Month: March 2022

Out With The Old Underworld, In With The New

A reader got in touch this week to let me know I’d missed a character in the New Gods fight in issue #2 of HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE annotations. While I was updating the Acknowledgements page, I noticed the logo that I’d created for use on the UNDERWORLD UNLEASHED pages:

I’ve never liked it – it’s too scratchy and rough, plus it doesn’t share the colour scheme from the actual series. I made it in 2018, though, so I’ve had a bit more practice putting together logos with all of the UNTOLD TALES covers I’ve done since then, so have re-done the logo like so:

I think that looks much neater, even if I say so myself.

Random Retrospective #12 – Green Arrow #105

Back in the days when legacy heroes were still a big thing at DC, we had Connor Hawke as Green Arrow – a young man who spent many of his formative years at a Buddhist monastery where he met his father Ollie Queen, the original Green Arrow, and ended up following in his footsteps. Here, soon after Ollie’s demise in issue #100, Connor and his travelling partner Eddie Fyers are trying to bring Milos Armitage, an arms dealer and all-round scumbag, to justice, and the trail has led to Gotham where things get complicated as Armitage also happens to have married Connor’s mother, Moonday. To say her grip on history is a little off is being charitable.

This being Gotham, of course, a team up is inevitable but despite Batman being interested in the guns Armitage is selling, it’s Robin that partners up in this issue, though not without the inevitable confusion between good guys that results in a fight.

Thankfully Robin and Green Arrow get on much better and the pair of them team up, find the guns that Armitage is selling and take him down together.

After that, it’s just down to Connor to tell his mother some hard truths while she does everything she can to avoid anything in reality that contradicts her own world view.

Man, that’s a massive case of deflection right there.

I really enjoyed Connor as Green Arrow and as nice as it was to see Ollie return several years later, it seems to have been at the expense of Connor as I don’t think he’s been seen since the New 52 launch over ten years ago.