Here I am on the steps outside Excel, with my boxing glove arrow at the ready!
Showing posts with label Green Arrow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Green Arrow. Show all posts
Friday, 21 March 2014
Green Arrow at London Comic Con
Here I am on the steps outside Excel, with my boxing glove arrow at the ready!
Sunday, 23 February 2014
Hunters Moon
To my great joy, I found the Green Arrow story Hunter's Moon, by Mike Grell, at Forbidden Planet, which is the follow up story to The Longbow Hunters.
These are the stories I remember when they first came out - I used to go to a comic shop round the corner from New Scotland Yard, and read Green Arrow stories over my (frankly rather horrible, but cheap) vegetarian curry in the police canteen. It's great to see them again - and they are just as good as I remember.
In fact, tucked away in one of my old scrapbooks, I found a few pages of one of the original comics. Green Arrow has come upon three thugs robbing a couple in a Seattle park, and proceeds to beat the stuffing out of them. "You know, just when I start to think there's hope for mankind," he says, "I run into guys like you, and my faith in human nature is restored."
One thing that impressed me when I first read the stories in the 1980s was that the characters had to deal with real problems - it wasn't all just beating up the bad guys and moving on to defeat the next supervillain.
Dinah Lance/Black Canary is still dealing with the trauma of her torture in the Longbow Hunters, to the extent of going to a hypnotherapist about it - but she really gets back to being her old self when she gets into a situation where she can beat up some bad guys!
This also does wonders for her love life with Oliver, and that's something else I didn't expect when I started reading the comics - bedroom scenes!
Some of the stories, or scenes in stories, I remembered vividly on re-reading, but some I didn't remember at all. I don't think I got every issue of the comic originally. It was all great fun, and I'm looking forward to finding the next volume of the series.
These are the stories I remember when they first came out - I used to go to a comic shop round the corner from New Scotland Yard, and read Green Arrow stories over my (frankly rather horrible, but cheap) vegetarian curry in the police canteen. It's great to see them again - and they are just as good as I remember.
In fact, tucked away in one of my old scrapbooks, I found a few pages of one of the original comics. Green Arrow has come upon three thugs robbing a couple in a Seattle park, and proceeds to beat the stuffing out of them. "You know, just when I start to think there's hope for mankind," he says, "I run into guys like you, and my faith in human nature is restored."
One thing that impressed me when I first read the stories in the 1980s was that the characters had to deal with real problems - it wasn't all just beating up the bad guys and moving on to defeat the next supervillain.
Dinah Lance/Black Canary is still dealing with the trauma of her torture in the Longbow Hunters, to the extent of going to a hypnotherapist about it - but she really gets back to being her old self when she gets into a situation where she can beat up some bad guys!
This also does wonders for her love life with Oliver, and that's something else I didn't expect when I started reading the comics - bedroom scenes!
Some of the stories, or scenes in stories, I remembered vividly on re-reading, but some I didn't remember at all. I don't think I got every issue of the comic originally. It was all great fun, and I'm looking forward to finding the next volume of the series.
Wednesday, 12 February 2014
From One Queen to Another
I've been following tor.com, where Keith DeCandido has just been rewatching Rejoined, an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9. This is the one where Dax meets someone from her past - in fact, an ex-wife of one of the symbiote's previous hosts (writing about Trill relationships can get complicated). In fact, the other Trill has a new host, too, and she is played by Susanna Thompson, who is playing Moira Queen in Arrow at the moment, Oliver's morally dubious mother.
The episode features the first kiss between two women in all of Star Trek, and it was quite a controversial scene at the time. Keith DeCandido points out that, in episodes where a regular character meets an old flame, the old flame has only a short time to establish themselves and convince the viewer that they really did share a passion - and he says "this time round they struck gold."
I was also interested to find that this isn't the first time she's played a Queen, as she also played the Borg Queen in several Voyager episodes.
The episode features the first kiss between two women in all of Star Trek, and it was quite a controversial scene at the time. Keith DeCandido points out that, in episodes where a regular character meets an old flame, the old flame has only a short time to establish themselves and convince the viewer that they really did share a passion - and he says "this time round they struck gold."
I was also interested to find that this isn't the first time she's played a Queen, as she also played the Borg Queen in several Voyager episodes.
Sunday, 9 February 2014
Seattle in Fiction
There are many, many books and films and comics and so on set in London and New York, and many of them are great fun - but there's more to Planet Earth than that.
