Green Arrow by Mike Grell — VOLUME 1

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MIKE G

SHARO RELL N M A R K W R IG H T R YA N

MIKE G R LUREN ELL E HAIN ES ED HAN N DICK G IGAN IO FR ANK RDANO MCL AU PA R IS GHLIN CU EDUAR LLINS DO R ANDY BARRE TO DUBUR ARNE S KE T GARY M ARR A DAN JU RTIN RGENS JJ. BIR CH TREVO R VON EE SHE A A NTON P DEN COLOR ERSA JULIA L A C Q LETTE UEMEN RS T KEN BR UZENA K JOHN C O S T E V E N S TA N Z A H AY N I COVER E S MIKE G RELL JOE RU B ED HAN INS TEIN NIGAN DICK G IO DAN JU RDANO RGENS JJ. BIR CH

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o start: a little bit of history on you. You enlisted in the Air Force in 1967 and were discharged in 1971. You were in Saigon in 1971 – for about a year, correct?

Yes. So you weren’t in the Vietnam War per se, you were working in the Air Force and Military Intelligence?” [the US extraction from Saigon (aka: end of Vietnam) was in 1975] Yes, I was. But the war was going on all around me, so I wasn’t a combat soldier by any means, but I was in the war. I was involved. In fact, I was almost as involved as you can get without being in the jungle.

You grew up in Wisconsin, so you know a lot about hunting. Actually, I read that was one of your passions – wilderness, hunting...

Yes, yes it is.

You also know a lot about weaponry – I remember, while reading Jon Sable Freelance, you going into a lot of detail about the actual weapons used in the stories. I remember reading fan mail for the book praising your attention to detail on illustrating/describing a particular combat knife or gauge/caliber of a specific weapon. You have a really advanced knowledge of this stuff.

Well, I learned to shoot when I was 4 years old. I lived in Northern Wisconsin where the area was so depressed that if your father didn’t hunt, your family didn’t eat meat. Hunting came naturally to me just as a way of life. It taught me respect for the game animals, it taught me a love of the wild, and I’ve been at it since I was just a kid.

I sense a lot of that is reflected in your work: Jon Sable has a history of being a big game hunter in Africa, there’s the whole hunter/ prey motif in the series, and in Green Arrow – in your revamped origin – Green Arrow learns how to use a bow for survival while being stranded on a deserted island. Originally, as per his pre-Crisis origin, Green Arrow was a young boy when he was taught how to shoot.

Yeah, it’s a question of staying alive. I had a line I wrote in a story where someone asks him “what’s the toughest shot you ever made?”, and he replied “it was a lizard at ten feet”. And they asked “was it poisonous?”, and he replied “No. Tasty”. Because it was the shot that he had to make in order to feed himself.

On the topic of Oliver Queen... by the way, do you still like the name ‘Green Arrow’? I remember hearing you weren’t a fan of the name ‘Green Arrow’.

The name is stupid, but the character – the concept of Green Arrow – well, Green Arrow has always been one of my favorite comic book heroes. Right from the time I was a little kid. I learned how to shoot a bow when I was six or seven years old and we used to play ‘Robin Hood’ all of the time. The idea of a character who doesn’t have super powers, but he has superior skill that anybody can learn, just really appealed to me.

That’s like the ‘everyman’ idea. Jon Sable is the ‘everyman’ because anybody with enough training could BE Jon Sable. Warlord/ Travis Morgan was an ‘everyman’, he didn’t have any special powers, he was an Air Force pilot who crashed in Skartaris...

THE Mike

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Grell N TERVIEW

Right. He was just an ordinary guy with a big sword and a .44 Magnum... but he had the only .44 Magnum is Skartaris, so it gave him a slight edge – y’know?

Starslayer was another character you created.

He was a Celtic warrior who gets that cybernetic eye implant as soon as he gets picked up by that ship – but for the most part, it is feasible that a normal human being could be skilled and honed enough that he could be on par with Starslayer.

I’m finding that this another major theme in your 80s work – the main character as the ‘everyman’.

