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Green Arrow #11
Matt Morrison |
| Title: |
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Ultimate Speedy |
| Cover Date: |
February 2002 |
| Story: |
Kevin Smith |
| Pencils: |
Phil Hester |
| Inks: |
Ande Parks |
| Colors and Separations: |
James Sinclair |
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Basic Synopsis:
The first single issue of the new series,
and the first to follow after the 10-part
"Quiver" storyline, this issue
answers many of the "what next"
questions that were inevitable to come after
the conclusion of Quiver last month. We find
out what Ollie is doing in his time not in
costume, what’s happening with Connor and
Mia and where things stand on his relationship
with Dinah. All this and some moments which
are truly funny and truly touching, often
at the same time. All in all, the quality
level is still as strong, proving that Smith
can write a single issue just as well as
a saga. The art continues to be as strong
as ever, though the coloring is a bit off
in places.
Mia dreams of what her life with
Ollie might
be like: first as his sidekick
and then as
a lover. She is awoken by the
harsh reality
of Ollie shaking her awake, telling
her she’s
almost late for class. As Ollie
makes her
bed, as they talk while she showers,
he discovers
a crossbow under her bed and
says they have
to talk.
Later that day, at the Star City
Youth Center
(which Ollie is still running
and Connor
now works for), he and Connor
talk about
Mia’s desire to take up the vigilante
lifestyle,
their love lives and Ollie’s
parental desires.
Back in his office, Ollie looks
at the phone
and struggles to pick up the
phone and call
Dinah Lance. He is just about
to do it when
Mia arrives, late for work. After
some brief
talking about the housework,
Oliver leaves
to go home, shower and change
into costume.
Oliver and Connor meet up and
enjoy a bit
of father/son bonding as the
crack the heads
of the wicked of Star City, letting
the criminal
element know that The Green Arrow
is back.
The two return to Ollie’s brownstone,
to
find Mia practicing with her
crossbow on
a target in the courtyard. Connor
goes inside
as Ollie takes Mia aside, and
explains why
he does not want her trying to
become a costumed
hero.
Full Story Synopsis (WARNING! SPOILERS!)
We open with a shot of a man being chased.
It is Richard, Mia’s ex-pimp,
from way back
in GA #2. He is cut off by Green
Arrow and
is pinned to the wall by Oliver’s
new partner:
The new, "Ultimate Speedy",
aka
Mia in a very nice feminine adaptation
of
Roy Harper’s Arsenal costume.
Turn the page and Mia’s alarm
clock is going
off. Pounding if off and cursing,
she wanders
down to kitchen and finds Ollie
cooking breakfast.
He offers her a spoonful of his
new "Egg
McChili" and sends her running
for the
sink. (A quick note: Thank you,
Kevin Smith
for bringing this back: Ollie
is not only
one of the few superhero men
who apparently
can cook for himself- he really
enjoys experimenting
in the kitchen). Mia chews Ollie
out for
"stuffing her face with
chili".
Ollie asks if he’d rather stuff
her face
with something else. She grabs
his shirt
and pulls him in for a kiss.
A big, romantic
kiss, which Ollie returns.
Turn the page and Mia is being
shaken awake
by Ollie, and informed that it
is time for
her to go to class. As she hurriedly
showers,
she and Ollie discuss their agreement:
he
gives her a place to stay and
a job working
at the Star City Youth Center
so long as
she goes back to high school
and keeps her
grades up. As Ollie tidies up
her room and
makes her bed, he discovers a
crossbow under
her pillow and calls out "We’ve
gotta
have a little talk".
Later that day, Ollie and Connor (who is
now working at the Star City Youth Center
as well) are handing out pudding to the kids
and discussing the talk Mia and Ollie had
that morning. Mia had decided that she wants
to become Ollie’s partner and wants her to
start training him. After dealing with one
surly kid who thanks Connor for the pudding
by saying "Thanks Tiger Woods"
(a common joke name for Connor among long-time
Arrowheads on the boards), the discussion
continues. Ollie is dead set against Mia
becoming his sidekick, saying she is just
a kid. Connor points out that most of the
Titans were younger than Mia when they started
and that the Young Justice kids seem to do
just fine. Connor then points out that Oliver
likes to surround himself with the young
and says that it is because deep down, Oliver
has always wanted to be a father. "You’re
a wannabe-dad, dad." Ollie laughs this
off and asks Connor why he doesn’t find himself
a nice woman to settle down with. Connor
tells him to take his own advice. When Ollie
asks what that means, and Connor makes a
bad pun referring to Ollie's chivalric personality:
"Figure it out, Lance-Lover. I'll see
you tonight."
Back in his office, Ollie ponders
what Connor
said and admits that his son
is right: not
just about his desire to be a
father but
about his still loving Dinah.
It’s been two
weeks since he came back, and
he still hasn’t
called her despite having her
number. He
reflects on how typical it is
that he is
afraid to face emotional pain
despite having
the courage to risk death helping
total strangers
on a nightly basis.
He is about to call Dinah when
Mia bursts
through the door. Quickly putting
the phone
down, Ollie evades all her questions
about
who he was calling and when they
are going
to talk more about her becoming
a vigilantee.
After a brief argument over housework,
Ollie
leaves to go home, shower and
change into
costume. Up on the roofs, Ollie
thinks about
how this is how life should be;
"Just
a man and his bow and some ass
that needs
beating."
Ollie shoots a mugger in the
shoulder and
then further presses the point
by twisting
the arrow in the wound. He delivers
a spooky
Batman speech (beautifully drawn
and inked
with only Ollie’s eyes and teeth
showing
in the shadows of the bottom
panel of page
15), where he tells the mugger
to spread
the word that "Star City
doesn’t belong
to your kind anymore. It’s mine
again."
