IPTAT: Emerald Archer
Arrowsmiths - Part Two
I’m putting together a team… multiple teams, in fact.
Team 7: Arrowsmiths
Archers assembled
Hawkeye/Clint Barton (Marvel comics)
Green Arrow/Oliver Queen (DC Comics)
Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games)
Legolas (The Lord of the Rings)
The bow and arrow is a classic weapon used in mythology, containing its use to this day across fantasy, sci-fi, action, adventure, and just about every setting you can imagine where it’d be effective to shoot something pointy from a springy string tool thing. These are technical terms.
2. Green Arrow/Oliver Queen
First appearance: More Fun Comics #73, November 1941
Popular entertainment of 1941:
Citizen Kane - film starring Orson Welles
Men At Work - television variety series
Random Harvest - novel written by James Hilton
Created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp, Oliver Jonas Queen, better known as the Green Arrow, has a long and varied history in DC Comics and other related forms of media, which was heavily reinterpreted for The CW’s foundational Arrowverse series, Arrow.
Initially starting out as basically “Green Batman,” Queen was a wealthy playboy who, after being stranded on a deserted island, was forced to master archery to survive.
The Batman clone characteristics came complete with a teenage sidekick, Speedy/Roy Harper, an “Arrowcave,” an “Arrowcar,” and a vast array of gadgets.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams revamped the archer. Queen lost his fortune and his former “Robin Hood” image was replaced by a passionate, outspoken, liberal crusader against social injustice (racism, pollution, corporate greed). The activist archer archetype remains part of Green Arrow’s personality to this day.
Queen also maintains his long-standing, often turbulent, relationship with Black Canary/Dinah Lance. Harper would go on to adopt the vigilante names of Arsenal and Red Arrow along his journey into an adult superhero.
Queen was famously killed in a plane explosion in the mid-1990s (the “Zero Hour” event), with his son, Connor Hawke (the second Green Arrow), taking over the mantle. He was resurrected in the early 2000s and eventually married Black Canary.
Queen has been a member of the Justice League and, in some continuities, served as the Mayor of Star City (or Seattle). He has also fought alongside the Seven Soldiers of Victory and the Justice Society of America.
The 2012 TV series Arrow (which launched the Arrowverse) took a gritty, grounded approach, heavily influenced by Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. The show would eventually incorporate numerous comic-based elements, including even having Queen become a version of the Spectre.
Queen’s family would be extended in the form of a half-sister named Emiko who would later go by the superhero name of Red Arrow.
Green Arrow is famous for his expansive, often absurd, arsenal of “trick arrows.” The most famous and recognizable is the Boxing-Glove Arrow. He also has used a Net Arrow, a Glue Arrow, an Acid Arrow, a Flashlight Arrow, and a highly versatile Cryonic Arrow.
Green Arrow’s political views are as pointed as his arrows, but he’ll need to find common ground with his fellow archers if he want a chance to succeed in the tournament.
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