One place that hasn't been used as a setting all that often is Seattle.
In The Longbow Hunters, Mike Grell sent Green Arrow and Black Canary to Seattle to fight crime, rather than the fictional Star/Starling City. Apparently the proximity to the Canadian border was one of the reasons for the choice, opening up ideas for plots.
I next came across Seattle in fictional form in Wizard of the Pigeons, by Megan Lindholm. "It did not have much of a reputation for sunshine and beaches, but it did have plenty of rain, and the folk who lived there were wont to call it 'The Emerald City' for the greenness of its foliage." That's what she says on the very first page - which makes it an even more fitting place for The Emerald Archer to live. Even better, I see from the Wikipedia page about Seattle that it was also known as Queen City until 1982.
I like the way magic is presented in the story, and the threat to Wizard from Mir is serious enough to threaten the city. Wizard's friends Cassie and Rasputin are great characters as well. I was always sorry that there wasn't a sequel, but Megan Lindholm has gone on to greater things as Robin Hobb.
And then, from the end of the 1980s, there's Ishmael, the Star Trek novel by Barbara Hambly that sets Spock down in the middle of 19th century Seattle and the TV series Here Come the Brides (which starred Mark Lenard, who played Spock's father Sarek), and adds Klingons. Oh, and Spock's lost his memory. I knew nothing of the TV series when I read the book - I don't think it ever crossed the Pond to the UK - but I did enjoy Barbara Hambly's writing. There are all sorts of little references to other Western series and SF series tossed into the mix too, and it's fun to spot them. In fact, I don't think I ever did spot them all - but it didn't matter to the story; it just added local colour. Reading Ishmael led me on to the Darwath books (and one day I'll get round to the Benjamin January books). I have a vague memory that there was some sort of copyright problem with the use of Here Come the Brides, but whatever it was, it seems to have been sorted out now.
I gather that Seattle has more recently been the setting for several TV shows I haven't seen, like Frasier, so the city hasn't been entirely ignored. It looks like a nice place to visit.
One place that hasn't been used as a setting all that often is Seattle.
In The Longbow Hunters, Mike Grell sent Green Arrow and Black Canary to Seattle to fight crime, rather than the fictional Star/Starling City. Apparently the proximity to the Canadian border was one of the reasons for the choice, opening up ideas for plots.
I next came across Seattle in fictional form in Wizard of the Pigeons, by Megan Lindholm. "It did not have much of a reputation for sunshine and beaches, but it did have plenty of rain, and the folk who lived there were wont to call it 'The Emerald City' for the greenness of its foliage." That's what she says on the very first page - which makes it an even more fitting place for The Emerald Archer to live. Even better, I see from the Wikipedia page about Seattle that it was also known as Queen City until 1982.
I like the way magic is presented in the story, and the threat to Wizard from Mir is serious enough to threaten the city. Wizard's friends Cassie and Rasputin are great characters as well. I was always sorry that there wasn't a sequel, but Megan Lindholm has gone on to greater things as Robin Hobb.
And then, from the end of the 1980s, there's Ishmael, the Star Trek novel by Barbara Hambly that sets Spock down in the middle of 19th century Seattle and the TV series Here Come the Brides (which starred Mark Lenard, who played Spock's father Sarek), and adds Klingons. Oh, and Spock's lost his memory. I knew nothing of the TV series when I read the book - I don't think it ever crossed the Pond to the UK - but I did enjoy Barbara Hambly's writing. There are all sorts of little references to other Western series and SF series tossed into the mix too, and it's fun to spot them. In fact, I don't think I ever did spot them all - but it didn't matter to the story; it just added local colour. Reading Ishmael led me on to the Darwath books (and one day I'll get round to the Benjamin January books). I have a vague memory that there was some sort of copyright problem with the use of Here Come the Brides, but whatever it was, it seems to have been sorted out now.
I gather that Seattle has more recently been the setting for several TV shows I haven't seen, like Frasier, so the city hasn't been entirely ignored. It looks like a nice place to visit.
Saturday, 8 February 2014
Arrow
For Christmas this year, I was given the DVD set of the first season of Arrow. My Young Man knows I like the character Green Arrow, and the trailers we'd seen looked intriguing. And the sight of Stephen Amell's bare chest didn't hurt any, either.
