Green Arrow #4 - Comic Review

 

Oliver Queen has been lost out of time for a while now, with some outside force preventing him from reuniting with this family. This force has even displaced Connor and Lian in time too, sending them into the far future with the Legion of Super Heroes. What has the power to do this, and why would they be doing this to the Green Arrow family? All of that is now revealed with the fourth issue, as we learn that Parallax is behind things. 

This might seem a bit complicated at first (and it's definitely not simple) but this is something we've seen Parallax do before. Before the Geoff Johns retcon of Parallax being an entity possessing Hal Jordan the evil version of the GL brought Oliver Queen back to life before sacrificing himself to reignite the sun, proving that there was some good in him still. The Parallax we have here is very much this version, a Hal Jordan possessed by the fear entity; but it's not our Hal. This is the displaced Parallax that came to exist in the events of Convergence way back during the New 52.

And it actually works really well for this story, as we kind of get to have an evil Hal Jordan who's not quite all evil, whilst our Hal is still bumbing around Earth sexually harassing Carol Farris. And this version of the character is still very much like he was presented in the 90's, as a darker Hal. This gets explained away as Hal fighting against the alien parasite, and it's a decent enough explanation for me to go along with it.

It turns out that this Parallax made a deal with an older version of Ollie, that in order to prevent another disaster like Coast City, he'd use his power to keep Ollie and his family apart from each other. This leads to a wonderful issue where the two characters get to really hash it out, dealing with their past, the issues that they've had with each other, and it brings a lovely new dimension to their friendship; because this is still Hal. The moment where Ollie takes off his gear and challenges Hal to a fistfight is the highlight of the series so far, and is one of my favourite Hal Jordan moments in years.

After decades of seeing Parallax be one thing, a big scary space bug, getting to go back to a version of him that wasn't like that, that was Hal Jordan first and foremost, is really cool. And Joshua Williamson absolutely nails the character. He feels like that version of Hal dropped into a modern comic, and the way Ollie interacts with him feels like something that only Ollie could do thanks to their history.

The art on the issue, by Sean Izaakse, and Romulo Fajardo Jr., is absolutely fantastic, and there are so many moments that are absolutely stand out. The already mentioned fight between the two characters is incredibly well done, and because it's just two guys knocking each other around it feels different to what we've had so far. The designs for the Legion all look really cool and I like how they're presented here, and the return of Cheshire was really well done, and it's great to see Jade again. And that final page reveal was absolutely superb.

Despite the first issue of Birds of Prey kind of revealing how this series is going to end (somewhat at least) it's still a great journey were going on with Ollie, and it feels like a great time to be a fan of the character. With DC already having doubled the length of the series from six issues to twelve, let's hope they see how well its doing and make it an ongoing.

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