As Ollie continues to threaten
the mugger,
another one comes up on the shadows
behind
Ollie. He is just taking aim
when his gun
is shot out of his hand by another
arrow
and he is tackled by another
man in mask
and jumpsuit. Without missing
a beat, Ollie
turns around and says "Thanks
Kid".
After making sure the mugger
is clear on
what he is saying, Oliver pulls
the arrow
free, gives it to the mugger
as a souvenir.
"We spend the night emptying
our quivers
into the underbelly of Star City.
Fatehr
and son, nocking arrows in tandem.
It reminds
me of those days I spent with
Roy doing much
the same thing. Maybe the kid’s
right after
all. Maybe I have always been
a wannabe-dad."
The two heroes return home to find Mia practicing
with her crossbow on Ollie’s practice target
in the courtyard of the brownstone. Connor
comments that she’s a good shot. Ollie tells
him to go inside and let him talk to Mia
alone. Once Connor is gone, he says that
he was right and that Mia is a good shot.
Mia asks when she can go out on patrol with
the two of them and Ollie says she can’t.
Mia asks why not and says that Ollie obviously
wants a partner. Ollie says he doesn’t and
that he is enjoying Connor’s help, but he
also wants more for Connor than a life of
"mixing it up with the street-level
loonies and their costumed counterparts".
He then says the he does not want to train
Mia to take his place for the same reason,
saying that being a superhero is not a job
for kids. Mia says that Arsenal was just
as young as her when he got started. Ollie
agrees and then talks about how stupid most
of the heroes were back then and how amazed
he is that none of them were ever arrested
for child endangerment. He noted that things
were much simpler then and that the worst
you ever expected was being tied to the keys
of a giant typewriter or some other hokey
deathtrap. (Side note: Yay Kevin! Smith is
a big Silver Age fan, and it's nice to see
things like this being played up and made
fun of loving rather than ignored or mocked
like in most comics.)
Ollie says that he made some
mistakes with
Roy and how he blames that on
him having
put Roy into that life in the
first place:
a mistake he doesn’t want to
risk again.
Mia says that she isn’t Roy and
asks for
one good reason why she can’t
become a costumed
hero. Ollie says, quite simply,
"Because
I don’t know what I’d do if I
lost you, kiddo."
Mia pauses and all of the anger
rushes out
of her face. She and Ollie agree
that things
are cool, but Mia says that she
is only putting
the idea on hold and how she’ll
ask Ollie
to train her again when she turns
21 if she
still wants to be a hero then.
She’s about
to leave, jumping through the
skylight into
the "Arrowcave" (the
same entrance
Connor took to get inside), but
Ollie stops
her and makes her use the stairs.
Analysis:
Cover:  (4 of 5cowls)
The cover art by Matt Wagner is not as strong
as some of his previous covers for the book.
This is not to say that it’s bad…just not
as good. It seems very small, compared to
some of the big images and scenes we’ve had
in the first 10 issues. Here we just have
Ollie on a rooftop, looking very small as
a brick wall takes up half the space on the
page. This is one place where the "Full
Coverage" idea didn’t work too well.
Story: (5 of 5 cowls)
Smith’s writing is, as always, great. For
a man who is accused of using too much dialogue,
he manages to convey things in a very simple
or speedy manner. Consider how in this issue,
he manages to show how far Ollie and Connor
have progressed in their relationship in
just one page, just by showing how casually
they work as a team now. Or the subtle freedom
that they have in talking to each other that
was not there in the issues just after Connor
appeared, when he was still hiding the fact
that he was Ollie’s son.
Smith also succeeds in quickly
addressing
two fears expressed by fans of
the book on
the Internet, regarding Mia’s
future role
in the series. And not only does
he address
them… he mocks them in one of
the funniest
moments in the series so far,
with a double
dream sequence that had me laughing
twice;
first at the scene and that at
Smith’s audacity
in using the "it’s just
a dream"
cliché .
I also like Connor’s characterization
as
done by Smith. It’s not overstated,
but in
many ways Connor is the more
mature and wise
of the two. He plays Devil’s
advocate as
Ollie talks with him about all
his problems
and then states the obvious in
a plain, simple,
Zen-like way. It makes Connor
the perfect
foil for the much more emotional
Oliver and
also shows Connor’s training
as a Buddhist
monk without clubbing us over
the heads with
it, as was often done during
the Dixon run
of Green Arrow.
To my mind, the best moment in
the book is
the halfway point scene, where
Ollie struggles
to pick up the phone and try
to call Dinah.
It is a great character moment,
as Ollie
has an internal monologue where
he ponders
this truth about himself: that
while he has
the courage to throw himself
into danger
and risk his life to save other
people, he
has trouble dealing with his
emotions. And
the man who had the courage to
walk out of
Heaven rather than have a great
evil unleashed
on the world is scared senseless
at the idea
that the woman he loves might
no longer feel
the same way about him. So he
avoid the issue
rather than deal with it and
get it over
with. It is, as he says "Typical
Ollie".
Artwork: (5 of 5 cowls)
The art is a perfect match to the writing.
Parks inks make everything appropriately
dark in the places where it needs to be dark.
In lighter scenes, the book looks almost
different, with light inking making Hester’s
artwork look like Bruce Timm’s animated-series
style of drawing, but with slightly more
detail.
The coloring continues to be
a minor problem.
It has never been said if this
was part of
a permanent costume change or
if Ollie just
has to replace the feathers in
his cap, but
the feather of Ollie’s Robin
Hood cap keeps
changing. It was red in the early
issues
of the new series, when it has
always been
a light green before Ollie died.
Now the
feather is a pale blue-white.
Granted, this
is not nearly as bad as the color
mistakes
with Etrigan from issues 5, 6
and 8, but
it does offend the traditionalist
in me.
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