Even Blackhawk, the feature you wrote for 1988’s Action Comic Weekly, is just a ‘normal’ pilot...

It’s the circumstances that cause ordinary, normal people to rise above their everyday lives that really makes them heroic – people just going about their lives and something happens to change them. And it’s that change that’s important – it’s what makes them who they are. It what makes them interesting.

Something else I’ve noticed in your books is the concept of ‘aging’. For example, Ollie is going through a mid-life crisis in Longbow Hunters, he’s saying “well, I’m 40-something, do you want to have kids?” and Dinah says “Well, no. I don’t want to bring kids into this world.”

He wants to have kids because he’s feeling that biological clock ticking, and she doesn’t want anything to do with it because of what THEY do. She tells him that she’d love to make babies with him, but she doesn’t want to make orphans. She’s not ready to hang up her costume and give up the action. She still enjoys what she is and what she does.

The reason why I made it a point to age my characters was that early on [in the 70s] I had a discussion with Julius Schwartz over a line in a Green Arrow story in which Ollie says “something something whatever I’m not even 30 yet”, and I said “that’s impossible”, and he said “no no no, none of our characters are over thirty because our readers can’t relate to anybody over thirty. They think that over thirty is over the hill”, and I said “that’s totally ridiculous. How long would you say Green Arrow and Speedy have been together? Could you believe that the state had awarded Green Arrow custody of Speedy? What about Batman and Robin? Are you going to tell me that the state was going to award custody of a 15 year old boy to 29 year-old male bachelor? Really?”. So when I had the opportunity to create the Warlord and then Jon Sable, I made it a point to make those characters not just over 30, but over 40.

I took a certain amount of pride in making them just a little older than I was at the time because I was against the pervasive ageism that is so prevalent in the comic industry. And it still is. There are so many unemployed artists who just happen to pass that 45 year old mark that you just can’t believe it. It happens

more so in the comics industry... probably more so than any other industry. Artists who are still vital and viable – guys who can draw rings around a lot of the younger crop – are out of work because they’re in their forties. Or, God forbid, in their fifties. Or, in my case, in their sixties.

Did you ever go to Africa?

Yes. I’ve been there twice on safari.

Was that before or after you wrote Jon Sable?

More or less during. I went first in 1984 and back again in 1989.

And you jousted at some point?

Yes. I rode with a group called the Seattle Knights for almost 10 years. I’ve jousted, did horse-back archery, sword fighting, and all that other stuff. I used to brag that I’ve never fell off a horse in my life. Then when I turned 45, I bought a horse. That came to an end in a hurry – three years later I was falling off professionally doing it 3 or 4 times a day. I’ve never been hurt falling off a horse on purpose. I’ve gotten busted-up on accident a couple of times.

When you were shopping around your Savage Empire comic strip in the early 1970s, you had another hard-boiled detective strip called Iron Mike. Is that who Jon Sable is partly based on?

You’ve listed Mickey Spillane and Edward Burroughs as some of your early influences...

The Mickey Spillane influence really showed in Iron Mike. There were a couple of stories I did in Jon Sable that I lifted straight out of Iron Mike – plots I had written out and wanted to follow through with.

I remember reading somewhere that Jon Sable was your favorite character. He was your ‘pet project’ and a lot of the allure came from the fact that you were able to tell the stories you wanted to tell. I’ve got say, I’ve re-read most of the entire Jon Sable Freelance TPB reprint set (available from IDW) for the first time a few months and still really enjoy it. It really holds up 30+ years later.

I don’t know if it’s my age or etc., but lately I’ve been taking an interest in Cold War espionage drama, and this book was right up my alley. The majority of the stories are framed like whodunit mysteries...

That’s what I liked most about the Jon Sable book – I could do any kind of story I wanted. It was securely anchored to the real world and I could often draw my stories from news headlines.

