Direct Course #5

Green Arrow #44

(March 1991)

 “Funny, it seems a bit ...fragile to me." -Mr. Barton

Rock and Runes (part 1) 

by Mike Grell writer, Rick Hoberg penciller, John Nyberg inker, Steve Haynie letterer, Julia Lacquement colorist, Katie Main associate editor, Mike Gold editor. Cover by Mike Grell
                         
Dinah Lance and her friend Marianne are walking down a Seattle street, Marianne enjoying the cool, brisk, autumn air. Dinah is much less cheerful, pointing out the smell of urine from an alleyway. Suddenly, a couple of thugs run by them, snatching their purses. As they attempt to flee, Dinah and Marianne fight back and kick their asses just as the cops arrive. After detaining the criminals into a police van, one of the officers approaches the ladies. He introduces himself as Aloysius Kazcinski, but says they can call him Kaz. Complimenting them on their help, Kaz recognizes Dinah Lance (aka Black Canary) as being Green Arrow (Oliver Queen)'s girlfriend, but that he hasn’t seen him around lately. Dinah confirms that he hasn’t, to which officer Kaz offers to take her out for dinner, but she turns him down. Walking on down the street, Marianne tells her friend the she should have gone with him. Asking if Dinah has heard from Ollie, “I don’t have any idea where he is or where he is. I doubt he does either."

In a forest, a young boy with a bow and arrow is trying to be quiet while chasing after a rabbit. A figure approaches them, scaring the rabbit and the boy off. It’s Oliver Queen, coming up the country hillside of Wales. The boy races to his home, passed some statuary, and straight to his mother and father who are waiting outside. Oliver approaches them, asking the father, who has an eyepatch, for a drink of water. The father shows him to a sculpted fountain, Oliver scoops the water out with a ladle and drinks. Oliver is then told that he must leave, the father does not want any trouble to come to his family. The father tells Oliver that if Mr. Barton sent him, he shouldn’t expect a warm reception, but Ollie denies knowing anyone by that name.

As Oliver leaves the family’s place, a car rolls up behind them. Out of it comes Barton and a couple of other men. They ask the father, whose name is Tom, if they’ve changed their minds yet about his offer. Tom refuses, saying that they will not take his land “I told you before, you and your real estate scavengers can find another piece of land to rape." Barton offers him a rose, saying he could retire on what he pays him for the land, and never have to worry about selling his art again. Tom refuses again, and Barton tells him that he can’t support his family on what he makes with his art, crushing the rose in front of them to drive the point home. Grabbing a hammer off of Tom’s work table, he raises it and threatens to smash one of his works, when an arrow darts by knocking the hammer out of Barton’s hand.

Rising out of the nearby forest, Oliver makes his presence known to Barton. With Barton questioning who he is, Ollie replies that he’s there to give young Tommy some archery lessons “Today’s lesson is sitting ducks.” Barton recognizes he’s American, and tells him that he should leave. Ollie refuses, with Barton backing down he gets into his car and drives away, warning that he’ll be back.

Oliver now aware of what has been going on, and his lukewarm reception by the family, they introduce themselves properly to the man; Tom Jones, Laurel Jones, and Tommy Jones. They invite Ollie into their home for dinner, which he graciously accepts. During dinner, they discuss the problem in more detail with Mr. Barton. He wants them to sell the land, because it has a small brook on it, which Barton wants to dam up to create a lake. This would destroy the trees, and flood over half of the property. Aside from that, he also wants to keep it intact so that his son Tommy can inherit it.

After dinner, Tom guides Ollie to another reason why he won’t sell. He leads him to a holy site built by the druids, an ancient area built in the second or third millennium BC. According to the runes, this was place where heroes would come and rest and drink from the spring. Or at the very least, it’s a device for calculating a lunar eclipse. Tom wants to get the site raised, restored and then recognized as a historical site, which would make Barton unable to flood the area. Tom tells Ollie that nobody will help him, because everybody else owes their livelihood to Barton in some way. He offers Ollie food and lodging, if he will help him get this straightened out.

