Green Arrow: Year One

AUTHOR: Diggle, Andy

ARTIST: Jock (illustrator); David Baron (colorist); Jared K. Fletcher (letterer)

PUBLISHER: DC Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 2007

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2008

Publication History

More than sixty years after the debut of Green Arrow in issue 73 of More Fun Comics, writer Andy Diggle approached Dan DiDio, then senior vice president and executive editor of DC Comics, and pitched a reimagined take on the hero’s origin story. The pitch was successful, and Diggle began work on the project along with artist Jock (also known as Mark Simpson), with whom he had previously collaborated on The Losers (2003-2006). The duo created a biweekly, six-issue limited series that modernized and reinterpreted Green Arrow’s origin story and featured a visual style and narrative pace appealing to contemporary comics readers.

Plot

Green Arrow: Year One tells the story of Oliver Queen, a spoiled, rich playboy with no regard for others. His only friend is his employee and sidekick, Hackett, who accompanies Oliver on his thrill-seeking trips to exotic places. Toward the beginning of the story, Oliver and Hackett return from an adventure in the mountains to attend a charity auction. While drunk, Oliver spends a large sum of money on a bow used by Howard Hill, the stunt master for the 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood and Oliver’s personal hero. At the auction, Queen inquires about a business deal Hackett has made with a mysterious woman named Chien Na Wei. The deal, which involves the use of Oliver’s yacht and money, seems a bit suspect, but Oliver does not attempt to prevent it.

After winning the auction for the bow, Oliver is embarrassingly rude to the crowd. Becoming sober on the way home, he realizes that he needs to get out of town to avoid the inevitable bad press. Dismissing Hackett’s protests, Oliver insists on joining him on the yacht for the business deal. Once aboard, Oliver brags about his skill with the bow, saying that Hill had once given him lessons and complimented his natural skill as an archer.

With Oliver on the yacht, Hackett’s plans go awry, as he had intended to steal the boat and Oliver’s money without injuring him. Chien Na Wei orders Hackett to kill Oliver, but despite his other treacherous actions, Hackett is unwilling to kill his former friend. Instead, he throws Oliver overboard, leaving him to die in the ocean.

Oliver washes up on an island, where he develops his survival skills over the course of several months. He learns he is not alone when he discovers an opium farm run by Chien Na Wei and cultivated by enslaved islanders. Oliver discovers that Hackett is now on the island as well.

After a near miss with Chien Na Wei’s drug runners and a fight with Hackett, Oliver goes into hiding, seriously injured. Taiana, a pregnant woman native to the island, nurses Oliver back to health and uses opium to medicate him. Once Oliver is physically healed, he experiences a difficult withdrawal from the opium, spending part of this period aboard his rediscovered, beached yacht. There, Oliver finds his Robin Hood bow.

Although he considers repairing the yacht and making his escape, the plight of the islanders convinces him otherwise. He uses the yacht’s radio to call for help before joining forces with the islanders in a fight against Hackett and Chien Na Wei’s men. By the time a navy ship arrives to help, the fight is over. Oliver is a hero, and the islanders call him by a name meaning “Green Arrow.” After helping deliver Taiana’s baby, Oliver returns to the United States to begin life as a better man.

Characters

•Oliver Queen, a.k.a. Green Arrow, the protagonist, is a well-built man with shoulder-length blond hair and a goatee. When stranded on an island, he grows out his beard and uses a green hood to protect himself from the sun. An immature playboy at the start of the series, he becomes a weathered, world-weary man with a mastery of the bow and arrow. Oliver assumes the ideals of Robin Hood when he helps the enslaved people of the island, transforming from a self-centered, wealthy thrill seeker into a heroic champion of the helpless.

•Chien Na Wei, a.k.a. China White, the primary antagonist, is a white-haired Chinese woman with a commanding presence. Her key characteristic is her cruelty, showcased by her harsh punishments for those who displease her. Oliver’s mispronunciation of Wei’s name is apt, considering her opium operation; “China White” is a slang name for heroin. Her continuous pursuit of Oliver pushes him to take heroic action and shut down her operation.

•Hackett, the secondary antagonist, is a well-built man with a buzz cut. Once Oliver’s trusted employee and friend, he betrays Oliver, resulting in Oliver becoming stranded on the island. He acts as the physical antagonist for Green Arrow.

•Taiana, the key supporting protagonist, is a young pregnant woman. Determined to free her people, the island’s native population, she defies the drug producers and helps Oliver when he is injured. She tells Oliver that her people have named him Green Arrow.

Artistic Style

Originally published as a six-issue limited series, Green Arrow: Year One is a fast-paced narrative featuring numerous scenes of action or motion. Jock developed the panels for the series with this in mind, building on techniques he had previously used in The Losers. His artwork uses stylized realism to create the feel of an action film, while the panel placement and use of single-action panels create a heightened sense of motion.

The images become sharper as the series progresses, with more use of contrast. Shadows and dark lines are used to emphasize and communicate emotions such as anger. As the story progresses, Oliver’s face develops darker lines, signaling his physical and emotional transformation.

