Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

Green Arrow/Black Canary #1
DC Comics
Winnick & Chiang

Shame on me. I hated the wedding issue and wasn’t going to pick this one up. To think what I would have missed. This issue was great!

We pick up about a month after Green Arrow was killed by his wife, Black Canary, in self defense. Black Canary is pissed and she is cracking skulls. While out hunting some bad guys Black Canary gives a severe beatdown to some dudes and Connor intervenes before she kills them. Connor tries to calm her down, but she is not having any lip from her step-son.

Connor confides in Mia that Black Canary has lost it and Mia calls Connor Dr. Phil. It appears Connor gets no respect from Team-Arrow. Maybe he should just not talk.

As the issue progresses Black Canary and Hal have an exchange that reveals that Canary is convinced that the body of Green Arrows is not the real Oliver Queen. Hal doesn’t believe her, basically because his ring scan tells him the body is the real deal. Hal also states he can’t raise Ollie from the dead as he had previously.

Enter Batman.

Batman runs down through an excellent exchange his process of elimination that no motive to kill Canary or kill Queen matches any villains. Therefore, although the DNA evidence says otherwise, he too, believes the body of Queen may be a fake.

We head to the Batcave for an autopsy. Now you’d think Queen’s body would need to be exhumed, but not so. Canary had Oliver in a see-through tube in her house for the last month. Canary, was this necessary? He’s not Lenin.

Batman gets to work on the autopsy with the help of Dr. Mid-Nite. Together they figure out that the body of Oliver Queen is actually………

Everyman. Does this mean he is dead? I don’t know who is so I actually don’t really care, but I was just wondering.

Now where is Ollie? Canary runs down those who wished her well and she comes to the conclusion that the Amazonians didn’t wish her well, but instead wanted her to live with them to be away from men. Ok. So they took Ollie.

I enjoyed the art very much in this issue. Particularly the autopsy. The inclusion and rendition of Dr. Mid-Nite was great. I was surprised and liked the teaming of him and Batman. Batman putting on a pair of gloves over his normal pair of gloves just for the blood and Batman eyeing up the chainsaw prior to the cutting was awesome. Plus, we get to see some brains. How cool is that?

Questions arise though. Why would the Amazonians want Canary to live with them if they are keeping Ollie hostage there? I have no insight into the world of Wonder Woman other than that the title is a train-wreck so I don’t know the angles here, but that seemed fishy.

Beyond that I was very pleased with this issue. Now, the cover price was up 50 cents but the page count was up 8 pages so I was okay with that. I would recommend this issue to anyone who likes a little mystery in their comic and no, you don’t need to have read the dreadful wedding issue to catch on here.

Excellent start to this arc.

5 out of 5 geek goggles.


Green Arrow Black Canary #1