Green Arrow and Black Canary #1 Review

GREEN ARROW AND BLACK CANARY #1
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Cliff Chiang

Coming out of last month's Wedding Special, this week's GA & BC picks up several weeks after the death of Green Arrow. Dinah is becoming more and more brutal in her search for answers and nearly beats a man to death before Connor steps in to stop her.

The rest of the issue does a good job of recapping the cliffhanger death from the Wedding Special and showing the condolences of many of the heroes. The only conspicuous people shown are the Amazons asking Dinah to come join them away from the world of men. Winick doesn't beat around the bush or try to build up anything suspcious here and basically beats us over the head with this obvious clue.

After the recap, we get a nice exchange between Hal Jordan, Ollie's best friend, and Dinah concerning how she is taking his death and Hal suggesting she bury him already and how even his ring says it's really Ollie. Cue Batman, who arrives to show how much smarter he is than everyone else, even all powerful alien rings and modern science. After going through a barrage of tests with Dr Mid-nite, Batman reveals that it is not actually Ollie that died, but Everyman, a shapeshifter that had some face time in 52 and was apparently imitating Ollie here for some reason and undisclosed amount of time.

Going over possible grudges or people approaching her after Ollie's death, Dinah realizes that Athena and the Amazons are the only ones that have done anything suspicious since then. The scene then switches and we see Ollie caged in the air, still alive and surrounded by dozens of Amazons on Themyscira.

For those out of the loop, Athena is really Granny Goodness from Apokolips. My guess is she wanted to convert Dinah to her cause similar to Holly and Harley in the pages of Countdown by offering her a place with the Amazons after Ollie's death. Why she would want the all too human Black Canary is beyond me when she had an entire army of Amazons at her disposal for Amazons Attack before she wisked them all away and made them human with no memories of their Amazon lives.

I was really disappointed to see this become just another Countdown tie-in. I was expecting something related to Deathstroke at the very least. My recommendation is to just ignore this and read the reviews / summaries online. Not much happens and what little that does is not worth the cover price.

Verdict - Avoid It

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