| Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters | |
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Cover art to Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters #1. Art by Mike Grell. |
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| Schedule | Monthly |
| Format | Limited series |
| Genre | Superhero |
| Publication date | August - October 1987 |
| Number of issues | 3 |
| Main character(s) | Green Arrow Shado Black Canary |
| Creative team | |
| Writer(s) | Mike Grell |
| Artist(s) | Mike Grell |
| Collected editions | |
| Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters | ISBN 0930289382 |
Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters is a three-issue prestige format comic book miniseries published in 1987 by DC Comics. Written and drawn by Mike Grell, it stars the character Green Arrow.
Contents |
On his fortieth birthday, Ollie Queen relocates from Star City to Seattle, Washington, the home of his girlfriend Dinah Lance. He changes his costume and abandons the use of his trademark trick arrows for more traditional archery equipment. As Green Arrow tries to track down a serial killer, the Seattle Slasher, killing prostitutes in the area, Black Canary attempts to infiltrate a drug racket.
Oliver tracks the killer to the abandoned Seattle Underground section of the city, discovering that the killer is a disturbed ex-tunnel rat from the Vietnam War. The Slasher jumps Oliver and gets away to apparently kill again, but a mysterious female archer with an elaborate dragon tattoo on her arm shoots the slasher (as well as a passing motorist) before vanishing.
The archer is revealed to be Shado, the daughter of a Yakuza agent incarcerated during World War II, where American soldiers forced him to reveal a major cache of Yakuza gold. Dishonored, the agent killed himself in atonement. When Shado comes of age, she is charged with killing those who dishonored her father and the Yakuza. The passing motorist she killed was one of those soldiers, who used the stolen gold to build a financial empire. Ollie tracks Shado down and fares poorly in the confrontation.
At home, Ollie hears on the news that the drug supplier Dinah had been investigating was found dead and mutilated earlier that day. Panicked, Oliver races to the dockside warehouse Dinah suspected the drugs were being distributed from. There, he finds Dinah tied up, tortured, and on the verge of death. Without hesitation Ollie kills her torturer along with the others in the drug lab, including one of Shado's intended victims.
After killing another target, Shado leaves a message for Ollie to meet her on Mt. Rainier where she intends to kill her remaining targets. Although Ollie initially tries to stop her, only one of the targets survives the affair. Ollie also confronts a CIA agent about the use of an Iranian arms deal to fund Nicaraguan Contras, mirroring the events of the Iran-Contra story which broke months earlier.[1] Ollie confronts the remaining target in his office. Ollie intends to frame him for the murder of the drug supplier, but Shado shoots the target through the window and kills him.
Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters was nominated for a 1988 Eisner Award for Best Finite Series.[2]
The series proved popular enough that DC Comics commissioned the first ever Green Arrow ongoing series, also written by Grell.[3] The series ran for 11 years. Grell also wrote the official Post-Crisis origin of Green Arrow in Green Arrow: The Wonder Year.
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