Grab your bow and quiver for this month's Superhero Sunday: Green Arrow! Lets flash back to 1941 when Morton Weisinger and George Papp created/designed Oliver Queen aka the Green Arrow.
The History
Oliver would appear in "More Fun Comics #73" and would spend the next 25 years gaining notice but wouldn't reach real popularity until writer Denny O'neil started working on him in the 60's. From there the popularity has only grown with the character getting a solo TV series.
The Character
This origin is the most current and collected version, there have been many retools and reboots of this character (like many hero's who are decades old). This origin is a hybrid (including TV elements)
Oliver Queen is a rich, arrogant, ego driven workaholic until everything is taken from him. He is young and has the his fathers company, Queen Consolidated, bother his parents have past under mysterious circumstances. But his life changes when he goes out on to travel on a ship and the boat wrecked onto an island.
Oliver Queen must survive the island and become something stronger than he was, but even after his time on the island when he returns and the world thought him to be dead he loses his fathers company and is left with nothing. The arrogant Oliver must be better and must mature. Oliver learns his bow skills on the island but always had a love for robin hood as a child. The mythos of the island only grow in Jeff Lemire's story (New 52). That is the origin. (if this all sounds familiar thats because the original creators saw Green Arrow as the Batman with a bow for Star City).
But with all the iterations of Green Arrow comes his character and who Oliver Queen is. That hero is a man who had to build up after losing his family his company and survive on an island, Oliver Queen protects a city from corruption and is progressive for the liberal rights of all humans. He is known for being friends with Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) and fighting on the Justice League but mostly his own solo work.
Why this hero?
Honestly, I didn't like Green Arrow at first. I thought he was like Hawkeye with a Van Dyke and didn't seem very interesting. As a kid he was the grumpy one on Justice League cartoon. But I was watching a PBS documentary or some other doc and it went of the history of heroes, Green Arrow teaming up to work for equality for all people was amazing. He became more interesting and I wanted to know more.
The Green Arrow is DC's Robin Hood and green solutions and civil rights, he was later revamped to be more a vigilante in the more common sense but was given a deeper mythos including guilds and magic. He is truly an interesting character that has carved out a path in the DC universe. The TV show and new books only add to his depth and keep him interesting.
