Green Arrow #21 continues the story of the Freshwater Killer. Just like every issue before, Chris Condon begins by contextualizing the story in a more lifelike way than a vigilante with a hood aiming boxing glove-shaped arrows at bad guys. No, this Green Arrow story continues to make the reader wonder how often this happens today. How many people are impacted by chemicals in their community system? And from there, the story only leaps to higher bounds.
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Oliver Queen is in trouble. Not only has his name been implicated in the Horton Chemical disaster, but there’s an intruder in his house – an intruder who looks a lot like the Freshwater Killer. Wait, aren’t they dead? Clearly not. I mean, this is comics after all, who really stays dead these days? Unfortunately for this intruder, Oliver Queen is more than just Oliver Queen. Maybe this was the wrong house to break into to seek revenge…
Condon handles the pacing in this story excellently. Once again, the issue is over before I know it, and I’m desperate to find out what happens next. While there is a bit of action in this issue, the actual superhero-ing itself is a bit slim, which actually works to drive home how personal this story is.
As a whole, this has arguably been the best Green Arrow has been written in a long, long, long time. Not only do the stakes feel real, but the issue at hand is a true ethical dilemma perfectly suited for DC’s proudest loudmouth. So suited that this issue does the unthinkable and leaves Ollie speechless. Moreover, the story’s utilization of someone breaking into Oliver’s house winds up being the best way to confront both Ollie and the reader with the severity of the situation those in Freshwater have been facing.
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Montos and Adriano Lucas continue to knock everything out of the park. The granular approach to the story that Montos has taken maintains the story’s intensity and helps to emphasize this story as one intended to be more graphic than other comics right now. While at times this causes things to blend together, which some readers may not be a fan of, it mostly works to present the story as one with grit and raw emotion. From here, Adriano Lucas continues to add moments of soft and intense colors to the book, which help to emphasize certain moments as more either serious or sincere. Altogether, the book is beautifully drawn and colored by a great duo who continue to add to the emotional gravity of a story as lifelike as this.
Green Arrow #21 is another great issue from Chris Condon, Montos, and Adriano Lucas. While the story doesn’t do much for getting things closer to a resolution, it takes a different approach and forces Oliver to reconsider his perspective on his handlings of Horton Chemicals to question just how clean his hands really are. As a result, the story remains a spectacular approach for contextualizing problems that happen every day through the lens of comic books, which may help some readers consider how problems such as these play out in real life.
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