The DC Comic That Saved Green Arrow

4. Quiver, Kevin Smith, And The Return Of Oliver Queen

It wasn't until 2001 that Oliver Queen made his return from the dead, and though fans have always been quick to bemoan the sudden resurrection of a deceased superhero, there was a different feel to the return of the original Green Arrow.

For starters, Kevin Smith had been tapped to write the series. Smith - who by this point had helmed Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy, and had written Daredevil: Guardian Devil for Marvel - turned out to be the perfect choice to bring Queen back, and that stemmed from his own love for the Arrow comics of the previous decades.

Dubbed Green Arrow: Quiver, Smith (also joined by Hester) orchestrated Queen's comeback tour by taking a holistic approach to the character's history. He broached all aspects of Queen's past (a theme that would persist into Meltzer's following comic), and in doing so managed to craft a genuinely affecting resurrection. It showcased Oliver struggling to reconcile the hard-travelling hero of the seventies with the darker, more world-weary version he became before his death, and in reappraising the character's two most definitive incarnations, Smith managed to attain the perfect balance.

Put simply, it pushed Green Arrow forward. The character had been lacking direction for years (though three of those years were spent in the afterlife), and Smith's work gave him the perfect foundations to find a new role in a rapidly changing DC continuity.

But there was something else that needed to be addressed. Though Smith had managed to bring Oliver back in a gratifying manner, there wasn't so much as a knowing wink towards the fact that Arrow was yet another DC superhero who was returning from the dead. It was just another thing to be accepted, and it wasn't until Smith departed the title that that particular aspect was appropriately deconstructed.