On paper, Green Arrow seems kind of like a joke superhero on par with Aquaman or (perhaps more directly) Marvel’s Hawkeye. There’s a bit in one of the Avengers movies where Jeremy Renner is mumbling about how silly it is that there are magic flying robots or whatever zipping around and he has a bow, but Green Arrow seems a little above that.

In fact, one of the striking things about “Hunter’s Moon” is that Oliver Queen seems unnervingly dangerous when he’s in his hood. Batman scares criminals with his spooky theatrics, and he might whip a Batarang or two at them, but Green Arrow is a medieval hunter. He could easily pop a few arrows into a bad guy’s heart and drop them way faster than the Dark Knight ever could. The darkness of the art really works for that, making it clear that this guy is scarier than he seems and that this isn’t a traditional superhero adventure romp — all without Oliver specifically lampshading how silly it is to fight crime with a bow.

Plot-wise, the story follows Oliver and Dinah Lance (looking so much different from more modern takes on the character), living in Seattle and reeling from (what I assume are) the traumatic events of a previous Green Arrow comic. To that point, there’s some dark-as-hell subject matter going on here, with Oliver taking Dinah to therapy to help recover from the bad stuff that happened to her, only for the therapist to turn out to be one of the surviving victims of a serial killer who attacked a bunch of children.

Due to the inadequacies of the justice system, said murderer now has an opportunity go free and someone has simultaneously begun terrorizing the therapist lady. Luckily, the Emerald Archer is there to start Emerald Archering… and that’s about where the issue ends.

It’s pairs nicely with season one of Arrow, which seems more interested in capturing a Dark Knight vibe than any specific Green Arrow comic, so it’s cool to see more of the show’s origin in books like this.

As for Arrow, Tommy Merlyn sure gets screwed over, huh? I didn’t remember quite how miserable his entire life his when I was first watching the show, but knowing how poorly things work out for him, it is kind of a bummer (though it’s also a side effect of how soapy the show is in its early goings). That’s not totally related to this comic book, but this is MY newsletter! Let me know somehow if you want to keep talking about Arrow. I’d be happy to do it.

Remember that funny guy from HBO Max’s Peacemaker? This is him! And he’s totally just as fun. This came up when I was thinking about the Wolfman/Pérez Teen Titans for last week’s newsletter, since Vigilante is also one of theirs. It’s pretty wild!