Batman: The Ring, the Arrow, and the Bat

I wish I'd known about this book when I did my big readthrough of Green Arrow tales, because it's much more Green Arrow and Green Lantern's tale than it is Batman's. This collects two stories: the first, "Peacemakers," is about the first meeting between Green Arrow and Green Lantern, while the second, "The Arrow and the Bat," unites the two with Batman.

That said, it's not very good. I feel like the later you are in Denny O'Neil's career, the worse his writing is, and this book is no exception. It's jumpy, characters don't (re)act realistically, the conspiracies are too complicated to make sense, it's bloodier than a mainstream DC superhero story ought to be, and it doesn't even get basic points of continuity right. Oliver seems to have show more lost his fortune already, but he hasn't even joined the Justice League yet because there is no Justice League yet. And it was O'Neil who wrote the story where Oliver lost his fortune, set well into his tenure on the League! What's the point of writing a tale to tick off a continuity box if you get the continuity wrong? None, as far as I can tell, because this is a disappointing and uninteresting book.

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A decent pair of team-up stories purportedly representing the (revised) first meetings of Green Arrow with Green Lantern, then Batman. Decent, if unremarkable stories. Same is true of the artwork. What makes the stories work as well as they do is the interplay between the heroes here, particularly Batman and Green Arrow. Actually, these stories by O'Neill are probably just as good as his earlier classics. It's just that back then he pioneered a style of comic-book writing, and he's still mining ground he broke over three decades ago.