Monday, October 12, 2015

Green Arrow Annual #1 Review and *SPOILERS*


Hating On The Wolf Man


Written By: Ben Percy
Art By: Szymon Kudranski, Gabe Eltaeb, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: October 7, 2015

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

How the hell have we gone this long in the Green Arrow series without an Annual?  It's very odd and even odder is the placement of this Annual.  You'll see when I get into this review, but having this Annual here just seems like a big mistake and will only make me more disappointed in this series than I have already been since it's new creative team.  Alright, with this being an Annual, I don't have much to say before we get started so let's just get right to it I guess and see what's going down in Seattle on Halloween night.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our Annual begins with the bank robbers from Point Break changing their game up a bit by deciding that banks are for suckers........ The real thrill is beating the shit out of  people who have contracted a forgotten disease known as Lukos.  Nah, I'm only joshin' ya.  Where the robbers from Point Break were bad ass, these people here are just bigots and see anyone who has contracted this disease as someone who is less desirable and shouldn't be polluting the area in which they live.  The violent harassment of the diseased people is pretty easy too because this group has gotten a hold of the location that the government as put them...... kind of like a disease relocation program.  What I get out of all this is that Ben Percy has a real interest in discrimination....... not that he advocates it or anything crazy like that, but he sure as hell likes to write about it and goes way over the top in making sure that the people that populate this world are just the worst fucks you can think of....... and that's just not the attackers I'm talking about either.  The cops who take the assaulted man's statement are bigoted pieces of shit too and the only person we can really trust from this series is Green Arrow himself.......... even if he's spending the beginning of this issue basking in the glory that is sex, while his partner leaves him for being a playboy........ but not before remarking about how big his dick is....... yeah, we could have done without that.


So after what I imagine is our hero taking a long shower, then immediately getting checked for V.D., he gets the lowdown from Fyff about what Lukos is........ and yeah, pretty much werewolf disease.......which I thought after watching Teen Wolf was Parkinson's, but apparently I was wrong and it's Lukos and if the people that the government has rounded up aren't given regular doses of medicine, they'll begin showing werewolf like characteristics.  What these people of this disease community need is a strong leader to show them that they can fight back and that's just what they get in the form of a werewolf biker gang, who are tired of being treated like second class citizens.  After rounding up the people who want to fight back, we find out that they're plan is to go to Seattle's Midnight Halloween Parade and start passing the disease along to everyone there.


In the end, the parade begins and the werewolves start attacking everyone by biting them, but luckily our hero Green Arrow was there prepared for the attack and fought the werewolves off with Emiko and George.


 As our issue closes the werewolves are taken down and the bigots from the beginning of the issue are taken down as well, but the ending isn't all pinatas and RC Cola though because we see that Green Arrow has been bitten............. which is weird because this issue ends on a cliffhanger and the current Green Arrow story........ which isn't this story, continues until at least the New Year.  That's pretty bad placement for this Annual story.


That's it for this first Annual of Green Arrow and man did I not like this story.  Nobody except Emiko was really likable and even our title character came off really odd here because we first see him right after sex just laying there as a woman he's really into walks out on him and then the next thing we see of him is him putting down Fyff for no real reason.  We've got our bigoted bad guys who obviously aren't likable, but even the victims are assholes as well, when they begin attacking the people of Seattle for the sins of others......... and there are even parts of this book that I didn't talk about where normal folks just seem to be dick bags for the sake of being dick bags....... This just really isn't that fun of a read........ and that's weird coming from a book that has a werewolf biker gang.  To top it all off, this was just an uninteresting story about bigotry, which feels weird since we just got done an uninteresting story about bigotry and when it ends, we find out that this uninteresting story will continue........ but not for months.  So at least I have something to not look forward to I guess.  While the art style wasn't something that I usually like, I did find myself kind of digging it, so I guess the only things that I liked about this book were Emiko and the art........ Man, Green Arrow has been really letting me down lately.

Bits and Pieces:

This is a strange ass Annual that I didn't happen to like and I feel bad for anyone who did enjoy it because it ends on a cliffhanger that won't be touched again until at least the New Year...... yeah, it continues apparently and having another story that deals with bigotry and the lack of Green Arrow really doing anything isn't something that I'm looking forward to.  The only things that I remotely liked about this book was the art style that had the right atmosphere in telling this dark story and the characterization of Emiko, which always seems to be spot on while the rest of the characters come off odd.

4/10

2 comments:

  1. Hope the January solicits announce a new writer for green arrow becuase he seems interested about writing about discrimantion all the time and this annual is the most generic Annual ever

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  2. I don't know, it seems odd that they would advertise that the biker werewolf story would continue if he wasn't on it...... hopefully this is more of a hoping it would do well scenario and when the January solicits come out you're right and we can forget that Green Arrow ever had an Annual.

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