So I was looking forward to a superhero with a bow and arrows, fighting crime in Starling City.
Well, I've just finished watching the whole season, and - wow!
It's not just superhero with bow and arrows fighting crime; it's a lot more interesting than that!
First of all, I was impressed with Stephen Amell. He seemed at first to be fairly unemotional (as you might expect from someone who'd been stranded on a remote island for five years), but as the series went on, and the flashbacks telling the story of his time on the island continued, I started to notice just how good an actor he is. It's instantly obvious that the privileged playboy who washes up on the island and has no survival skills whatsoever is not the same as the competent, self-contained man who returns to Starling City, and as the season progresses, you can see Oliver on the island gaining more confidence and competence gradually.
Then there's John Diggle (David Ramsey). I very often like the sidekick better than the hero, and Diggle is lovely! And he's a man with great integrity, who tells Oliver straight when he thinks he's wrong (and Diggle usually turns out to be right).
This was where it started to get interesting for me - when Diggle started asking Oliver what sort of superhero/vigilante he wanted to be. It wasn't as simple as going out and taking down the bad guys. Sometimes, Oliver needed someone to watch his back. Sometimes, the problem was such that Oliver had to let the police handle it. And it's good that Diggle has his own agenda (going after the murderer of his brother) and his own romance (with the widow of his brother).
There were the practical problems, too. It's a great idea to have your superhero HQ hidden under your nightclub - but what happens when the building inspector wants to check that everything is up to code?
Oliver's romantic and family life is pretty tangled, too, with his ex-girlfriend Laurel Lance, and her dead sister Sarah (or did she die?) who was on the Queen's Gambit with him when it sank - whose father is the detective who is obsessed with bringing "the Hood" to justice. He argues for the Law rather than vigilante justice, imperfect though the legal system is - and he's the one who points out that the vigilante has killed 26 people, near the end of the season. Even if they were all bad guys, that's still 26 dead bodies, who had families and lives to live.
And then there's Oliver's mum Moira, who is implicated in all sorts of bad things with Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman oozing charm and villainy), who is the father of Oliver's best friend Tommy, who is going out with Laurel now.... And Moira is now married to Walter, who worked for Robert Queen (Oliver's dad), who died when the Queen's Gambit sank. Walter is another lovely character - and he seems to be one of the very few good guys, despite the posh British accent which usually means that the character is a villain in US shows.
And if all that wasn't enough there's Thea/"Speedy", Oliver's little sister, who gets into trouble, then starts to get more serious, and meets Roy Harper, who was Speedy in the comics, and comes from the Glades. It's not just very rich people fighting each other for the soul of the city - Roy is a working class bag snatcher and thief from the worst part of town. He wants to find out who "the Hood" is, (because "the Hood" saved his life) and he cares about what happens to his city, too.
And I haven't even mentioned Felicity yet, who is awesome - a computer geek who gets more and more involved with Oliver's crime fighting as time goes on. I think I'm right in saying she was only supposed to be in one or two episodes, but was so good in the part that they kept writing more for her to do.
It's also a cast with a lot of racial diversity - Walter is black as well as British, and another businessman, Frank, who has been doing business in China, is Chinese. Oliver also has Chinese friends back on the island (he wasn't all alone for five years - it was a lot more complicated than that). In The Longbow Hunters, there is a character called Shado, who is Japanese, and was brought up by the yakuza. For the purposes of the series, she's now Chinese, but still an awesome archer. (But they do keep shooting arrows off into the undergrowth on the island, and they never seem to go looking for them again, and they never seem to run out either....) There's also a bad guy in The Longbow Hunters called Fyres, and that's the name they've used for the main bad guy on the island.
And it's a cast with women who talk to each other - Laurel has friends and colleagues, and Thea talks to her mum (or has screaming rows with her, but that counts too).
And now I've got to the last episode, where all the pieces are thrown up in the air, and Starling City will never be the same again - so I'm really looking forward to what they do with that in season two.
So I was looking forward to a superhero with a bow and arrows, fighting crime in Starling City.
Well, I've just finished watching the whole season, and - wow!
It's not just superhero with bow and arrows fighting crime; it's a lot more interesting than that!
First of all, I was impressed with Stephen Amell. He seemed at first to be fairly unemotional (as you might expect from someone who'd been stranded on a remote island for five years), but as the series went on, and the flashbacks telling the story of his time on the island continued, I started to notice just how good an actor he is. It's instantly obvious that the privileged playboy who washes up on the island and has no survival skills whatsoever is not the same as the competent, self-contained man who returns to Starling City, and as the season progresses, you can see Oliver on the island gaining more confidence and competence gradually.
Then there's John Diggle (David Ramsey). I very often like the sidekick better than the hero, and Diggle is lovely! And he's a man with great integrity, who tells Oliver straight when he thinks he's wrong (and Diggle usually turns out to be right).
This was where it started to get interesting for me - when Diggle started asking Oliver what sort of superhero/vigilante he wanted to be. It wasn't as simple as going out and taking down the bad guys. Sometimes, Oliver needed someone to watch his back. Sometimes, the problem was such that Oliver had to let the police handle it. And it's good that Diggle has his own agenda (going after the murderer of his brother) and his own romance (with the widow of his brother).
There were the practical problems, too. It's a great idea to have your superhero HQ hidden under your nightclub - but what happens when the building inspector wants to check that everything is up to code?
Oliver's romantic and family life is pretty tangled, too, with his ex-girlfriend Laurel Lance, and her dead sister Sarah (or did she die?) who was on the Queen's Gambit with him when it sank - whose father is the detective who is obsessed with bringing "the Hood" to justice. He argues for the Law rather than vigilante justice, imperfect though the legal system is - and he's the one who points out that the vigilante has killed 26 people, near the end of the season. Even if they were all bad guys, that's still 26 dead bodies, who had families and lives to live.
And then there's Oliver's mum Moira, who is implicated in all sorts of bad things with Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman oozing charm and villainy), who is the father of Oliver's best friend Tommy, who is going out with Laurel now.... And Moira is now married to Walter, who worked for Robert Queen (Oliver's dad), who died when the Queen's Gambit sank. Walter is another lovely character - and he seems to be one of the very few good guys, despite the posh British accent which usually means that the character is a villain in US shows.
And if all that wasn't enough there's Thea/"Speedy", Oliver's little sister, who gets into trouble, then starts to get more serious, and meets Roy Harper, who was Speedy in the comics, and comes from the Glades. It's not just very rich people fighting each other for the soul of the city - Roy is a working class bag snatcher and thief from the worst part of town. He wants to find out who "the Hood" is, (because "the Hood" saved his life) and he cares about what happens to his city, too.
And I haven't even mentioned Felicity yet, who is awesome - a computer geek who gets more and more involved with Oliver's crime fighting as time goes on. I think I'm right in saying she was only supposed to be in one or two episodes, but was so good in the part that they kept writing more for her to do.
It's also a cast with a lot of racial diversity - Walter is black as well as British, and another businessman, Frank, who has been doing business in China, is Chinese. Oliver also has Chinese friends back on the island (he wasn't all alone for five years - it was a lot more complicated than that). In The Longbow Hunters, there is a character called Shado, who is Japanese, and was brought up by the yakuza. For the purposes of the series, she's now Chinese, but still an awesome archer. (But they do keep shooting arrows off into the undergrowth on the island, and they never seem to go looking for them again, and they never seem to run out either....) There's also a bad guy in The Longbow Hunters called Fyres, and that's the name they've used for the main bad guy on the island.
And it's a cast with women who talk to each other - Laurel has friends and colleagues, and Thea talks to her mum (or has screaming rows with her, but that counts too).
And now I've got to the last episode, where all the pieces are thrown up in the air, and Starling City will never be the same again - so I'm really looking forward to what they do with that in season two.
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Green Arrow
I'm going to a comic convention in London in March, and I'm starting to get quite excited. It's a very long time since I went to any sort of SF Con, so this will be testing the water before the big one, WorldCon (LonCon 3) in August.
I knew I was going to wear my home made Captain Marvel costume (and I now have the red boots to finish the costume off), but then I had a look down the guest list again. I'm very much a beginner when it comes to comics, so most of the names mean nothing to me, but one name did leap out at me - Mike Grell, who wrote the Green Arrow adventure The Longbow Hunters.
Back in the 1980s, his Green Arrow stories were just about the only comics I read.
I was planning on putting a Green Arrow costume together for WorldCon - because a group of friends want to do DC superheroes (so I obviously can't be Captain Marvel for that). I own a longbow, and like the character, so Green Arrow was an obvious choice.
