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The Kill Machine

Like many comics published during DC's New 52 initiative, much of Green Arrow's history and background as a superhero were wiped clean. Faced with dwindling sales, Jeff Lemire was given creative control of the struggling title, beginning with issue #17, in hopes of giving it a much-needed direction. The artwork was done by Andrea Sorrentino.

Lemire's duration on the title proved to be incredibly rejuvenating to the series. Further wiping the slate clean and ignoring much of what had come before, Lemire's run focuses heavily on a Myth Arc and extensive lore that was entirely new to the character, while re-introducing key members of Oliver's Rogues Gallery in new and interesting ways.

Running from 2013 to 2014, from issues #17 to #34, the series served as a high mark for the character's history during the highly divisive New 52. Further aided by running concurrently with Arrow, this highly-acclaimed take on the character helped to elevate Green Arrow out of relative obscurity.


Jeff Lemire's Green Arrow provides examples of:

  • All Love Is Unrequited: Henry has a crush on Naomi, but she is in love with Oliver. By the time the series ends, Naomi doesn't reciprocate Henry's feelings, and Oliver doesn't reciprocate hers, though they all remain good friends.
  • A Real Man Is a Killer: While Oliver doesn't necessarily believe that killing is a passage into manhood, he certainly believes that the moment he stopped being a spoiled socialite with no direction in life happened after he took his first human life.
  • Abusive Parents:
    • Komodo takes Emiko away from Shado and raises the girl as his own daughter, but also feeds her lies and molds her into a cold-blooded assassin. When Emiko finds out the truth and begs him to spare her mother's life, he threatens to shoot her unless she gets out of his way.
    • Robert put Oliver through a Training from Hell in order to toughen him up and force him to gain the skills necessary to help him along his quest for the Arrow Totem. This included stranding him on a deserted island, letting him believe that he was the only person alive there for years and watching him struggle to survive, culminating in Cold-Blooded Torture when he found out that he wasn't. Ultimately it was for good reasons, and it worked, but Oliver disowns him after finding the truth.
  • Adventurer Archaeologist: Robert Queen dedicated his life to the search of the Arrow Totem, and spent his days jet setting around the world under the guise of being just another rich socialite.
  • Animal Motifs: Simon Lacroix adopts the name Komodo, making his the komodo dragon. Other than the name, there's not much more to it though.
  • Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy:
    • Komodo is a master of kyudo, a Japanese mixture of archery and martial arts. He trash talks Green Arrow during their early fights, even though he repeatedly fails to take out the hero.
    • Richard Dragon, after being trained by the League of Assassins, became a strong contender for being the World's Best Warrior and can deliver some brutal beatdowns. He fights both Green Arrow and Diggle while delivering a self-aggrandizing speech, though the heroes manage to outsmart him and barely win the battle.
  • Asian and Nerdy: Henry Fyfe is of Chinese heritage and works as Green Arrow's tech support.
  • Bad Future: The Futures End tie-in issue takes place five years into the future, when the Cadmus organization has begun experimenting on Earth-2 refugees with the goal of becoming more powerful than any government. Green Arrow, Emiko, Naomi and the Outsiders team up to find the organization's headquarters and put a stop to their operations.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: While Komodo is certainly Ollie's most personal foe throughout a majority of these arcs, Richard Dragon gradually usurps his Big Bad status and becomes the True Final Boss.
  • Badass and Child Duo: Emiko is a young girl who mastered the art of archery. She fights alongside the Big Bad Komodo for the first two arcs, before becoming Green Arrow's disciple for the final one.
  • Big Brother Instinct: After Oliver discovers that Emiko is his half-sister, he decides to do whatever he can to save her from the people who have been manipulating her from birth. Even after disowning his father and the legacy of the Arrow Totem, he tries to convince her to live with him.
  • Body Horror: Count Vertigo's powers are derived from the machine that has been implanted on his skull. After it's damaged, the repair process shows the device is lodged directly to his brain.
  • Call-Back: When Magus sends Oliver on a Vision Quest, Oliver sees a few of the Arc Villains that he had faced earlier in New 52, including Midas, Blood Rose, Rush, and Harrow.
