DC Comics reviews for the week of 9/20/17
Green Arrow #31
Hard Traveling Hero wrapped up fittingly with Green Arrow dealing The Ninth Circle a major blow.
Benjamin Percy’s main goal with this arc seemed to get Green Arrow back in the good graces with his fellow A-list superhero peers. Some issues along this path were better than others — I would have loved more street level interaction with Green Lantern than space shuttle mayhem.
This issue finds Green Arrow confronting his main Ninth Circle adversary on a space mission with GL. Ultimately, the Justice League must lend an assist to clean up the mess highlighting one of the shortcomings of this final stop in GA’s Hard Traveling Hero tour. There’s not a lot of scenarios where Green Arrow would be bailing out the Justice League, but Percy didn’t give GA the necessary heroic spotlight to wrap the storyline.
As a comprehensive story, this arc accomplished Percy’s mission. There was something immensely satisfying in seeing Oliver hanging out with the Justice League again. Hopefully whoever takes over Justice League for Bryan Hitch considers bringing GA on board full time.
Otto Schmidt had another unusual inconsistent outing this issue. Some of the earlier pages were hard to follow. Schmidt has more of a sketch style, but some pages were rougher than his norm. Fortunately, that’s not the case for most of the issue and by the 10th page, the art falls more in line with expectations save a sickly-looking Superman.
Percy also took advantage of the timing to explain Green Arrow’s involvement in Gotham Resistance playing out through the Dark Night: Metal tie-ins. For Metal and Gotham Resistance arc readers, this was a fun glimpse at how Oliver got roped into Batman’s plans.
Even if this wasn’t the strongest arc of the title, Hard Traveling Hero provided some fun team-ups and brought Green Arrow out of the shadows and shoulder to shoulder with DC’s top heroes.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10