Then I looked at the weapons policy of the conventions, and decided that maybe I wouldn't be taking my real longbow and arrows along. So I've bought a toy bow, but I couldn't resist doing this when I found a mini pair of boxing gloves on a recent visit to town:
In The Longbow Hunters, Green Arrow is getting back to basics, and not using trick arrows any more, but one of the most famous trick arrows he used were the ones with little boxing gloves on the end. This isn't a very good picture, but the best I could do in the dreary, rainy, grey conditions we've been having recently.
I knew I was going to wear my home made Captain Marvel costume (and I now have the red boots to finish the costume off), but then I had a look down the guest list again. I'm very much a beginner when it comes to comics, so most of the names mean nothing to me, but one name did leap out at me - Mike Grell, who wrote the Green Arrow adventure The Longbow Hunters.
Back in the 1980s, his Green Arrow stories were just about the only comics I read.
I was planning on putting a Green Arrow costume together for WorldCon - because a group of friends want to do DC superheroes (so I obviously can't be Captain Marvel for that). I own a longbow, and like the character, so Green Arrow was an obvious choice.
Then I looked at the weapons policy of the conventions, and decided that maybe I wouldn't be taking my real longbow and arrows along. So I've bought a toy bow, but I couldn't resist doing this when I found a mini pair of boxing gloves on a recent visit to town:
In The Longbow Hunters, Green Arrow is getting back to basics, and not using trick arrows any more, but one of the most famous trick arrows he used were the ones with little boxing gloves on the end. This isn't a very good picture, but the best I could do in the dreary, rainy, grey conditions we've been having recently.
Monday, 25 February 2013
Green Arrow
The other day I made a trip down memory lane when I read The Longbow Hunters by Mike Grell, a Green Arrow story.
When I worked in London, I found a little comic shop near my office. I wasn't too sure what to try, until I found a Green Arrow comic - a superhero with a bow was just my cup of tea! I used to sit in the canteen at lunchtimes reading while I ate the frankly quite disgusting "curry" that they served up (it was cheap!). One of the things that impressed me back then was how adult the comics were - the characters went to bed together, and talked about getting married (or not). It wasn't just about fighting crime - the characters had real relationships.
Those stories must have come not long after the story in The Longbow Hunters, because I remember the Black Canary was recovering from some very traumatic incident in her recent past, and this story tells you what that traumatic incident was.
There's also a rival archer lurking on the rooftops of Seattle, where Oliver Queen has set up his shop the Sherwood Florist, a meaty plot involving Japanese gold and drugs and money laundering - and it was all great fun!
I'll be hunting down the sequels now to find out more about Green Arrow and the Black Canary.
I was interested to see that there's a new TV series, called just Arrow, but about the same character. I saw a trailer for it, but I haven't seen any episodes yet. The TV Oliver Queen is a lot younger than the comic book one I'm familiar with, though, and I understand he hasn't got together with his Black Canary yet. It should be fun to find out the differences, and the similarities, with the comics, when I finally get round to it (so many good stories out there, in so many formats - and so little time!)
When I worked in London, I found a little comic shop near my office. I wasn't too sure what to try, until I found a Green Arrow comic - a superhero with a bow was just my cup of tea! I used to sit in the canteen at lunchtimes reading while I ate the frankly quite disgusting "curry" that they served up (it was cheap!). One of the things that impressed me back then was how adult the comics were - the characters went to bed together, and talked about getting married (or not). It wasn't just about fighting crime - the characters had real relationships.
Those stories must have come not long after the story in The Longbow Hunters, because I remember the Black Canary was recovering from some very traumatic incident in her recent past, and this story tells you what that traumatic incident was.
There's also a rival archer lurking on the rooftops of Seattle, where Oliver Queen has set up his shop the Sherwood Florist, a meaty plot involving Japanese gold and drugs and money laundering - and it was all great fun!
I'll be hunting down the sequels now to find out more about Green Arrow and the Black Canary.
I was interested to see that there's a new TV series, called just Arrow, but about the same character. I saw a trailer for it, but I haven't seen any episodes yet. The TV Oliver Queen is a lot younger than the comic book one I'm familiar with, though, and I understand he hasn't got together with his Black Canary yet. It should be fun to find out the differences, and the similarities, with the comics, when I finally get round to it (so many good stories out there, in so many formats - and so little time!)
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