Green Arrow In Smallville

This is the sequence of events:

in Season One, Episode One, the headline of a Daily Planet read by Lionel Luthor proclaims that the Queen Industries CEO is missing, believed drowned;

in Season Six, Lionel meets an "Ollie," who, we learn, is Oliver Queen, CEO;

at the end of that episode, Queen shoots green arrows accurately from a longbow and turns out to have been responsible for the abduction of Lex, but this was because he was researching super powers - and he had ordered the kidnappers not to use violence;

in the following episode, he attends a costume party in what we recognize as a Green Arrow costume complete with mask and is introduced as Oliver Queen;

we see that he can use the bow but maybe needs to improve his accuracy;

in the next episode, a green hooded archer wearing dark glasses raids a party and steals jewellery from Martha Kent (so will this be a villainous opposite number of GA?);

Lois Lane tries to stop the thief whom she later headlines as the "Green Arrow Bandit;"

Chloe says, "Drop the 'Bandit'";

it turns out that this guy steals goods bought on the black market and donates to charities;

Clark learns that the thief is Oliver Queen who in turn learns of Clark's powers;

Clark and Ollie keep each others' secrets;

Ollie suggests that Clark should be more pro-active with his powers.

Thus, we get a new GA intermediate between hero and villain.

Trilogies: Final Year?

Certain DC comics are classics, including these three "trilogies" (I am calling them that but they do fit together, as I will show):

The Man Of Tomorrow by Alan Moore;
The Man Of Steel by John Byrne;
Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography by James D Hudnall.

Batman: Year One by Frank Miller;
The Killing Joke by Alan Moore;
The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.

The Longbow Hunters by Mike Grell;
Green Arrow: Year One (GAY1) by Andy Diggle;
Batman: Rules Of Engagement by Andy Diggle.

(By The Man Of Tomorrow, I mean a collection of Alan Moore's three Superman stories, which include a two parter. Titan Books collected them under this title albeit in black and white.)

The common themes here are high quality writing and art, beginnings and endings:

Moore concludes and Byrne re-creates Superman;
Hudnall writes the origin of the new Luthor;
thus, an end for Superman followed by new beginnings for him and his main opponent.

Miller begins and ends a new Batman;
Moore rewrites the origin of the Joker;
thus, new beginnings and an end for the Batman and his main opponent.

Grell presents a mid-life crisis for the then current Green Arrow and slightly revises his origin;
Diggle presents the origins of a new Green Arrow, the Batplane and Wayne Charities;
thus, a middle age, a retold beginning and a new beginning for Green Arrow and some beginnings for the Batman.

These lists refer to three continuities:

the first began with Action Comics no 1, June 1938, and ended with Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?, 1986;

the second began with The Man Of Steel and Batman: Year One and ended with The Dark Knight Returns;

the third began with GAY1 (many other works are involved but here I highlight a few peaks of quality).

Byrne's Superman, Grell's Green Arrow and the Joker come together with Miller's Batman and Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Returns. Mindy Newell's Catwoman miniseries continued the character of Selina directly from Batman: Year One.

Since Batman: Year One begins the Batman's career and since The Dark Knight Returns describes his return from a ten year retirement, it has been suggested that Miller could also have written a Batman: The Final Year, describing the build up to retirement.

This would have disclosed events only hinted at, like what had happened (something bad) to Jason, the second Robin. In later comics set in current continuity, the Joker brutally murdered Jason but there is no hint in Miller's story that whatever had happened to Jason had been done by the Joker. Also, whatever it was had caused the Batman to cover it up, then retire, while superhero activity was governmentally banned or covered up as in Watchmen, but this did not happen in continuity, except for the temporary superhero ban in Legends, so there is still a different story to be told here. The Dark Knight Returns, no longer a possible future, becomes an alternative timeline.

Superheroes

Superheroes remain a dynamic comic book concept, a modern mythology, well adapted to cinema with CGI. Comics and film script writers endlessly renew the concept. Several comics put superheroes, or the closely related masked avengers and costumed adventurers, into the real world.

(i) A Nazi accepts Alan Moore's Marvelman as the superman. When a super-villain devastates London, the horror is graphic, but then Marvelman's pantheon effortlessly replaces the UN and national governments and institutes utopia.

(ii) In Alan Moore's Watchmen, the nuclear-powered Doctor Manhattan changes the balance of power and practical technology simply by existing.

