endanger's Green Arrow #17 - The Horse Man Part 1 review

    Avatar image for endanger

    The Horseman of Death

    There was a sound of a dusty, coughing motor, and then there was the sound of a foot roughing the ground below. And there was sounds of chains dangling back-and-forth in rhythm to his strict gait. Then the doors to the nightclub open and shuts. He enters the club. All silence. Not long after that, permanent silence. The man leaves the club, smoke reaches every corner of every room, hovering over the blood which looks like big brushes of red paint on the ground. He is looking for a girl named Dawn, a redhead, and he plans to kill her, but how big is this plan? And what is the motive?

    This issue was extremely simple, colorful, and seemed to be done in a few pages. Mike Grell is a fascinating writer who has an obsession for murder it seems. In fact, he focuses more on the aspects of the crime, the slow build of the story than he seem to focus on Green Arrow himself. I never let this be a determining factor on my enjoyment of the comic, but I do appreciate it very much. Oliver is a very simple and ordinary man in Grell's eyes. He has no redeeming features but a ton of flaws. He doesn't possess the charm and playboy-isms of Batman, he doesn't have the boy scout spirit of Superman, nor is he the strict and adamant Hal Jordan. What he does possess is the failures of the every common citizen, not the happy times or the bad times, but the mundane boringness that brings to his life. There is no grandeur with Oliver, he is as common as they seem, whether we want this in a Superhero or not can be debated, but it's good that a man like Oliver exists, he brings the absolute perfect balance to the world of meta-humans and batgods.

    In fact, Grell doesn't fawn over Oliver's private life, in this issue we see him hanging out with his fiance Dinah, walking about, shopping, sleeping and love-making. Commonfolk life is quite common in Green Arrow lore, but a crime always brings out the longbow hunter in him. He doesn't love it, in fact he kind of hates it, but he does it out of necessity, simply because he has the skills. This time the hunt is for the horseman, the man who is so feared that entire businesses are willing to go bankrupt because of him. Of course, sometimes you wonder how a hero who works without high-tech gadgets, without powers, and certainly frail in close-quarter combat can fight something as deadly as the Horse man. But here we see him, crouching down, hand covering his mouth, flashbacks of a previous crime haunts him. Of course he goes on, but unlike the other superheroes, we know he has a limit, and a very short one at that. And Mike Grell isn't afraid to put him to the test.

    The final few scenes of this issue does its best to twist Oliver's stomach in the worst way, and it brings us the unexpected that we all expect from a good writer. The horseman completes his mission dutifully and effortlessly. It's almost as if he doesn't spare a single though on random superheroes patrolling the city, he finishes his kill and leaves them there, daring them to come catch him. It's almost a very Gotham-way of doing things, but unlike Batman, the killer probably has no fear of Green Arrow the common man. Of course we all expect Oliver to save Dawn, either by getting clues from the police force or interrogating the club himself, the fact that he never got close to doing that was quite the surprise.

    Now we all know that Seattle is Oliver's town to patrol, but this new mystery certainly makes him stand in no man's land with nowhere to turn. This is the limit, he has reached the edge. There is no other way for the Green Arrow but sorrow and pain. And as a comic reader, you gotta love it.

    Other reviews for Green Arrow #17 - The Horse Man Part 1

    This edit will also create new pages on Comic Vine for:

    Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.

    Comment and Save

    Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Comic Vine users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved.