The DC Comic That Saved Green Arrow

5. Green Arrow In The Nineties - An Archer Without A Quest?

As was previously mentioned, prior to the 1970s, Green Arrow wasn't exactly one of DC's strongest characters. He'd featured in the Justice League and had managed to carve out a space of his own during the Silver Age of comics, but it wasn't until Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams came along that Oliver Queen became a vital member of the publisher's library.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow was one of the most important comics DC ever published, and it defined Queen for an entire generation. He was outspoken, perhaps even reactionary, but his matter-of-fact approach to the political context of Seventies America was also massively refreshing, and even led to Green Arrow holding his fellow heroes' feet to the fire on numerous occasions.

Then came Mike Grell, and Oli underwent another reboot of sorts. He ditched the Robin Hood hat in favour of a hood, moved from Star City to Seattle, and ditched the trick arrows altogether. Reimagined as a 'Longbow Hunter', Grell depicted a slightly more cynical version of Queen that wasn't afraid to take a life, situated far away from the mainstream of the DC Universe.

After Grell left - and Queen was restored to more familiar surroundings - nothing particularly momentous occurred, save for the introduction of Connor Hawke, who was later revealed to be Queen's son. That said, the Green Arrow of the nineties didn't possess nearly the same transgressive qualities as that of the one from the seventies and eighties - he was lacking another compelling story.

Come 1995 - presumably in an effort to galvanise the Arrow family of characters - DC opted to kill off Queen and have him be replaced by Hawke. Batman scribe Chuck Dixon then took over the book with Oli's son at the helm until it was cancelled in 1998, leaving DC without an Emerald Archer, and with the door apparently closed to the original's return.