  • Canon Immigrant: It's in this series that John Diggle officially makes the jump from Arrow over to the comics.
  • Color-Coded Characters: Given that the title character has the word "green" right in his name this is to be expected. However, it's done subtly throughout the series in other ways.
    • Oliver's color is obviously green. Whenever there is a panel shot of an action that the reader should focus on, things that Oliver is looking at or arrows that he is firing are always colored accordingly.
    • Komodo's is purple. His outfit is a very dark purple, almost black, and the lights on his mask light up similarly after Oliver blinds him in one eye. Robert Queen is shown with a similar color scheme, to help illustrate their close bond.
    • Shado's is red. She has a red bow, red accents on her outfit, and fires red arrows. Emiko shares this color scheme, serving as a subtle hint of her true parentage.
  • The Clan: The Outsiders are made up of six later revealed to be seven clans that each specialize in a specific weapon. They are:
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: In his civilian identity, Simon Lacroix is the CEO of Stellmoor International, a rival of Queen Enterprises.
  • Darker and Edgier: With visceral fights that are gruesomely detailed and the heavier subject matter, this series is noticeably darker than the issues that came before it.
  • Deadly Distant Finale: Receives one in the Green Arrow 80th Anniversary 100 Page Super-Spectacular, where Lemire and Sorrentino return as writer and artist to tell The Last Green Arrow Story. It follows a very old Oliver Queen who has come back to the island, is reunited with the Arrow Totem by a vision of his younger self, and dies at peace.
  • Enemy Scan: Richard Dragon's lethality and skill with hand-to-hand combat are shown this way. He's able to see each of his opponent's weak points and the best way of taking them down, presented to the reader as blurbs emanating from the body part in question.
  • Expy:
    • Emiko Queen is one for Damian Wayne from Batman. Both were trained as assassins for the purpose of killing a family member who was a superhero and both wound up becoming snarky teen sidekicks to said hero, who complained about not being allowed to kill.
    • Komodo is clearly inspired on Malcolm Merlyn, as he is a bow-wielding assassin clad in black who serves as Green Arrow's archnemesis. Ironically, Merlyn later took on characteristics from this character, and the original Merlyn was reintroduced back into Oliver's Rogues Gallery.
  • Eye Scream:
    • Magus has two large X-shaped scars over where his eyes should be.
    • Komodo gets blinded in one eye during his second fight with Green Arrow, courtesy of an arrow to the face.
  • The Faceless: Magus is a shapeshifter whose face doesn't have any eyes, only large x-shaped scars where said organs should be.
  • Faking the Dead: Komodo believes he murdered Robert Queen long ago, but that was really Magus in disguise. The real Robert was alive and taking measures to ensure his son Oliver would have what it takes to carry on his legacy as the leader of the Arrow Clan.
  • Goggles Do Something Unusual: Komodo's eyewear isn't just for show. They enhance his depth perception and allow him to focus on what he's going to be aiming his arrows at. After he becomes blind in one eye, his depth perception is ruined and he has to rely on them in order to keep up with the other archers.
  • Heel–Face Door-Slam: When Komodo finally acquires the Arrow Totem he has been seeking, it shows him that everything he has done to get there ultimately served no purpose, aside from turning Emiko against him. This happens about five seconds before he is killed by one of Emiko's arrows.
  • Hidden Depths: It turns out that Robert Queen wasn't just a well-to-do socialite, and was very much the Adventurer Archaeologist that his son was in The Golden Age of Comic Books.
  • Legacy Character: What Robert Queen was trying to turn Oliver into. As it turns out, his family comes from a long line of archers, and is descended from the Arrow Clan.
  • Legendary Weapon: Each of the clans that make up the Outsiders have a "totem" that's supposed to hold mystic properties. Much is made over Komodo's search for the Arrow Totem, which is supposed to grant a certain degree of omniscience. Similarly, Katana's Soul-Taker Sword is the totem weapon of the Sword Clan.
  • Like a Son to Me: Robert Queen had a father-son relationship with Simon, as he viewed him as a more worthy successor than his own biological son Ollie, who was still a Brilliant, but Lazy teenager at that point. Until Simon got too greedy and turned on him.
  • Long-Lost Relative: Oliver and Emiko are half-siblings.
