No title, so here's mine: "Oliver Queen Can't Shoot Arrows and Hates Green... So Why Is His Company Still Called That?"- Oliver Queen was shipwrecked and had to defend himself on an island with a bow and arrow. using this training he became the hero Green Arrow. Now in the world of Flashpoint, apparently none of this happened, and he runs a "special" weapons company.
Summary: This story actually addresses a point I have made several times, but no story ever seems to take this point, and after reading it, I can kinda see why. The company is contracted by various groups to take the weaponry confiscated by supervillains, and use it in other ways. The story opens at a press conference where he is discussing the advances he's made with the current stock: Turning Trickster's air shoes into boots for flight, The Folding Man's costume to put a lot of weapons into a small space, and The Top's arsenal into moving grenades. Great dialogue: Okay, combine that stuff and what do you get: we clearly complain about the public school system too much. He then reveals his new missles, called the Green Arrows (I GET IT NOW!), while holding a bow. His head of security, Roy Harper, later mocks him for buying a really expensive bow just for a pose. Ollie does seem to be the same kind of guy since Roy comments about him having 8 kids from 7 different women. Things blow up fairly quickly from here as the compound is attacked and everyone except the lead assassin and Ollie. All of this, by the way, happens off panel. Lead assassin, also by the way, uses arrows. I LOVE IRONY!!!!! But seriously, Ollie goes after the assassin and goes to grab something to defend himself, finds the bow, and I swear to God, looks at the reader, and goes, "Ha, screw that!" Next we see him, he's decked out in all different types of villian tech and running through the woods. He then gets an arrow straight through his head. I really wish I could just have ended it there. But alas, this is a product of Mirror Master's gun. So now they actually begin attacking each other. Arrows fly, paste-throwing tops explode. It gets dumb. Not nearly as dumb though as when Ollie is using a gun that shoots fire, and uses it for a full page and a half, before going "Oh shit, this isn't Pied Piper's sonic gun. Its Heat Wave's." DUHHHHH. My god, the idiocy of this man. They continue to go toe to toe and fight with their weapons. Finally, the girl tells Ollie that she is his daughter (with the hero, now a villain in Flashpoint, Vixen) and that he is corrupt. Remember my first point here, where villain tech should be taken and used for the betterment of humanity? Here is (finally) the counter to that. Turns out, there are all these companies in small towns across the country and the villains are razing these towns to get their stuff back. Ollie is hurt by this info, unaware of all this tragedy and just monologues for a page about how he should and will change. That he can be better and not just be a weapons maker... he can be heroes. As it turns out, it really is just for one day, because the girl is gunned down without warning by another security team. They rush to Ollie's aid and get him to a medic. They ask him what he knows, and he just replies "I just make the weapons." Smallville's Erica Durance, you wanna take this one?
Lows: The story is just dumb and the writing is just hack-y. Maybe I'm bitter because I had high hopes since GA is one of my favorite heroes.
Verdict: C-. Its an interesting take that goes absolutely nowhere. Just meh.
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