Arrow Season 2.5 #5 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Marc Guggenheim, Keto Shimizu
Art By: Joe Bennett, Craig Yeung, Szymon Kudranski
Digital Price: $0.99
Release Date: October 27, 2014

Church Is Weird

Last chapter of Arrow Season 2.5 was just a waste of time in my opinion.  The entire issue was just a flashback to Season 2 of Arrow, where we happened to see that after Sebastian Blood died by Ravager's sword, Clinton Hogue was hiding in the closet and claimed Blood's mask to become the new Brother Blood.  Also it seems that since Diggle and Felicity had Hogue tied up and interrogated, they've been on his mind ever since and he employed a sketch artist to create their likenesses because I guess he wants some payback.  Now this has to be the best sketch artist I've ever seen work off of memory because these drawings are dead on.  Hopefully this doesn't come back to bite our heroes in the ass.............  Yeah I know it's going to happen.  Let's check out what this issue has in store for us. 

Explain It!:

Our story begins with Laurel Lance questioning the psychopath that the Arrow took out before, who was doing some ranting about God's will and all that nonsense, while waving a gun at a hostage.  During the interrogation he let's the name Blood slip and Laurel goes back to Oliver with the information of Sebastian Blood's possible resurrection.  Even though Oliver isn't really buying the idea of resurrection, Diggle gets him to go check out the old burned out orphanage that Sebastian went to as a child.  You know because it's a church as well........ Did we know that?  Either way church's are all rife with God stuff so it seems like a decent lead to check out.

On the sunny beaches of Corto Malteze, the still very much alive Malcolm Merlyn completely ruins a nice trip to the beach by explaining to Thea that even though it looks nice now, once the sun sets it becomes a place for crime.  The tourists and the summer fun masks what this place truly is and Malcolm throws all chances of winning the father of the year award because his first vacation with his daughter is ruined by him having to be all dark and mysterious.  Throw a goddamn beach ball Malcolm and chill out.  Yeah, I know that this is the beginning of Thea's training, but is a little fun out of the question?

Over at that burned out orphanage, Clinton Hogue is walking through the......... catacombs?  The basement to this orphanage seems to go on forever and I don't really know what we'd call it.  Giant rooms, long corridors, I don't know, I guess we'll just go with basement.  It's just that basement sounds so one roomy.  Anyway, Clinton is walking with a Mr. Green, who seems to be one of the homeless that Hogue is recruiting to his faith and he tells Mr. Glass that even though his faith isn't as strong as others, he still needs soldiers and he just might fit the bill.  We leave Hogue and Green when they enter a room and we see that Brother Blood has one of Deathstroke's mirakuru soldiers chained up.  Are we going to go over everything that happened in Season 2 again?  First Brother Blood and now mirakuru soldiers.  Something original had to happen during the summer gap of the show.

Arrow shows up to the orphanage to check things out, but what he doesn't know is that Diggle came as backup because our hero decided not to answer his comm and you know how Felicity worries.  Anyway Diggle gets a baseball bat to the back of the head and we see that each of Brother Blood's flock has one of the sketches from last issue and I don't know what the reward for bagging a Diggle is, but man do they seem happy.  Oliver isn't having it any better because he actually comes across Brother Blood, who claims that he has resurrected and before our hero can fact check that statement with an arrow, Blood's flock jump him and it looks like it's going to be a long night for the Arrow.

In the end, we have a backup about the students that were taken hostage by terrorists of Kahndaq and the leader decides that he's going to make a video to send to...... I guess America, it's where I'm from and as far as I know, we get all the terrorist videos.  Anyway, the leader claims that he feels no pain and that he's the conduit of the old gods.  He is Khem-Adam and he's going to lead their people back to greatness.  I really don't know how a Arrow Black Adam will work.  Is he just some religious nut that claims he doesn't feel pain?  Is he like Dark Man or does he have some mirakuru going on over in Kahndaq?  I guess we'll see when Amanda Waller sends some Task Force X in.

That's it for this chapter and man is it a step above what we got last chapter.  Well it's probably a couple steps above, because man was that last issue lacking.  We've got a confrontation with the new Brother Blood, some peril for our sidekick......... some more peril for our other sidekick because Roy's still laid up from his injuries.  It's just an all around better issue and man am I happy.  See you in two weeks as we continue our adventure of what happened between season two and three.  See you then.

Bits and Pieces:

Like usual, the art in this book is great.  All the characters look like their actor counterparts and I really don't ever have anything bad to say about it.  For the story, well I'm really happy that shit is going down.  After last issue I was a little afraid that this series would continuously use flashbacks, but that doesn't seem to be the case and all my worries were for not.  Go check out this digital title as shit starts getting real from Starling City to Corto Maltese to Kahndaq.

8/10