Green Arrow #44 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Ben Percy
Art By: Patrick Zircher, Fabrizio Fiorentino, Gabe Eltaeb
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: September 2, 2015

The Secret Origins of.........George?

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

I'm a little hesitant to step back into Seattle because the last time I was here it was full of racist robots and a white supremacist who wasn't even a vampire like I swore up and down that he was........ disappointments all around really.  Anyway, during Green Arrow's pseudo pursuit to get to the bottom of the last story arc's.......... big bad?  I'm not actually sure what Green Arrow was trying to do or really what the main antagonist Mr. Zimm was trying to do because the story was all over the place, but Oliver happened to come in the possession of a Wolf, who Emiko later named George and even though we really haven't had any Green Arrow action going on since this creative change, it looks like we're not going to get much here either.  Let's jump into this issue and find out about a wolf.

Explain It!:

Our story begins with Oliver on a date...... but apparently not a very good one because they're walking through the fish market and Oliver is walking George.  Maybe it's just me, but if you bring a pet to a date........ especially one that happens to be a half-wolf, you're begging for an excuse to leave from the get go.  This is made abundantly clear as we listen in on Oliver's most private thoughts from his monologue about how this girl is beginning to ask too many questions that he can't answer........... and then it becomes a psychic story about George.  I'm not kidding, Oliver's girlfriend gets him to go into a psychic's shop and we're re-introduced to that hideous wart woman from the previous story arc, who apparently has been doing pretty well for herself since then because now she has a shop, she isn't on the street screaming about night birds and is instead telling people about their pets.  

Our secret origin begins with a blizzard that completely shut off a village called Burns, where the wolves became hungry and brazen enough to begin attacking people and getting the taste for human flesh.  Eventually, these wolves killed and ate the entire village and if it wasn't for an old Indian man named Old One, they might have moved on to another village, but they would never get the chance because he killed them all with his gun and when he ran out of bullets, he killed them with a magic axe created from the jaw bone of a demon.......... Yeah, shit is getting crazy.  Instead of killing the Alpha of the pack......after battling it for a day and a night......really?  Old One took him home and healed him and the two became friends....... crazy has moved to ridiculous at this point.  So the two hunted and did whatever a man and a wolf do out in the wilderness until they were attacked by a cult that uses bones for their magic.  After putting up a good fight, both the old man and the wolf were killed and the cult took possession of the axe.......... but that wouldn't be the end of the wolf's bloodline.  We find out that the wolf had knocked up a huskee and that a lone puppy was born.  Anyway, George was born, then bought by a dog fighting aficionado......which brings us to our current story.

In the end, after the psychic is finished with her dog whispering, Oliver ends his date and is then immediately attacked by that bone loving cult.  As our story closes we see that Oliver is being saved by Tarantula and that this cult wants his dog because of it's bones!........... Remember when we used to have Green Arrow in Green Arrow books?  Good times.

That's it for this issue of Green Arrow and even though I eventually got on the trolley with the art and can dig it now, I have no idea what Ben Percy is up to with these stories.  The first story arc felt like a complete and utter mess and just when I hoped that the worst was behind us and that we'd finally get back to a Green Arrow story.......we have a secret origin about a half-wolf.  Now don't get me wrong, I thought that the story was really interesting, but it in no ways made me think of Green Arrow and for us to get out of that story about the bone cult and then have our hero immediately attacked by said cult is just........disappointing.  The best part of the last story arc was the inclusion of Emiko and here she's completely absent and this issue is also devoid of any Green Arrow..... just Ollie complaining to himself about his relationship problems.  This book is really bringing me down and I hope that now that we got George's backstory out of the way that this new story arc can become fun and can maybe resemble a Green Arrow book.

Bits and Pieces:

For anyone out there that thought that the last story arc was missing a crucial element, like the actual title character of the book, don't go running to your comic shops and picking up the latest Green Arrow just yet because what you will find instead is backstory on Ollie's new wolf pet and while it's well written, it's just not Green Arrow and it completely left me wanting more.

4/10