Arc Reactor! Green Arrow #22-23: 'Shados'

Andrea Sorrentino's cover for Green Arrow #23

Just seven issues  into Jeff Lemire's run, and Green Arrow has gone from one of the worst titles of DC's New 52, to one of the best. Picking up where issue #21 left off, this second arc is a nice little 2-parter that re-introduces Shado, Count Vertigo, and Richard Dragon into the new DC Universe, and appears to throw a spanner in the workings of Oliver Queen's family history. Spoilers-in-a-nutshell incoming...

BEGINNING OF SPOILERS!!! Green Arrow is still on the hunt for Simon Lacroix (Komodo), the bad guy from a few issues back, so he heads off to a castle in Vlatava on the advice of the mysterious Magus. He kicks the arse off some armed guards and finds Shado in a dungeon. Count Vertigo shows up and starts screwing with Oliver's brain, but Ollie and Shado manage to escape. Shado knows who Oliver is, and claims she had an affair with his father, and that Emiko (Lacroix's daughter) is Oliver's half sister! She explains that she was an assassin hired to train Robert Queen and Simon Lacroix as they hunted for the ancient Green Arrow artefact. Ultimately, Shado and Ollie's dad ended up doing the nasties, and Lacroix became corrupt, killing Robert Queen, taking baby Emiko as his own, and handing Shado over to Count Vertigo to obtain the location of the Green Arrow artefact from her brain. Count Vertigo shows up again and they all have a tussle in the snow, with the good guys coming out on top and leaving Vertigo on his knees. Meanwhile, in Seattle, Richard Dragon has taken out the local crime bosses as he looks to 'take Seattle'. END OF SPOILERS!!!

'Shados' is not the best comic book arc you will ever read, but it does well to set up what could potentially be a kick ass relationship between Oliver and Shado. She is immediately an awesome character in this title and I really want to see more of her in the upcoming War for Seattle storyline.

Jeff Lemire's take on Green Arrow is really refreshing, and I can't help wondering how amazing it would be if this was a Vertigo title. It's a brilliant Teen-rated book that really feels like it's bordering on Mature. Lemire is not afraid to put arrows through people's eyeballs, and his writing style is just generally that little bit more grown-up than than some other DC writers.

Having sung Jeff Lemire's praises, the star of this show for me is Andrea Sorrentino. He's drawing the covers as well as interiors on Green Arrow, and every month this book gets prettier and prettier. The flashback pages in issue #23 are gorgeous, and there are a few larger panels and 2-page spreads in these issues that are totally jaw-dropping. For the first few issues of this run, Sorentino was colouring the books as well, but those duties have now been taken over by Marcelo Maiolo. His style is not too different to Sorrentino's, but his use of a slightly broader palette adds a little more body to the pages. The combination is perfect.

I'll probably write an Arc Reactor! post on Green Arrow quite often, because along with Scott Snyder's Batman title, it's one of the few DC titles I can't get enough of just now. BUY THIS BOOK!