Green Arrow #43 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Ben Percy
Art By: Patrick Zircher, Gabe Eltaeb
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: August 12, 2015

Robots Are Racist

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Let's head on back to Seattle where our hero has really been letting me down lately.... We've had Green Arrow slacking in the hero department and we've even had Oliver Queen slacking in the responsible business man department.  Not only has a slew of racially motivated murders taken place that Green Arrow hasn't been able to solve, Oliver went and signed a deal with a guy to create terrible robots for the police department, creating panic in the streets as tentacled drone monsters racially profile the people of Seattle and even murder folk.  At the end of the last issue, we finally saw our hero taking action, but he disappointed again by getting himself caught by the evil Mr. Zimm and his racist robot.  Hopefully this issue does something to enhance my Green Arrow experience because as of right now, I haven't been a fan of anything that we've seen.  Let's check it out and see what happens.

Explain It!:

Well, it looks like this is the conclusion to our racist vampire/racist robot story and I have to tell you right away, it turns out that the pale ass guy who's been murdering black folks.......... well, apparently he's not a vampire at all.  Just a white ass awful monster of the people variety and I don't know if this was obvious to everyone else, but damn did it seem like he had some sort of supernatural powers going on.  Anyway, Green Arrow is captured and Mr. Zimm, knowing that he's Oliver Queen wants him to turn over all his money to him.......which now I'm really disappointed because everything that we've dealt with was apparently all about money to create more of these drones to weed out the people Zimm feels aren't worthy of life....... Only we saw it as this big murder mystery that turned into a sci-fi movie with robots and I'm left wondering what the hell happened to my Green Arrow comic.  It's just been a mess and I hope that the conclusion of this story is where it ends.

As much as I've been bitching about the last two issues and this story line in general, this issue does manage to stand above the rest because I can actually follow what's going down.  Zimm wants Oliver's money, racist-not vampire-guy wants to kill Zimm because he found out that he's supplying weapons to people who aren't white....... which leads to a confrontation between the two where the racist gets ripped apart by robots.  So we have that and Emiko being worried about her brother and going to Henry for help in finding him.  After a brief argument about Henry participation that ended with Emiko sicking the wolf that Oliver saved in the first part of this story on him, Henry tracks down where the drones are based and equips Emiko with some EMP arrows and a robot hacking arrow and sends her on her way.  The best part of this book is pretty much everything that involves Emiko and even though she doesn't really do much in rescuing Oliver since he took the opportunity of the racist-not vampire getting quartered to escape, she does supply Oliver with the special arrows that once used end the story rather quickly.

In the end, Henry reprograms the robots to explode and Oliver shocks me by having the mother drone holding Zimm sink to the bottom of the ocean........... What's with the murder Oliver?  So all's well that ends well and with the threat neutralized all that's left to think about is........... What the hell was up with the wart faced street lady screaming about night birds?  Man I'm happy that this story is over.

That's it for this issue of Green Arrow and man I don't know what the hell happened to this title.  I was really excited about the creative change initially, but after reading the first part to this story I found myself just sitting back and wondering,..."huh?"  murders, robots, racial profiling...... it's just been crazy and while this issue doesn't do much to better it except for ending the story, it was the best issue so far from this creative team.  Even the art was odd for me because I'm a big fan of Patrick Zircher's art and for the first two issues I couldn't get behind it and I don't know if I just got used to it or if something changed, but here it's the best it's been and I actually dug it.  So yeah, while I'm not a fan of this new take on Green Arrow, this is the best we've gotten so far and hopefully it keeps upping it's game in the issues that follow.  Also I hope that Emiko gets a larger role to play from here on out because she was really the star of this book.

Bits and Pieces:

It's taken two issues, but I'm finally behind the art in this book and I'm so thankful because I'm a huge fan of Patrick Zircher and I hate to not like his work.  The story likewise has gotten better but that's only because of the inclusion of Emiko to the story and the fact that it's finally over so we can move on to something new.  This first story arc is a mess and I can't recommend it to anyone, but at least it looks like it's starting to become something that I'd want to see in a Green Arrow book........ at least I hope so.

5.8/10