10 Smartest Decisions In DC Superhero History

The Archer's Quest is my favourite Green Arrow book for a host of different reasons. First of all you have Phil Hester and Ande Parks' gorgeous artwork, but when you factor in Brad Meltzer's sincere approach to the well worn comic book trope of death and resurrection - exploring how a character would navigate their own return, were they to ever actually shift off the mortal coil - you're left with one of the character's finest ever stories.

Oliver Queen is perhaps most synonymous with DC's Bronze Age books, thanks largely to the late Denny O'Neil's work on Green Lantern / Green Arrow together with artist Neal Adams, which completely transformed the character from 'ersatz Batman' into the left wing social justice warrior we know and love today.

He's also one of the publisher's most storied characters, and having undergone several different transformations since the creation of the DC Universe (Queen would change yet again in the 1980s, courtesy of writer/artist Mike Grell), there's more cause for him than any other character to take a trip back through memory lane - which is what Archer's Quest essentially does.

The main draw is Meltzer's sincere approach to the resurrection trope though, and it conjures an interesting revelation for Ollie. The book reveals how, in the event of his death, Queen had tasked known supervillain the Shade with destroying his personal items and memorabilia, lest one of his enemies used them against his loved ones.

Shade isn't as successful as GA would've hoped, forcing him to track down the remaining pieces of his past himself, but it's an important quest all the same. Villains have previously used memorabilia to hurt heroes where it matters most, something Dick Grayson found out the hard way during Scott Snyder and Jock's phenomenal Batman: The Black Mirror.