Absolute Green Arrow #1 Fires True
It’s not revolutionary to believe that billionaires shouldn’t exist and that the rich should be held responsible for their actions. But when you’re living in a world where the President of the United States of America has alleged connections to the world’s most famous human trafficker, it makes everything seem mundane in comparison. Nothing is happening to him or the laundry list of other rich and famous people who should have their hands held to the fire for their crimes.
Big 2 comics typically rely on the laurels of smashing your action fingers together, which doesn’t feel right with everything going on around them. Absolute Green Arrow has the teeth and strength to fire an arrow to the heart in order to tell a story of these people getting what they deserve. It is revolutionary for a company like DC Comics, under the Warner Bros. umbrella, to publish a story like this.
After the brutal murder of billionaire Oliver Queen, a killer has appeared who is spending his time chopping down the corrupt elite with tactical efficiency. Oliver’s former business partner and multi-time accused trafficker is one of the first targets taken out, and the mystery begins. Former police officer and current bodyguard Dinah Lance is hired by another one of the corrupt elite to protect her from the newly dubbed Green Arrow Killer. With her detective expertise and MMA background, she is the perfect fit to protect Hector Hammond from the righteous fury of the Green Arrow Killer.
The book does not hide its real-life influences, with allusions to Jeffrey Epstein and references to a trafficking island in the first few pages. There isn’t space to debate the thoughts or intent of the book because it’s written out plainly for you, that the elite deserve what is coming to them. We live in a world so heavily divided by debate and conspiracy that the elite took part in fostering. With modern technology, we see every possible angle of every story for a 24-hour news cycle. It’s information broken down by opinionated voices whose job is to distract or entertain more than to bring a sense of justice to the world.
Rafael Alburquerque and Pornsak Pichetshote use cell phones as a narrative device to underscore that this is what is happening all around us. There is a page where the news of Jubal Slade’s murder is being examined through different lenses. We start with the corporate news lens, which is clean and specifically uses the word “alleged” about his crimes.
Another panel brings it to just a man posting from his car, ala TikTok or Reels. He talks about how many women have accused him. It’s a show that, logically, if there is so much evidence for one thing, calling it another just feels inauthentic to what reporting could be. There are clear allusions to the use of media in past works like The Dark Knight Returns, but for a modern era. It’s a perfect framing device for a look outside the book into the world we know.
But for our main point-of-view character in Absolute Green Arrow, we have Dinah Lance, who shares the same thoughts about the elite that we have seen swirling around in the book. She starts talking about a Berkley study on money and empathy. The gist of it is that with more money, there is less empathy for the world around us, and that the rich feel more entitled to take from others. She brings up the Mirror Neuron being suppressed by money, so the elite cannot have the empathy to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. This is especially hard when Dinah herself is working so hard to pay for her father’s treatments.
Pornsak Pichetshote and Rafael Alburquerque have crafted a version of Black Canary we can see ourselves in because she’s stuck in this place where she has to work for one of the elite to essentially pay for her father’s life to continue. It’s a harrowing look at what so many people go through every day, working whatever job they can to fight for the right to even exist. It’s a powerful use of the familiar to put yourself in a character’s shoes, amidst so much violence and catharsis we never get to feel in our own.
Absolute Green Arrow has been touted as a slasher with horror elements, which it delivers tenfold. The power of the slasher genre is its righteous justice dished out by the slashers themselves. So many slashers have a reason for what they do, and it’s why we return to the genre so often. For example, Mrs. Vorhees in the original Friday the 13th is killing camp counselors to get justice for the death of her son.
She is doing something heinous to get the justice the system won’t give to her. There is a part in most people that roots for those without power reclaiming it by any means necessary. It’s why Absolute Green Arrow works so well, even beside the incredible art, coloring, and lettering by Rafael Alburquerque, Marcelo Maiolo, and Jeff Powell.
The Green Arrow killer is giving us the catharsis we want by seeing these horrible men receive their just desserts. We read about their crimes and the horrible injustices they push onto others without even so much as a slap on the wrist. It’s not just justice; it brings a brutality that matches the gravity of their crimes. It’s comforting to see this kind of justice; it’s why we read comics in the first place.
We want to see good prevail, but with crimes as heinous as these, we don’t just want to see cuffs on their wrists. We want these people to truly pay for their crimes because we live in a world where they seem to never face the music. Green Arrow strums his bow to make them pay the piper.
Absolute Green Arrow never shies away from the horrors outside of its pages. But in these pages, we find justice and the revenge so many of us can only imagine. When those in power lack the empathy to care about their fellow humans, why wouldn’t we root for the man bringing them to account for what they have done? Absolute Green Arrow is the hero the world needs, even if the river of blood trailing behind stains every hand it touches.