  • Master Archer: Oliver comes from a whole clan of fighters who devoted their to mastering the art of the bow. This includes his father, who turns out to be alive and on the island that Oliver was stranded on.
  • Master Swordsman: Anyone who hails from the Sword Clan, including Katana, base theirlives around becoming skilled swordsmen.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Arrow Totem, like all of the items that help to form the basis of the Weapon Clans, is believed by some to hold mystical powers (in this case, the gift of foresight). Others simply see it as a really old arrow with a fairy tale attached to it, and just want it so that they can use it to claim ownership of the Arrow Clan. Oliver firmly believes that it's the latter. Until he wields it and is granted visions of all that is his life.
  • Mythology Gag: Robert Queen sports the exact same distinctive Van Dyke as Oliver did before Flashpoint.
  • Nurture over Nature: Emiko was born and raised to be an assassin, like her mother. But her time with Oliver helps to soften her into a kinder, though at times bratty, character.
  • Remember the New Guy?: Despite having never been mentioned before, Diggle worked Ollie and Roy during very early his days as Green Arrow, before leaving after a disastrous encounter with Richard Dragon.
  • Rescue Equipment Attack: Naomi saves Emiko from Red Dart by sneaking behind the villainess and bashing her in the head with a fire extinguisher.
  • Riches to Rags: Simon Lacroix engages a hostile takeover of Queen Industries, leaving Oliver effectively broke.
  • The Rival: Komodo believes himself to be this to Oliver, seeing himself as a more deserving heir to the Arrow Clan and as having a closer relationship with Robert Queen, compared to his son.
  • Scary Black Man:
    • Diggle is very large, imposing, and served two tours in Iraq with the US Military.
    • Clock King and Brick both run criminal organizations in Seattle, and both also happen to be very large, very imposing black men.
  • Shoo Out the New Guy: Prior to this, previous issues had introduced a slew of characters at Q-Corp that worked as Oliver's Mission Control and Voice with an Internet Connection. In the first issue, Lemire has most of them killed off in a hostile attack on the Queen Industries building.
  • Single Specimen Species: Magus is already enigmatic at the start, but it's later revealed that he's seemingly the only member of the Mask Clan.
  • Soft Reboot: Coming off of an already rebooted franchise. Whereas the previous 16 issues had introduced a number of cast members and established a status quo of Oliver Queen being a rich crime-fighter who used corporate assets and employees to finance his life as Green Arrow, pretty much everything was thrown out the window as soon as the new creative team took over.
  • Stalker with a Crush: When Henry still worked at Queen Industries, he had a little crush on Naomi that (apparently) drove him to stalk her. He still has the crush on her, but now he's better about it.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: Robert Queen took Komodo under his wing back when he was just Simon Lacroix, who returns the favor by betraying him.
  • Vision Quest: Magus arranges for Oliver to drink a potion that causes him to have visions of the past and future. The protagonist witnesses his father Robert searching for the Arrow Totem in the past, thus revealing his connection to the Outsiders, and learns that his future is tied to three antagonistic forces, who take the form of a trio of dragons. Said dragons turn out to be the Big Bad Komodo, Robert's lover Shado, and the True Final Boss Richard Dragon.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: Henry and Naomi communicate with Green Arrow through an earpiece during his missions, giving him suggestions on how to proceed and informing him about the new arrows they have developed.
  • Wham Episode: The series starts out on one. Not only is most of the supporting cast Killed Off for Real during a terrorist attack of Queen Consolidated, but Oliver meets another archer who is leaps and bounds ahead of him in skill. He's then put on a Vision Quest by Magus, after only just barely escaping with his life.
  • You're Not My Father: Once Oliver finds out that Robert faked his death and subjected his only son to Cold-Blooded Torture in hopes of preparing him to lead the Arrow Clan, he disowns him and tries to leave him on a deserted island.
  • You Killed My Father: Once Komodo kills Robert Queen, Emiko turns on him and puts an arrow through him.
  • Villain Team-Up: A rather large one consisting of Richard Dragon, Clock King, Count Vertigo, Killer Moth, and Red Dart.

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