Green Arrow OYL (discussion thread)

[Harlekin]

Connor is of with Mia on an island, training.

 

[Darthphere]

Connor is of with Mia on an island, training.

Riiiiight, training.

 

[Harlekin]

Riiiiight, training.

Well, that's what Robin thinks, anyway.

 

[sinewave]

Connor is of with Mia on an island, training.

really? so mia's gonna come back as a badass too, huh? maybe they'll rival the bat-family for the most badass in the dcu.

 

[Darthphere]

really? so mia's gonna come back as a badass too, huh? maybe they'll rival the bat-family for the most badass in the dcu.

Dont go crazy now.

 

[sinewave]

Dont go crazy now.

i don't see why they couldn't. even before he re-trained, ollie was able to handle himself against batman. now that dick's a crappy male-model getting his ash handed to him by jason todd he's obviously not the badass he once was, unfortunately. robin's a lot better as of OYL, but if connor and mia have re-trained then they are too. plus, cassandra's not a member of the bat-family anymore so that leaves them one short, at least until this new batwoman shows up and who knows how good she's gonna be. they could be close.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

ollie shouldn't have to rely on connor to win his battles, i think that's why he decided to re-train himself.

He wouldn't have had to rely on Connor if he didn't put fighting Deathstroke hand-to-hand on his list of things to do. With the amount of planning that obviously went into that trap, Ollie could've found some way to disarm Deathstroke in that glue pit and just pump him full of arrows to weaken him. Getting down there and fighting him pretty evenly with the monstrous disadvantage Deathstroke had was a conscious effort to prove something. Ollie wanted Deathstroke to know that he'd gotten better at fighting. I'm taking issue with the fact that Ollie did get better at fighting and basically remade himself as a quasi-ninja, not the way he took Deathstroke down.

Boy corp,... In the last few threads I've read you in you've been borderline hostile in ref to the direction a few comics have gone.

You almost read as bad as I've gotten.



Props.

Well, when DC starts stripping away major elements of what I love about some of my favorite characters, I tend to get a little annoyed. Better to vent here than just tear up my comics, after all.

 

[Darthphere]

Well Dick is rusty.....I know that sounded bad to anyone else? Still if we include Cassie, she be able to take down ollie blindfolded. If we dont, Batman still has years of training over anyhting Ollie did that one year.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Who would each person in the Arrow family correspond to?

Batman <--> Ollie
Nightwing <--> Arsenal
Batgirl <--> Connor
Robin <--> Speedy

That's the best I can match them up. Given that even the Arrow family's best fighter, Connor, could barely hope to give the Bat family's best fighter, Batgirl, a good fight, I'd say the Bat family can rest easy. Black Canary's arguably still an Arrow family member too, but she's probably even with Batman at best right now.

 

[storyteller]

Dick is pathetic now. Dick wouldnt get his ash owned by someone like jason or some metas.

 

[Darthphere]

Dick is pathetic now. Dick wouldnt get his ash owned by someone like jason or some metas.

Read Outsiders, Dick took down a big group of soldiers recently, off panel but he did it.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Dick is pathetic now. Dick wouldnt get his ash owned by someone like jason or some metas.

I thought Jason was supposed to be as good as Batman himself now. Seems logical for Dick to get taken down by him if that's the case.

 

[sinewave]

I thought Jason was supposed to be as good as Batman himself now. Seems logical for Dick to get taken down by him if that's the case.

but dick's got more experience, is more agile and was more thoroughly taught by batman. he should be better than jason.

 

[Anubis]

You're forgeting the years spent training under Talia and the League of Assasin's after he was resurected. Simply put, he got better.

 

[LorDZeeD]

Black Canary's arguably still an Arrow family member too, but she's probably even with Batman at best right now.

eh? i don't pick up birds of prey, so, erm... eh?

 

[Darthphere]

You're forgeting the years spent training under Talia and the League of Assasin's after he was resurected. Simply put, he got better.

Simply put, its all rubbish. Seriously, why couldnt he die in IC.

 

[BrianWilly]

He beat all of those people in the end, though. I liked that underdog aspect about him. He never even came close to getting his ash kicked by Merlyn, either. Dr. Light was the only one who kicked Ollie's ash in that arc, and I think that should be expected. I would've much rather Ollie call in his son, who's among the top martial artists in the world, to beat the crap out of Slade. He could've easily done it with the help of all of Ollie's traps. It would've worked just as well for the story and it wouldn't have changed Ollie into some wannabe ninja with the wrong color scheme.

I don't mind the prep time thing--that's just Ollie being smart, since he knew Deathstroke would come after him and he had time and (as the mayor) new resources to plan for that. But the whole sword-in-the-quiver gimmick and his becoming this awe-inspiring martial artist in a year was just lame and unnecessary. Ollie got the job done just fine before with some good, old-fashioned fisticuffs and archery. No need to throw Eastern arts that I have trouble believing Ollie would ever sit down and have the discipline to learn into the mix.

Both Drakon and the Riddler beat him. Oh sure, Shift got Drakon in the end and the Riddler had to run away, but that arc ended with Ollie with his ash kicked, tied down on an operating table. Oh, and then his house exploded. The next arc, his entire city got set on fire and he got pumped full of arrows in the chest. I don't mind him being the underdog, especially compared to mofos like Batman and Superman, but I have no interest in reading stories about heroes who keep losing all the time and, worse, have no interest in getting their act together. I mean, we have the X-Men for that.

