Vigilante With a Beard or Handsome Man On a Salmon Ladder?

So here’s the thing… One character I have always been interested in is the Green Arrow. Did I find out about him through the popular TV show where he performs feats of athletic prowess like the salmon ladder pictured within this text? Yes. Yes, I did. However, I didn’t stay for the salmon ladder exercises, the allure for me was found in his brooding vigilante character armed with a bow and a purpose.

His depiction in the TV show is a person who has been hurt, but has become stronger because of it… like a callus. You learn about how he was shipwrecked on an island for 5 years and comes back to fix the city of Starling. He sets up shop and starts taking out wealthy people doing nefarious things to the good people in the city. His tactics of severe intimidation accompanied by his catch phrase: “You have failed this city,” are usually enough to make the wrong-doers repent and fix whatever they did wrong, but for those more hesitant, Oliver sort of… Does it for them, by what ever means necessary.

This was the Oliver Queen I knew until I sat in class and saw the cover of Green Lantern-Green Arrow, where my Oliver Queen was suddenly depicted as a blonde slightly older gentleman with a beard. To say I was shocked is an understatement. Naturally, I had to do some more digging on my favorite archer and where he came from and found out that not only did he start out leaping through windows and on top of buildings, but looked painfully like everyone’s stereotypical idea of Robin Hood. Green Arrow and Speedy seemed to be the classic heroes bursting into rooms as the bad guys gasp their names in horror.

However, the interesting thing about Green Arrow is that he has been rebooted many times over the years. He had an extensive run in 1988 where we see Oliver a bit more vulnerable than usual. He has self-doubt and confides in a loved on about his struggles, which is not so easily done by the Oliver Queen of 2012. The revised Oliver Queen as seen in Arrow is more reserved with his loved ones when he first gets back, he doesn’t openly share his feelings for a while and even then it usually isn’t voluntary.

However, the character that 2012 Oliver Queen represents makes sense for the new demographic that the content is being written for. When he was first written in 1944, the US had just gotten out of a war and the world was still shaken. At that time, the people wanted a simple hero, who would magically zoom onto rooftops, defeat the bad guys in one swoop and not say or emote anything much deeper than “Oh darn.” When Green Lantern-Green Arrow came out and revamped Green Arrow, the writers highlighted the dichotomy of Green Lantern, who always did things the right, legal way as opposed to Green Arrow who focused more on complexity of people and circumstances, leading him to be a vigilante in the eyes of the law. This pairing of characters has been seen in DC Comics with Superman and Batman, having a similar divide in how they went about getting justice.

Now, let’s look at 2012 Green Arrow. He is a broody, extremely well-off man who comes back from being cast onto and tortured on an uncharted island. He goes through horrible things while on the island and has to return to the city that his father has tasked him with saving. Queen exhibits signs of great trauma that certainly could be connected to PTSD, understandably. He is not the person he was when he was initially shipwrecked. He has been hurt and he knows it, but after existing in a world of pure survival for 5 years, he has to come back and readjust to being around people who care about him. They highlight the corruption he is trying to dispel from the city and the audience cheers him on, but when he is just Oliver, there is a disconnect from his humanity that he can’t seem to get past.

In this way, the audience feels for him, because he has been through so much and seemingly “recovered,” but he’s also not perfect. The stakes for Oliver are extremely high, none of the people on his hit list (for lack of a better term) can be left unaccounted for. He takes on the role of judge, jury, and executioner, which is what makes his vigilantism such a problem. He sees justice as something to be practically dispensed for those who have done wrong and his inability to depend on anyone but himself causes him to believe he is the only person who can do it. He isolates and distances himself from others and he claims it’s for their protection, but I think it’s also because after 5 years simply trying to stay alive, he doesn’t know how to depend on people anymore. He is self-reliant to a fault. Which is so beautifully human, that people connect with, sympathize with and root for him. In a way, perhaps in today’s world we want our “superheroes” to be painfully human with flaws and issues, so we don’t feel so alone.