There’s a few things here that you actually predict in advance. Sable dealt with a lot of contemporary stuff (at the time of publication), when you’re

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reading it you can easily place when it happened (“okay, this story is about the 80-something Olympics. Okay, here’s Jon Sable meeting with Reagan. Here’s some Russians trying to escape the soviet by getting smuggled into the U.S.”) and then there’s the whole Iran/Contra thing...

Longbow Hunters! I got a call from a radio station in NYC asking me if I’d go on air and speak live about the story connection. The reporter asked me how I was able to beat the Iran/Contra story, in print, by 6 months. I told them that, quite frankly, all I did was read the papers, looked at what was going on in the world and plugged in the various players and asked myself “what would be stupidest thing the CIA could do if they were absolutely certain they would never get caught?” and that’s what I wrote about.

You’re one of the pioneers of championing for creator-owned work. You were the first to join up with Pacific Comics in the ‘80s (Jack Kirby was the second). For First Comics, you were the second to sign up (Joe Staton was the first). Jon Sable was one of the first 3 books published by First Comics. There was WARP, E-Man, Jon Sable Freelance and then Starslayer came in not too long after that [1983]. What was that like? You were taking a big gamble and venturing into new territory (i.e. creator-owned). I know that First Comics was paying a really good page rate, but there was a risk – you were venturing and taking a gamble.

You were also making a statement about ‘creator-owned’. It wasn’t fair that you were creating popular characters for a bigger comic book company and couldn’t retain control of them.

Exactly. I was always a big fan of newspaper comic strips. One of the reasons I wanted to get into newspaper strips so badly is because creators owned their own material. I didn’t see any reason why that SHOULDN’T be the case in comic books as well. When the opportunity to create and own my own feature arose with Pacific Comics, I jumped on it. They unfortunately did NOT live up to their pledge and promise of even regular payments, there were so many bounced cheques back in the day that I had to look elsewhere. But here came First Comics and they were making good on their promises that Pacific was unable to fulfill. And it just made a huge difference. They were offering royalties. If it hadn’t been for companies like First Comics, I don’t think Marvel or DC would be paying royalties today. There’s no possible way.

First Comics needed you just as badly as you needed them, as First needed some big-name comic talent to jump on board with them to attract new readers. It was a win-win situation, really. The appeal of First Comics was that you were reading some big-name talent hence drawing you into their line of comic books.

When you started with Jon Sable Freelance, it wasn’t a code-approved book obviously, so it gave you more leeway. Frank Miller’s Daredevil run for Marvel – I wouldn’t say he coined ‘grim and gritty’ – but he had the street-level stories... and then there was kind of a lull because he left Daredevil in the early 80s, and that’s when Jon Sable appeared on the newsstands. But since you weren’t operating under the Comics Code Authority, you were able to be more graphic than Miller was able to...

You know... I’m not sure that that’s accurate. I think that Sable was ahead of Miller’s Daredevil.

[Miller’s Daredevil run ran from 1979–1983, and then again in 1985–1986. I was referring to Miller’s first run when he introduced Elektra. So, Mike’s half-right here. Still – not bad for a guy who didn’t have Wikipedia in front of him.]

What’s interesting about the character of Jon Sable is that he’s a very cool, laid-back guy, but then, next thing you know he’s straight up murdering people on panel — granted, they are typically villains, assassins, muggers or enemy soldiers.

But the point is, it’s pretty graphic and it’s on-panel. — Jon Sable has a major underlying theme of ‘urban crime’ – how dangerous the streets are.

There’s lots of implied sex in that book.

I explored a lot of those themes in Jon Sable, but also in Green Arrow: Longbow Hunters. I was taken to task in print by the New York Times and Times magazine – in the same week they ran articles mentioning Green Arrow. Unfortunately they never mentioned my name. They called Green Arrow, and I remember the quote word-for-word, ‘borderline pornography pandering to the prurient interests of today’s youth’.

Oh, it was great. It was great. I just regret that they didn’t mention my name.

