We Don't Have Emotions, And Sometimes That Makes Me Sad...
Awwwww, boooooo. Up until a few days ago, the solicit for this issue had a GREAT cover. Green Arrow 'atop' a 'pile' of arms; with a very effective white background. He was basically being 'consumed by the arms reaching for him. It had excellent balance and a compelling atmosphere. This cover..... feels generic, and really crowded. Green Arrow's too big here to be surrounded by the arms. It just doesn't work, it makes the image feel super cramped. And the positioning of GA and the arms don't work, plus the dull background just makes this feel like a panel instead of a more foreboding white background.
Before starting this issue, I was complaining to a friend how Green Arrow has been perhaps the biggest failure of the New 52, as it has been through THREE different writers, and pretty much been consistently terrible for different reasons. At the end of this issue, I was forced to take that back. I don't know what was wrong with Nocenti for the past 3 issues, but this standalone story had NONE of the pacing atrocities of the issues preceding it.
Also, Steve Kurth doesn't deliver the greatest art in the world, but he gives us a nice standard style that, frankly, just WORKS. It's not the best art for Green Arrow, but isn't super stylized in the wrong way. I think my favorite artist has been Harvel Tolibao, but his style doesn't always do Green Arrow justice. It's super stylized, which I find personally very interesting, but I think Kurth has been the most effective of any GA artist on this current series. There wasn't any super static moments, there was some pretty decent flow, and not a ton of awkward close ups.
And as I said, the story doesn't skip like a record scratched by a tiger. There's a nice solid flow from beginning to end. The story began with a bit of awkwardness in the plot department, I wasn't sure what moral direction Nocenti was trying to go in, but as the issue progressed, I found myself engrossed in the events. This was a seriously BOLD storyline to undergo, executed with elegant simplicity. The subject matter tackled felt almost like something belonging in Batman Beyond, but it never felt completely out of place here. Frankly, there wasn't a lot of Ollie actually AS Green Arrow, but the story was actually better for it. This brought up some great uncertainties in Ollie as it spiraled down a bizarre morally ambiguous path.
In Conclusion: 4.5/5
There were some problems, sure, but honestly there were only minor nitpicks. The fact that this wasn't THE MOST COMPELLING THING makes me a little hesitant about going above 4/5, but the intriguing subject matter won me over; though I don't think it will win everyone over. But what it mostly comes down to is that this is the first issue of Green Arrow that didn't have any massive crippling flaws. We had a solid, if not super unique, artist. We had solid unfractured pacing. We had some cool moral ambiguity and no awkward loose ends. If you've been waiting for Green Arrow to get good again, you should give this issue a look. It's a one-shot story, so you won't be committing yourself to an arc.