The next day, Oliver is using a large trebuchet-like structure of Tom’s to pull the ruins up out of the ground. While Tom is away getting supplies, his wife Laurel offers Ollie some lunch. While inside the house, Oliver and Laurel get to know each other a little more. Laurel tells him about her life up to this point, Ollie tells her about America with a cynical view on it “Must have been a hell of a place at some point in time before all those people showed up.” After getting a little closer, Tommy interrupts them to ask if Ollie will show him how to shoot with his bow and arrow.

Outside their house, Oliver admires Tommy’s bow. He tells him that his dad helped him make it with his sculpting talent. To start off, Ollie gives the boy a block of wood to toss high into the air. As he does, Oliver and Laurel steal a glance of attraction to each other. Ollie then aims and fires an arrow up at the block, piercing it right in the center. After feeling a bit guilty about the moment shared between him and the boy’s mother, Ollie suddenly hears the sound of chainsaws.

Rushing over to the ruins site, Oliver witnesses Barton’s men in the middle of knocking down the ancient stones and tearing down the wooden structure Ollie was using earlier. Ollie attacks the men, one of them tries to retaliate with a chainsaws, but Ollie avoids getting hit and punches the man out. More men come after Ollie, one holding his arms back while others start hitting him in the face. Tom finally arrives in his truck, quickly getting out he joins Ollie in the brawl. Eventually the two of them fight all the other men off, Barton’s men limp away in defeat. Looking at the destroyed wooden structure, Ollie offers to replace it with a metal one that their chainsaws won’t cut through.

That night as the family plus Ollie celebrate their victory for the day, over at Mr. Barton’s he talks to somebody on the phone. He wants Tom gone, the unknown person on the other end says that they’ve worked for his father before. They don’t need to know how or why in order to get the job done.

Notes/Observations/Thoughts

• A friend of mine was talking to me about the Arrow TV show last night, so I thought I’d cover something with him in it today. I’m not too familiar with the character before Kevin Smith brought him back, except that he has a huge on again off again relationship with Black Canary and he’s been around since the 40‘s. I know his origin for the most part, I just wanted to read a simple story with him in it to begin.

• This was really good, if a bit simple and reminded me a bit of a procedural show from the early 90‘s. Like if Murder, She Wrote was about Green Arrow instead of Angela Lansbury’s sleuthing. The characters in this story are so much more complex and interesting than the ones I was talking about in The Flash story I wrote about a bit ago.

• The art in here is magnificent. The colors really stand out, and are so vibrant you can almost feel the crispness of the countryside weather, and feel the warmth once Oliver is welcomed inside the home. There’s a nice yellow background when Marianne and Dinah are attacked, emphasizing the suddenness of it all.

• My one minor gripe is that they don’t mention the lady Dinah is with by name at all. I had to go look it up on the DC wiki to write this. Which is fine if you’ve been reading the series, but this is your first issue like it is mine of Mike Grell’s run, you’d be scratching your head wondering who she is.

• There’s a common theme here of Oliver making people flee from him. When we first see him, he makes the rabbit Tommy is hunting run away. He makes Tommy run away to his home. He makes Barton run away, and he with Tom makes Barton’s men run away. I think this is where his attraction to Laurel comes from, because instead of fleeing when they’re alone together, she opens herself up to him instead of hiding like everything else.

• I really like how the dialogue is used in this story. There are no narrator boxes, no thought balloons, they don’t talk an over “realistic” manner like people try to do in modern comics. The symbolism and thematic tones work a lot better when you don’t just blatantly tell the audience what’s going on. This is one of the reasons Walking Dead is so successfully these days. I’m not a huge fan of the series, but I understand why certain things in it work the way they do. You know the characters based on how they act and react, as opposed to knowing exactly what they are thinking. You don’t want a huge climactic event followed by a character thinking “This is so awesome!” It just ruins any tension or atmosphere that you try to establish. Stuff like that usually takes me right out of the story.

• I’m going to cover the next part of this story in my next post, then I’ll cover the Two-Face issue from Batman I mentioned. Once I get to 11 of these posts, I think I’ll cover something outside of both DC & Marvel Universes, and then post 11 Marvel things and go back and forth like that, so I don’t get tired of either place.

Quotes

“That’s what happens to dreamers-- They find reality or rude awakening.” -Green Arrow

The images, story, and all character names on this page are trademarked DC/Marvel Characters, and used without permission. No infringement is intended.