Although Green Arrow had become one of DC's most prestigious characters in the seventies and eighties, the nineties weren't particularly kind to the character. Oliver Queen was reintegrated into the DC Universe after Mike Grell wrapped up his critically acclaimed stint on the Green Arrow book, but the hero struggled to find his footing and was eventually killed off in 1998 fighting a bunch of eco-terrorists.
As far as deaths go, it wasn't the most gratifying. Complicating matters further was the fact that Queen's son, Connor Hawke, had then taken over the mantle, but it didn't galvanise interest in the book and so Green Arrow was cancelled in 1998.
And there he remained, for a good couple of years. It wasn't until 2001 that DC decided Queen should be resurrected, but the publisher pulled a masterstroke by recruiting Kevin Smith to mastermind the character's comeback. This was Smith's first DC story, and he managed to bring back Queen in superb fashion, offering commentary on the character's development in the seventies and eighties while providing a solid platform for Green Arrow to take the DCU by storm.
The story literally saw Queen plucked from heaven, and although the character has endured mixed fortunes since, Smith's interpretation has remained definitive.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