Ollie once checked himself into a Buddhist monastery to get some perspective on his life; that's how he "met" Connor in the first place. I don't think it's very out of character at all for him to sit down and seriously learn something, especially after all the sht he's gone through. Heck, isn't his origin story that he got stuck on an island and had to sit down and patiently learn the discipline of archery??

"And of all the exercises the old man put me through, it was never the lesson itself that taught me the value of patience. It was his example. When he wasn't shooting his mouth of about social injustice and corporate 'fat-cats'...the man could be as serene...as water. Beneath the bluster of the Green Arrow, Oliver Queen was a man with time on his hands. And I've spent my life trying to be that same kind of man."
-Roy Harper, Quiver

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I remembered everything about GA's past after I'd posted that he wouldn't be able to sit through training. My mistake, he could definitely commit himself to training and follow through.

As for the other stuff, though, Drakon's good enough to kick Connor's ash, so the fact that he handed Ollie his ash is pretty much to be expected. Riddler got Ollie on that operating table because he planned and laid out traps for Ollie. He's the Riddler; that's what he does. I don't recall the Riddler actually beating Ollie up hand-to-hand in a fair fight or anything, so it's not like Ollie has the shame of the Riddler "kicking his ash" hanging over him. He fell into some of the Riddler's traps; big deal--Batman's fallen into the Riddler's traps time and again.

I don't think Ollie got beaten any worse than any other hero does at some point. He had a string of bad luck that resulted in his house exploding, his city burning, etc., but that has nothing to do with the martial arts stuff, which is the only thing I'm taking issue with. He wised up in the 52 year and learned to protect himself better by stealing some of Batman's prep time mojo--fine, I actually like that aspect because, as you pointed out, he'd be an object of ridicule if he didn't get his ash in gear after all that happened to him and start working harder to protect himself and his family.

But the whole idea of Ollie as a highly trained ninja badass just reeks of lameness to me. That's not what Ollie's about. Part of why I like him is because guys come at him with martial arts and smack him around, thinking he's easy prey because he's not a highly trained martial artist himself (like roughly 99.99999% of the rest of the unpowered superhero community), and then Ollie fakes them out and shoves an arrow in their face. There's not as much tension when Ollie goes into a fight now. He's a badass ninja with his little sword for effective close-quarters combat against the likes of Deathstroke and he still has trick arrows and pretty much the best marksmanship ever heard of. He's basically a tank at this point, and under Winick's pen I can easily see him going the way of Amazo-stomping Batman, at which point I'd have to drop his comic in disgust and wait for some new writer to bring him back to his scrappy archer essence.

eh? i don't pick up birds of prey, so, erm... eh?

Black Canary had been training pretty steadily under Lady Shiva and various other master martial artists for the last year or two before Infinite Crisis. OYL, she's basically swapped lives with Lady Shiva--Shiva's filling her spot on the Birds and Dinah's living in a poor town with dudes trying to kill her every other day because Shiva lived there for a while in her youth.

 

[Manic]

I want to know what part of her youth Shiva lived in that village, because the b**** is from Detroit.

Anyway, I think it's good that Ollie has improved his close combat. Arrows are a long-distance weapon, and his scrapping ability has always been just good enough to handle your average street thug. His hand-to-hand had him at a disadvantage.

Black Canary is one of the best hand-to-hand fighters out there, AND she has a superpower, and she's never short on real challenges. And since I highly doubt Ollie could've reached her level in this past year, I don't think we need to worry about him being too good. I mean, this was Ollie with prep time. How often does Ollie ever have prep time?

 

[TheCorpulent1]

People sometimes travel in their youth. She didn't necessarily have to grow up in Detroit from birth to adulthood, did she? I don't know if it's in continuity that she never left Detroit or something, though.

Ollie used to beat the crap out of people by using his bow as a blunt object if they came in too close for his arrows to work. Or he'd just pull out an arrow and stab them.

Point about prep time. That's why I'm not upset about the fight in general, just the cheesy ninja sword action. I'm hoping Deathstroke busts loose at some point and hands Ollie his ash in a fair throw-down. Preferrably shouting, "Where's your little sword now, *****?!"

 

[sinewave]

You're forgeting the years spent training under Talia and the League of Assasin's after he was resurected. Simply put, he got better.

no, i'm not forgetting that. is there much of a difference between training under the league of assasins or training under batman?

 

[sinewave]

People sometimes travel in their youth. She didn't necessarily have to grow up in Detroit from birth to adulthood, did she? I don't know if it's in continuity that she never left Detroit or something, though.

Ollie used to beat the crap out of people by using his bow as a blunt object if they came in too close for his arrows to work. Or he'd just pull out an arrow and stab them.

Point about prep time. That's why I'm not upset about the fight in general, just the cheesy ninja sword action. I'm hoping Deathstroke busts loose at some point and hands Ollie his ash in a fair throw-down. Preferrably shouting, "Where's your little sword now, *****?!"

don't forget that ollie took down solomon grundy, with a broken bow.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Solomon Grundy's power level is one of the most inconsistent in comics, but that was cool.

 

[sinewave]

Solomon Grundy's power level is one of the most inconsistent in comics, but that was cool.

true and true.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Dick is pathetic now. Dick wouldnt get his ash owned by someone like jason or some metas.

I like to pretend that Jones's arc on Nightwing isn't happening. Hopefully DC is doing the same thing too.