(iii) Alan Moore transformed the Swamp Thing from a mud monster into a plant elemental who could change the world but thinks that to do so would be to impede evolution.

(iv) Moore's Superman stories avoid or rationalize the character's absurdities.

(v) Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen presents a literary superhero team.

(vi) Roy Thomas' Young All Stars retconned literary and mythological characters into comics' Golden Age.

(vii) Thomas' The Last Days of the Justice Society linked the end of World War II to the Ragnarok.

  

(viii) In Frank Miller's Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, the Batman is an anonymous vigilante wanted by the police. When he also becomes a political embarrassment, the US President sends Kent to bring him down. The government is also troubled by an archer saboteur but is hampered by its own policy of concealing the existence of costumed crime fighters and super powered beings from the public.

(ix) Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, about the criminally insane Joker, asks whether one bad day would be enough to drive you or me mad.

(x) Kurt Busiek's Astro City puts everyday people into a superhero world. They picnic on a skyscraper roof to watch a super powered fight overhead.

(xi) Alan Moore's Tom Strong, presenting a strong man who was raised in high gravity not on Krypton but in a terrestrial laboratory, restored fun to superheroes after Moore and his imitators had made them dark and serious.

(xii) Moore's Top Ten presents the police force of a city where nearly everyone is super powered. The pizza delivery boy has super speed. A hot dog vendor cooks dogs with heat vision.

(xiii) Moore's Promethea puts a superheroine into an appropriately magical and mythological context and presents the author's philosophy.

(xiv) Mark Millar's The Ultimates transforms Marvel Comics' main superhero team into the US Superhuman Defence Initiative. Its members include a former mental patient with a hammer who claims to be, and happens to be, the son of Odin. The US says that it will not deploy persons of mass destruction, then sends Steve Rogers to rescue hostages.

(xv) Marv Wolfman transformed Lex Luthor from a wanted criminal and frequent convict into a billionaire industrialist/philanthropist, the most powerful man in Metropolis until someone arrives whom he cannot buy...

(xvi) John Byrne reduced Superman's powers to finite levels. He also replaced the timid Clark Kent as an implausible disguise for Superman with Superman as a public disguise for the confident and athletic Kent.

(xvii) The Smallville TV series shows Jonathan, Martha and Clark Kent, Lionel and Lex Luthor, Lana Lang, Pete Ross and Chloe Sullivan in Smallville while Clark's powers develop.

(xviii) The Lois and Clark TV series (not as good) is about Lois Lane and Clark Kent and the latter, as we know, happens to be Superman who re-heats coffee with heat vision and uses his flight power to levitate in his apartment.

(xix) Some good novels have been based on both TV series.

(xx) The Marvel Comics Thunderbolts are former super-villains hired by the government to track down unregistered superheroes: a good guys bad guys reversal.

(xxi) Garth Ennis' "The Boys" are a CIA team tasked to curtail the dangerous activities of corporately backed superhero teams that are parodies of the Justice League, X-Men etc.

(xxii) Mark Millar's Kick-Ass asks: Why has no one ever done it? What would happen if you or I donned a costume and went on the street? Kick-Ass is stabbed and run over but, after an unlikely series of events, does become the first of a wave of real life superheroes, mainly thanks to internet publicity.

(xxiii) Current Marvel films about individual superheroes cleverly build towards a team film. The coda after the credits of Iron Man II shows the discovery of a hammer in a crater... Nick Fury, who says in the Ultimates comic that he should be played by Samuel L. Jackson, is played by Samuel L. Jackson.

(xxiv) The Dark Knight film, not based on Miller's masterpiece, ends with the Batman pursued by the police, the idea being that, since District Attorney Harvey Dent has failed to be a White Knight for Gotham City, the vigilante must be its "Dark Knight." Miller's earlier graphic novel ended with the Batman apparently dead and even buried, although dug up, after a climactic fight with Kent. With both the Bruce Wayne and Batman identities closed, he is free to train survivalists in the Cave...

(xxv) My Hero is a TV comedy series about the domestic life of a superhero's secret identity.

(xxvi) and (xxvii) Neil Gaiman's Black Orchid and Sandman transformed costumed crime fighters into different kinds of characters.

(xxviii) and (xxix) In different series, Mike Grell and Andy Diggle made the Green Arrow a credible character.

(xxx) Alan Moore wrote good treatments of the Green Arrow and the Vigilante.

There are other examples that I am not familiar with. My point here is the diversity and wealth of superheroes.