At the same time, they referred to Mindy Newell (she was writing Catwoman at the time), and Mindy’s name they used. She got a phone call from her father, who was a heavy-hitter stock broker with big offices on Wall Street, saying “Mindy, I’d like you to come down to the office for lunch today” and she was thinking “Oh my God, what am I gonna face now?”.

So she walks in, as she steps off the elevator in the main lobby of her father’s firm she sees the page from the New York Times blown-up wall-sized with her name circled about 25 times in yellow highlighter. She got a standing ovation from the office staff, and a big bouquet of roses from her father. He said “Honey, I’ve been on Wall Street for 35 years and I’ve never gotten my name in the Times”.

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THE Mike

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Grell N TERVIEW

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text: MARK WAID art: MIKE GRELL colors: TOM McCRAW

H ERO

GREEN ARROW Alter Ego: Oliver Queen

Group Affiliation: Justice League of America (former member)

Occupation: Florist, Deliveryman,

Base of Operations: Seattle, Washington

Adventurer Known relatives: None

Height: 5’ 11 Weight: 178 lbs.

Eyes: Green Hair: Blond First Appearance: MORE FUN COMICS #73 — November 1941

HISTORY

POWERS AND WEAPONS

Although the newspapers called Oliver Queen a millionaire industrialist, “bored dilettante” would probably have been more accurate. Spoiled by wealth, he never had to work hard a day in his life — until he paid the price for his indulgences when, while drunk, he fell overboard from a yatch and found himself stranded on a remote island off the coast of California.

Green Arrow is the world’s greatest archer. During the early days of his career, he relied on specially gimmicked arrows, but he now uses conventional shafts exclusively. He is also an extraordinary tracker, hunter, and hand-to-hand combatant.

Queen managed to hunt food by crafting a crude bow and arrow. Archery became a survival skill over the next three months as he learned for the first time what life without a rich man’s comforts was all about. He was finally “rescued” when a group of marijuana farmers boated out to the island to claim their crop and Queen got the drop on them while they were under the influence of their own drugs. Loading them into their boat, Queen took them back to California and turned them over to the Coast Guard. Though he remained anonymous, the local media picked up on the story and dubbed him a latter-day Robin Hood.

Their idle description was ironic; once Queen made it known that he was alive and well, his reintroduction into the posh society he’d left behind was at a masquerade charity ball, where he’d come disguised as Robin Hood.

But things were different for Queen. His exercise in self-reliance had changed him. He no longer had patience for the shallow concerns and chatter of the idle rich. So when a gunman appeared at the party, the masked Queen took charge and, armed only with his ersatz arrows and the archery skills he had learned on the island, stopped the thief cold.

The brush with crime-fighting was dangerous — but intoxicating, more fun than anything Queen had done in years. Without intending to, he’d found a way to practice and enforce the ethics he espoused. He’d even had an alter-ego designed for him: the gunman he’d apprehended had rattled on and on to the press about the “big, green arrow-guy” who’d collared him, leading the local press to coin the name “Green Arrow” for Queen.

Shortly after beginning his crime-fighting career, Oliver adopted a young orphan named Roy Harper, who became his masked sidekick, Speedy. For a time, Green Arrow was also a member of the Justice League of America and enjoyed tremendous success as a masked hero. His growing lack of interest in his corporation, however, allowed an unscrupulous industrialist named John Deleon to frame Oliver for mishandling municipal bonds for personal profit. Although Queen was not convicted on any charge, his reputation in the business world was ruined and he was forced into bankruptcy.

The experience toughened him even further. Green Arrow stopped being a costume, an alter-ego; he and Queen were now truly one man, dedicated to fighting for the weak and oppressed no matter what the odds.

With Speedy now grown up and on his own, Green Arrow’s new sometime-partner became the Black Canary, whom he had met in the Justice League. As lovers, Green Arrow and Black Canary live together in Seattle.

Green Arrow has a tremendous sense of social justice and will battle any opponent — including the law itself — when he believes his cause is just. His detractors often characterize his indomitable spirit as hotheadedness and they’re not completely wrong — his temper is legendary. His compassion runs even stronger.