DC Comics has created many of the greatest heroes of all time, starting back in the Golden Age. Everyone knows about Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the mantles of heroes like Green Lantern and the Flash. However, one of DC’s greatest heroes first appeared in the Golden Age, and most people forget he was around back then: Green Arrow. Oliver Queen was first created as Robin Hood in Batman drag, down to the Arrowcave and the sidekick. His adventures in the Golden Age are mostly forgotten, with most people only thinking of his Silver Age stories and beyond. Green Arrow has starred in some of the best DC stories ever, and 24 years ago, we got one of the best versions of the hero in “The Archer’s Quest”.
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Green Arrow is a hero who often gets overlooked. He’s very important to the maturation of the comic medium, with stories like “Hard-Traveling Heroes” and “The Longbow Hunters” pushing the character forward and creating the versions of him we like best. However, he couldn’t keep the popularity he got in the ’80s in the ’90s, and he was killed and replaced. The character got another chance to shine when writer/director Kevin Smith relaunched the hero in Green Arrow (Vol. 3) in 2001. During his 15 issue tenure with Ollie, the book was the number one book in DC, so the publisher decided to keep it going with another creator from outside of comics: Brad Meltzer, who went to college with DC writer Judd Winick and became a novelist. Teaming with Green Arrow (Vol. 3) artist Phil Hester, he gave readers the greatest Green Arrow story of all time.
“The Archer’s Quest” Shows Off All Sides of Oliver Queen
Green Arrow is a very complicated character. At first, the hero was basically just Batman, as alluded to earlier. Copying characters and ideas has always been a big part of the comic industry. Green Arrow was reasonably popular back in the day, but he faded away as the Golden Age went on, as did the vast majority of the superheroes created back then. He’d return in the Silver Age, with very little changes, and became a member of the Justice League. It wouldn’t be until “Hard-Traveling Heroes”, the legendary story from Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, that we got the modern version of the character.
This new Green Arrow was fervently liberal (echoing O’Neil’s own beliefs), and he became one of the mouthier heroes out there. Green Arrow’s grudge with Hawkman started back then, as did his relationship with Black Canary. The character became even more complex as the years went on, a man who loved hard, was kind of a hypocrite, and made the kind of mistakes that other heroes didn’t. He neglected the people he loved at times, and even did terrible things to them, like cheating on Black Canary. He was the most human of heroes and “The Archer’s Quest” underlined that.
“The Archer’s Quest” picks up at Ollie’s grave, where he asks Superman about his funeral. He learns that there was someone there no one recognized, and he decides to hunt this person who saw them in their civilians guises down, with Roy Harper joining him on his quest. We learn that he asked the reformed villain the Shade to get rid of any proof that Ollie was Green Arrow, and that the Shade sent Catman to the funeral. This leads to Ollie and Roy going on a quest to find the things that Catman and the Shade couldn’t.
This story is a primer on the character’s history, taking us to the Golden Age Arrowcave and a fight with Solomon Grundy to the Justice League Watchtower to Hal Jordan’s old locker at Ferris Aircraft Inc., each time finding something from his past, leading to a dinner with Dinah that doesn’t go as planned, all before heartbreaking final reveal of the story. This is a story about why Ollie is a great hero, but an often lousy man, and shows that he has the potential for change. The ending will both break your heart, and also give you hope for the Emerald Archer. It’s a story that I would say is perfect, and it still stands up all these years later.
“The Archer’s Quest” Is a Warts and All Look at the Greatest Archer in Comics
Green Arrow is a character who has two speeds, seemingly: either his stories are kind of forgettable basic superhero stories or are character-rich masterpieces. “The Archer’s Quest” is one of the latter. Over the decades, writers have done their best to make the hero into more than the Batman pastiche he was created to be, and this ’00s DC classic did a perfect job of showing off who the character can be and what kind of stories he can have. This is the last truly great Green Arrow story; there have been good stories since this one, but none of them have reached its level.
One of the interesting things about this story is that it shows the direction that DC was starting to take its heroes. There’s a feeling of realism to the characters and the way they deal with their superhero and civilian lives that would play a huge role in the years to come, especially in Meltzer’s Identity Crisis. This story shows readers every side of the character, and showed how well he can be used in more mature stories. It has a little bit of everything, and if you can find it, read it.
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