Green Arrow, or Oliver, is the only character to appear on the covers of issues 1 through 5, while issue 6 features Hackett and Chien Na Wei as well. These highly stylized covers of the individual issues, illustrated and colored by Jock, feature one dominant color and hint at each issue’s storyline in an abstract way. Inside each issue, colorist David Baron uses color as mood lighting for the various scenes. For example, Baron’s use of purple in the panels depicting Oliver’s withdrawal from opium creates a psychotropic feeling, causing the reader to experience Oliver’s pain throughout.

Baron also increases his use of color throughout the story, counterbalancing the occasional lack of basic background elements. Some pages include fewer panels and more white space in order to highlight the individual panels. Strategic use of color is further displayed through the presence of green boxes that convey Oliver’s internal thoughts and stand out against the panels’ backgrounds.

Themes

Coming-of-age and control are the major themes that pervade Green Arrow: Year One. The theme of coming-of-age has been central to earlier depictions of Green Arrow’s origin, effectively embodied by Oliver Queen’s transformation from fast-living playboy to bow-wielding hero. Diggle’s take on the origin story further explores the process of coming-of-age as Oliver learns about justice and caring for others over the course of his year on the island.

Green Arrow: Year One expands upon an idea previously explored in Mike Grell’s Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters (1987): Oliver is a fan of the Errol Flynn film The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and of the actor and stunt archer Howard Hill. In Year One, Oliver wins the bow used by Hill in the movie in an auction and first uses it while marooned on the island, prompting the development of his identity as Green Arrow. Oliver’s inspiration to become an archer plays a key role in his coming-of-age experience.

Chien Na Wei, Hackett, and Oliver each exemplify the theme of control. Chien controls others through fear, torturing and killing those who displease her or compromise her opium operation. Hackett tries and fails to gain control of his life through his attempt to steal millions of dollars from Oliver and invest in Chien’s operation.

Through his own journey, Oliver learns control over both the bow and opium. He acquires controlled skill with the bow by hunting for food and eventually fighting for survival, making the bow his signature tool and weapon. After Taiana helps him recover from his injuries by giving him opium, Oliver fights his newfound dependency and regains control of his body and mind. Oliver’s increasing ability to control his own life additionally serves as evidence of his developing maturity.

Impact

At the time of Green Arrow: Year One’s publication, DC Comics had several Green Arrow-related projects in production, including a limited series focusing on Green Arrow’s partnership and relationship with Black Canary. Although existing as a separate limited series, and later a graphic novel, outside of the ongoing Green Arrow narratives, Year One provided these new or continuing projects with a fleshed-out background for the hero.

In a tactic not uncommon in the Modern Age of comics, Green Arrow: Year One redefined Green Arrow’s origin, expanding upon previous origin stories and giving the hero a more mature and modern sensibility. The limited series references earlier depictions of Green Arrow’s origin, which generally include a boat, an island, and drug-runners. The details vary between comics, with some, including Grell’s The Longbow Hunters, minimizing Oliver Queen’s heroism on the island. In Year One, the drug-runners are a legitimate threat, and Oliver’s triumph over them is instrumental in causing his transformation into a costumed hero. The series further expands upon Green Arrow’s origin by adding the characters of Hackett, Chien Na Wei, and Taiana; specifying that Oliver was actively pushed overboard rather than falling from his yacht, as in some incarnations; minimizing the number of settings depicted, thus streamlining the narrative; and casting the native people of the island as the creators of the name Green Arrow, rather than the press or criminals.

Near the end of issue 6, Oliver develops a cover story to protect the islanders from further attention. This account of Oliver’s time on the island, with the severity of the events downplayed, closely resembles the earlier Green Arrow origin tales, thus linking Year One to the existing Green Arrow franchise. In addition, Year One connects to a prior Green Arrow story from Green Lantern/Green Arrow, issues 85 and 86 (1971). In the two-part story, Green Arrow discovers that his sidekick, Speedy, is addicted to heroin. Oliver’s experience with opium addiction in Year One gives Green Arrow’s intense reaction to Speedy’s drug habit an interesting background, in retrospect. While both stories have broader cultural and social relevance in terms of their antidrug message, Year One also retroactively places earlier Green Arrow comics within a more detailed context.

Further Reading

Diggle, Andy, and Pascal Ferry. Adam Strange: Planet Heist (2005).

Dixon, Chuck, and Derec Donovan. Connor Hawke: Dragon’s Blood (2008).

Grell, Mike, et al. Warlord: The Saga (2010).

Bibliography

Diggle, Andy. “Another String to Ollie’s Bow: Diggle Talks ‘Green Arrow: Year One’.” Interview by Arune Singh. Comic Book Resources, March 27, 2011. http://comicbookresources.com/print.php?php?type=ar&id=9831.

Dixon, Chuck. “From the Beginning.” Green Arrow Annual, issue 7. New York: DC Comics, 1995.

Grell, Mike. Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters. New York: DC Comics, 1989.

Kirby, Jack. The Green Arrow. New York: DC Comics, 2001.

O’Neil, Dennis. “They Say It’ll Kill Me . . . But They Won’t Say When!” In The Green Lantern/Green Arrow: The Collection. New York: DC Comics, 2000.