Green Arrow #8

This cover's pretty bland. The posing of Green Arrow and whatever that... dog? thing is, is WAY to close to the front, crowding the entire image, and then the dog thing blends with the background a bit too well, muddling things up even more, and then 1/3 of Skylark is there desperately trying to make sure she's in the image. It's all way too claustrophobic.

Harvey Tolibao's interior artwork is.... very hit and miss. His action scenes vary from nice and fun, to a little awkward; and outside of action he tends to use FAR too many close ups the really crowd the panels. A lot of scenes are hard to follow at times because the background is either not present or impossible to discern.

As for the story.... it suffers from a lot of the same problems as the previous issue. The pacing is just too inconsistent. Well, last issue the pacing was mostly just rushed, this time around it whiplashes around wildly. For starters, there's a HUGE jump between the previous issue and this one. Last time we saw Green Arrow he was conscious and tied to a chair. Suddenly he's out in the wild because 1/3 of Skylark let him go? And what's the deal with them anyways? Their father apparently discourages individuality, but encourages competition between the 'siblings?' WHAT THE GOSH DARN DUCK TOAST is the deal with the triplets? I feel like Nocenti is making things murky to make them 'interesting' but it feels more like she can't come up with an answer interesting enough to justify making it so muddled in the first place; thus relying on the muddledness itself to try and function as the 'interesting hook.' Spoiler Alert: It doesn't.

And then there's a few sections in the issue that feel like they're missing scenes. Like when Green Arrow is meeting Leer for the first time, then suddenly the next page has him in bed with GoodSkylark post coitus. In the first scene, he was agreeing to help her 'fix' her father, the next scene is set as if he's spent days there and has given up hope on the father, talking about Stockholm Syndrome and the like. Or when Green Arrow's fighting a mutant polar bear thing, we cut to a scene with Emerson, then cut back to Green Arrow who's riding off into the sunset with GoodSkylark while the rest of Skylark and Leer watch from a lookout point.

And then there's the whole subplot with Emerson trying to usurp Ollie, but it has some pacing weirdness of its own, rushing like hell, and then, I feel like I remember some stuff in previous issues where Emerson respected Ollie's father and thought Ollie was wasting his life? Where he wanted to be a guiding hand as his father had wanted; but now it seems like he's hated Ollie forever and is determined to run his life into the ground. I think he actually says that almost verbatim.

In Conclusion: 3.5/5

This issue.... it does some things better than last issue. Ollie seems better written this issue. He makes more sarcastic jokes and talks to himself less. But the pacing in this issue, while slowed a bit, is more hectic than last issue. This issue probably has less hiccups in the pacing, but the hiccups are bigger. Suddenly I'm a little less happy with Nocenti's run. It's starting to run the risk of being just as mediocre as the first two runs, just with a different style.