Green Arrow #13 // Review
Dinah is waking-up alone on Arrow Island. She wasn’t alone the whole night. What she doesn’t know is that Oliver left under cover of night over the course of the first three pages of the issue. No words were spoken, but it was clear that the man had a lot on his mind in Green Arrow #13. Writer Joshua Williamson enters the second part of the Absolute Power crossover with artist Amancay Nahuelpan and colorist Romulo Fajardo Jr. Green Arrow is forced to work with this sinister Amanda Waller, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it in an issue that establishes a new direction for the series.
No one on Team Arrow happened to notice that Oliver Queen wasn’t there that morning. Dinah was understandably upset. That didn’t mean that Speedy was going to do anything other than carry off the rescue that he’d been planning. Of course...when he runs into Oliver Queen serving as security, things get a little complicated. There’s a stand-off. There’s a fight. Things don’t go as planned, but they don’t exactly go the way they appear to at first glance. Oliver has decided he’s not Green Arrow. Team Arrow has a few things to work out before it can make its next move.
Williamson finds an interesting angle for the Absolute Power crossover. All too often a big crossover feels kind of awkward and tacked-on to every series that it makes contact with, but Williamson has found a deep connection with Waller and company that will make for an interesting interaction with DC’s big summer crossover. It’s also an interesting direction for Queen to take as he tries to navigate his way through some very dangerous territory in a hostile climate. It’s okay: he’s quite familiar with this sort of thing.
The first three pages of the issue are entirely carried by the art team. They do a really good job of bringing out the silent intensity of the situation. Williamson gives Oliver Queen a heaping helping of inscrutability this issue. The artist is left with the challenge of making that inscrutability feel interesting and not just...rude. In addition to this, Nahuelpan catches action and location from all the right angles to deliver a range of different moods, motions and emotions including some remarkably bracing moments of action. Above all, there’s a profound amount of personality pouring off the page.
Absolute Power hits its second issue with a very promising opening that could mean good things for the rest of the event.Williamson and company manage a sharp sense of poise about the issue that should do a good job of welcoming unfamiliar readers who might be drawn to the title because of the crossover while integrating the title well enough for regular readers who might be interested in following the event further into other titles.
