“GREEN ARROW” #22 REVIEW

Green Arrow #22

Written By: Jeff Lemire
Art By: Andrea Sorrentino

 

Jeff Lemire offers a lot genre-wise with his take on Green Arrow. There’s a lot of cool kung fu, black ops, gang and cult touches, and Lemire manages to tie them all together to create a cohesive, engaging story. While dialogue can be on-the-nose in Green Arrow #22, it delivers to genre fans successfully with its diverse content.

When a book is essentially about a street level crime fighter tracking down bad guys, things have the tendency to get dark and lifeless, in order to create the mood. Luckily, Lemire writes Oliver Queen with that sense of adventure, and colours the techies as bantering interludes mid-fight scenes.

The only problem is, when you mix those stereotypes, and add in your typical bad guys, add even more bad guys, then throw in a “maybe this person is your sister” element, there isn’t enough time to define relationships to give the book that proper emotional weight.

At the same time, there’s lots of superficial action to love in this issue. Sorrentino certainly understands the definition of sequential art, and manages to make a relatively non-superpowered character fascinating in the action sequence out front the castle, by offering tight close ups to capture the nuance of Green Arrow’s fighting style.

Colourist Marcelo Maiolo gives the book that extra kung fu flair, particularly on the page with the bloody sacrifice. The book shows off its diversity with pages like this, and manages to combine several action sub-genres between pages.

Green Arrow #22 could stand to establish relationships more clearly, to help steer the book from becoming filled with stereotypes. Otherwise, it is a solid action-filled spectacular that manages to showcase the grit and skill of Green Arrow in new ways.

Score: 7.8/10