure it out, but it's really annoying waiting eight chapters for the characters to catch up. And the eventual explanation of the motives of the killer are convoluted, to say the least.

But the small falterings of the book with crazy metaphysics and crazy killers can be overlooked, because the climax brings it all together. It's not Oliver Queen the just-resurrected soulless husk who has to learn to stop running away from the consequences of his actions; it's the soul hanging out in the afterlife doing nothing but shooting arrows at an ethereal target. That Oliver finally decides to be there for his son. Green Arrow may have not had a choice about his body being resurrected, but he did have a choice about his soul, and it's a choice he makes. It's a great moment when, soul returned, Oliver Queen joins his son in kicking tail and saving the day.

The book also has some cameos from around the DC Universe: Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, the Spectre, Jason Blood, and even Deadman make appearances. Most prominent, however, is Batman. I'm not sure what to think of Smith's Batman-- sometimes he's spot-on, but sometimes he drifts into caricature. But it's real good caricature, so I'm willing to forgive it. The Justice League as a whole suffers from a similar problem (I really think they'd be able to handle Oliver's resurrection better than this), but it's most pronounced with Batman.

Sometimes I also felt a little uneasy about Quiver's portrayal of women. Wonder Woman plants one on Green Arrow's lips when she first meets him, and judging from Wally West's reaction, it's a pretty intense kiss. Well of course she would; what else would an elated woman do but give a man a little bit of tounge? Deadman also gets one off Black Canary in a moment that's played for laughs, even if she does hit him in the jaw for it. And at the end, our serial killer friend also suddenly turns out to like raping teenage girls, seemingly just to up the level of danger a little bit. On the other hand, I have few complaints about Smith's portrayal of Black Canary as a well-rounded, independent woman, as much her own person as Green Arrow. And Mia Dearden is all sorts of awesome as well.

That said, I feel a bit skeevy myself complaining that the only real problem I have with Phil Hester's generally excellent artwork is that Black Canary is just nowhere near as hot as Black Canary should be.

I think the most important thing about Quiver is that though it deals with some crazy continuity, some abstract metaphysics, and some dark themes, is that it never loses its way. This book is about Oliver Queen/Green Arrow, what makes him a great hero and a sometimes not-so-great man, and about how he learns to come through in the end. And perhaps almost as importantly, it's always fun. Whoever doesn't love the boxing glove arrow ought to be lined up and shot.

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Now this was action packed. Imagine story that is a mix between "Escape from New York", "Mile 22", "Raid", "16 Blocks", "Gauntlet" and "Proof of Life".

Some will say this graphic novel reads like a movie script and they would be right. This is "movie script" in as far that story is very simple - mercenary expert in extraction of people from highly dangerous environments gets stuck in Paraguay, in Ciduad de Este, and hunted by corrupted government officials and criminal underworld because he show more is trying to extract the daughter of a very important person from the clutches of the kidnappers.

To say all tropes are in is not required - it would be like saying that starships and weird creatures are part of every space opera.This is an action event through and through, characters are slightly underdeveloped but again this is not drama nor criminal investigation that would flesh out the characters. Again no need - entire story is a race with time, fighting great odds to ensure our two heroes manage cross the city border into safety. We are spectators as action scenes play out in this great city and as our heroes try to get to the safety outside of it.

I can understand that good people of Paraguay might feel offended by description of lawlessness in Ciudad de Este but we need to come to terms that stereotypes exist and always will (hmmm, Russians are always baddies, I wonder why eh). Ciudad is here just a metaphor of large metropolis and underlying criminal shadowy world that is present in every major city.

Art might be off-putting to some but I liked it. It is a little bit cartoon-ish and I don't mind it. Decision to go without colors was in my opinion a great one (but then again I am fan of b&w graphics since Alex Raymond, Hal Foster and Al Williamson).

Good action romp and very interesting book. If you are fun of action stories that do not diverge or branch into ever more complicated story-lines give this one a chance, I think you will like it. show less

This is the only trade left in the Green Arrow series not penned by Judd Winick. Despite being volume 4, it actually collects the issues that ran before Straight Shooter, which is just kind of annoying, as it plainly takes place before them. The first three volumes focused on Oliver Queen's growing relationships with his family of Dinah "Black Canary" Lance, Connor "Green Arrow" Hawke, and Mia Dearden; this one gives some much-needed focus to his connection to Roy Harper, his former sidekick show more "Speedy", now known as "Arsenal". The two of them hit the road to recover some artifacts Queen left behind after his untimely demise. Unfortunately, the story never quite comes together: why does Queen think recovering these things is urgent now, as he was plainly fine with them being where they were before he died? (I do like the whole bargain he set up with the Shade for after he died, though.) And why does he have to be so sneaky about it? If he just teleported up to the JLA satellite and asked for his old trick arrows, surely they'd just give him them? Some of the sneakiness is explained by the final revelation of the book, but not all of it. And as for the final revelation, I'm undecided as to what I think about it; I feel like it undermines Quiver somewhat, but I'll reserve judgement until I see what (if anything) is done with it later on. Meltzer gets Oliver Queen himself, though; I especially like the almost-not-proposal to Dinah, and the final touch in his relationship with Roy is great, as is the moment where Oliver and Connor decide that they can both be Green Arrow. The story may be somewhat problematic (what's with the thing that randomly pops out of a wormhole and eats Catman?) but as a character piece, it's first-rate.

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