Green Arrow — on target
By:
March 13, 2012
A masterful action simulation by a creative team on its top score is the seventh issue of DC’s eccentric but iconic Green Arrow, released last week and now written by HiLobrow regular and returning comics champion Annie Nocenti. The story of a badboy billionaire exec who happens to be a badass super-archer on his unauthorized long lunches, Nocenti’s kaleidoscopic, quick-witted first issue is a great adrenalin-drunk fantasia on reluctant one-percenters at deadly play; a man above consequences who’s partying with real ammo. His player-twos have it also (this is the first comic I can remember that credits a “weapons consultant”); Nocenti and artist Harvey Tolibao’s sleek CGI-grindhouse scenario calls for three groupies-with-guns — well, with semi-sentient hybrid metal-insect arrows — whose superior design pierces the antihero’s vain heart until it’s too late for him to realize these overstimulated superfans have really been sent to kidnap him for a rival innovator in a hostile takedown. The clockwork of double-crosses and rush of acrobatics and information is handled with disciplined dastardly cleverness and the discreet but elaborate dirty-mindedness of a modern Danger: Diabolik by Nocenti, and Tolibao’s scrambled choreography and agitated textures make every molecule jump and each surface carry on a life of its own like racing pulses and whizzing pixels. The likely presence of mad-seer editor Joey Cavalieri puts everything under a judicious eye that knows when it’s most important to just look the other way. This is smart pulp storytelling that moves at the pace of high-speed torrents by creators who themselves don’t miss a frame.