Green Arrow #35 Review

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Reviewer: John Babos
Story Title: What’s Green and Yellow and Red All Over? (City Walls – Part Two)

Written by: Judd Winick
Penciled by: Phil Hester
Inked by: Ande Parks
Colored by by: Guy Major
Lettered by: Clem Robins
Associate Editor: Michael Wright
Editor: Bob Schreck
Publisher: DC

Writer Judd Winick’s second, and more super-heroish, arc continues with perennial Batman foil the Riddler on the loose in Star City.

When I was younger, I used to just love all of Batman’s quirky villains. The Joker was clearly my favorite. The Penguin became my second favorite, due in large part to his brief tenure with John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad in the 1980s. The Riddler rounded out my fave top 3. His appeal for me were his riddles – I would spend time trying to decipher them which would lead to me taking at least a few days to read 1 comic book (I’ve never been good with riddles, particularly those thought up by a psychotic). In all seriousness, it was the Riddler’s intellect and self-defeating tendencies (by giving clues to the World’s Greatest Detective) that intrigued me. This contrast was appealing.

Following his appearance in the mega-popular Jim Lee-pencilled Hush arc in the Batman series, the Riddler is contracted to “liberate” some artefacts in the pages of Green Arrow. In the process he undertakes some odd, theatrical, and distracting “crimes” – he painted an art restoration lab with blue industrial grade dye; he knocked-out, hog-tied and stripped the local basketball team to their skivvies; filled a key business building with eight tons of dried prunes; strapped balloons to elephants in the zoo and made them “fly”; etc… Kooky stuff.

However, while the Riddler undertakes his spree, our hero Oliver Queen reconciles with his young ward Mia and comes to terms himself with his lapse in judgement many issues ago when he cheated on his girlfriend Dinah Lance, the Black Canary – something Mia found out about and was angry over. We also continue to see Mia’s slow evolution into a super-hero sidekick with her practicing using the bow and arrow – this is turning out to be a solid subplot with the most advancement under Winick’s watch.

The issue ends in a great cliffhanger that spells serious trouble for Star City and beyond.

Judd Winick continues to improve with every issue of Green Arrow. The added human dimensions really make this book interesting.

Phil Hester is an awesome penciller. I can’t believe that he’s almost drawn all of Green Arrow’s 35 issue run. That’s virtually unheard of his mainstream comics. His pencils are as crisp as they were roughly 3 years ago when he and Kevin Smith launched this title. Wow!

If you like wrapping your head around riddles, enjoy the ups and downs of human drama, and you find super-hero/villain hijinks entertaining, Green Arrow #35 is for you!

John is a long-time pop culture fan, comics historian, and blogger. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief at Comics Nexus. Prior to being EIC he has produced several column series including DEMYTHIFY, NEAR MINT MEMORIES and the ONE FAN'S TRIALS at the Nexus plus a stint at Bleeding Cool producing the COMICS REALISM column. As BabosScribe, John is active on his twitter account, his facebook page, his instagram feed and welcomes any and all feedback. Bring it on!