Happy Father's Day!...Green Arrow is a Terrible Dad.

Happy Father's Day!

Whether you're a father, or you're just celebrating yours, one thing is for certain: you're glad Oliver "Green Arrow" Queen isn't your dad.

That's becuase Oliver Queen is a terrible father -- something that may come into play during the upcoming third season of the hit CW series Arrow, on which we recently discovered that he has an illegitimate son he doesn't know about.

Let's leave aside the fact that Oliver is a notorious whoremonger and that his two biological children (that we know of) are people in whose life he played basically zero role while they grew up. We can assume for the sake of argument that neither Shado nor Moonday Hawke really wanted any part of Oliver's life, and that having a superhero for a dad would actually have put them in more danger than having no meaningful relationship with him.

Let's instead focus on the fact that Oliver Queen abandoned his infant son and then pretended he didn't know the kid existed when they met in person years later.

When Oliver and Connor Hawke first met up, we were led to understand that Oliver (as in the TV series, at least as far as we can tell) didn't know he had a child -- that Connor had been born and raised entirely without Oliver's knowledge and that it wasn't until they happened to be training at the same ashram that they even crossed paths.

It would be several months later -- when Hal Jordan, who had recently been possessed by Parallax and had  been dabbling in time travel and the like (here's a conversation about Zero Hour with its writer/artist Dan Jurgens if you need a primer), told his old pal Oliver about it.

Ollie didn't take it particularly well, storming off and ultimately not really reconciling the knowledge with Connor before his death.

He got better, though, and as part of a cross-country scavenger hunt later on, he and his longtime ward Roy Harper (more on him in a minute) found, among other things, a photograph that served as pretty conclusive evidence that he had, in fact, been aware of Connor's existence all along. You can see that photo at top; it's...prety unequivocal.

Turns out, Oliver just kind of freaked out about the responsibility involved with being a dad and bolted. Apparently Connor's mom understood and never really painted him as a villain for this -- and Connor is even more understanding, as the whole time Oliver was pretending to have no idea he had a son and to be so shocked at the realization, his son knew him to be lying. Connor's mom told him somewhere along the way, and when Oliver finally told his son the truth -- Connnor had to be at death's door, of course -- Connor told him that he already knew it.

Now, you may have gotten the impression over the years that Shado was Connor Hawke's mother. This is a common mistake because, as intimated above, Oliver also had an illegitimate child with Shado.

His name is Robert and he's far less important to the story. Since he's never been a superhero, he's also never really got any of Ollie's (or the writers') attention, and the most we've ever seen him in one story was probably during the Connor Hawke: Dragon's Blood miniseries.

Not to be left out, of course, Oliver's adoptive/foster kids enjoy a pretty messed up relationship with their superhero-dad, too.

During the classic Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories from the '70s, Oliver abandoned his teenage ward Roy Harper to traipse across the country with Hal Jordan, and apparently didn't actually leave anyone in charge of making sure the kid -- left alone with nothing to do and Oliver's limitless financial resources -- didn't get himself in trouble.

Unsurprisingly, he returned home to discover that "Speedy" had developed a drug addiction and, more surprisingly for most superheroes but not so much for Oliver Queen, he freaked out, blamed the kid and hit him.

Yeah, it's very plausible for a father or father figure to have a response like that to a shocking revelation that someone in their care is doing drugs. But it's not exactly superheroic to slap around a half-stoned teenager who clearly needs help.

Then, of course, there's Sin. Shortly before the New 52 reboot, Oliver was married to Dinah (Black Canary) Lance and they had a young girl named Sin that they were taking care of.

She can be seen hanging out with Canary in Arrow -- and the fact that she wasn't there when Sara left at the end of last season raises its own questions about the suitability of Sara as a guardian in the world of the TV series, but if it gets us more Bex Taylor-Klaus in Season Three, that's probably for the better.

In the comics, Sin was being sought by the League of Assassins and, in order to protect her, Oliver faked her death. While this technically separated her from Oliver and Dinah, that seems like uncharacteristically solid parenting, right? I mean, he did what he needed to do to protect Sin and ultimately, he and Canary were secure in the knowledge that they had done their best for her and...

...oh, wait, he didn't tell Black Canary about his decision, and allowed her to believe her foster daughter was dead.

Why?! What possible purpose could this serve? Oh, well it's so that her grief would seem more real to the League of Assassins.

And then he didn't turn around and tell her the minute they weren't around because...umm...something came up.

Of course, in the New 52, none of this has happened...yet...that we know of.