By Andrew A. Smith
Tribune Content Agency
In 1941, Green Arrow and Speedy debuted as the protectors of Star City. After more than three seasons, the TV show Arrow has finally caught up with the comics -- in more ways than one.
Astute viewers of Arrow have probably already figured out what's been common knowledge among comics fans for more than 70 years, that originally the Emerald Archer was a knockoff of a more famous superhero. In the official history DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes, author Les Daniels wrote that Green Arrow "was based on the blueprint of Batman," who had debuted at DC Comics two years earlier.
And in those early issues, the "inspiration" was hard to deny. Oliver Queen, like Bruce Wayne, was a bored playboy who fought crime in a secret identity. Queen's ward Roy "Speedy" Harper, like Wayne's ward Dick "Robin" Grayson, accompanied his mentor as a sidekick. Batman and Robin fought crime with gimmicks in their utility belts, while Green Arrow and Speedy kept similar gimmicks in quivers.
The similarities only grew from there. The Battling Bowman was summoned by the police with a flaming arrow in the sky, much like the Bat-Signal. Further aping the Gotham Guardian, the Amazing Archer had an Arrowcave and an Arrowcar. All that was missing was a butler -- and a more compelling reason to fight crime. Batman had that whole dead-parents thing going, while Green Arrow just swiped his origin story from Robinson Crusoe.
But while the comics Green Arrow started moving away from the Bat-blueprint in the 1960s to become a unique character in his own right, the TV version has been eagerly filling the Bat-niche in the superhero food chain. That's because the TV rights to Batman are tied up elsewhere, so in Arrow, like in the unrelated Smallville, Green Arrow has been more Dark Knight than Robin Hood.
“We played him as a guy who was returning home from war with PTSD for the first three years,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim told Entertainment Weekly Sept. 10. And initially the character wasn't even called Green Arrow -- he has been "The Vigilante," "The Hood" or "The Arrow" to the police and media for three seasons.
That wasn't the only difference between the comics and TV. The on-screen bowman lives in the invented-for-the-show Starling City. His first partner was invented-for-the-show John Diggle, and he has a sister, invented-for-the-show Thea "Speedy" Queen. The show lifted Felicity Smoak from Firestorm comics to join the rapidly growing Team Arrow, and swiped Teen Titans arch-enemy Slade "Deathstroke" Wilson as a villain closely tied to Ollie's origin. Arrow gave us Roy Harper as a sidekick, but he isn't Ollie's ward and he has never been called "Speedy."
Even more confusing for comics fans is what the show has done with Black Canary. That heroine was introduced in 1947 as Dinah Drake, who appeared to play both sides of the law to Johnny Thunder, a character whose strip she took over. Canary eventually married a private investigator named Larry Lance, becoming Dinah Drake Lance.
DC revived the character in the 1960s, and faced with the realities of a character tied to the 1940s, eventually decided to make the new Black Canary the daughter of the original, dubbing her Dinah Laurel Lance. That character became the love of Green Arrow's life, their off-and-on romance mirrored by the Canary's off-and-on status as co-star in various Green Arrow titles. But since the latest revamp of DC's superhero line, Green Arrow and Black Canary have yet to meet, much less date (although one suspects that will eventually happen).
That's pretty complicated, but the TV show decided it wasn't complicated enough, splitting Black Canary into two characters, sisters named Lance who have both dated -- and broken up with -- Oliver Queen. On TV, Sara Lance was the original Black Canary, who kicked the bucket at the beginning of Season Three. Her sister Laurel is the current Black Canary, but is no longer tied romantically to Oliver, who is shipping with Felicity.
Got all that? Well, it doesn't matter, because a lot of it is changing.
Because with Season Four, the grim "Bat-Arrow" era is over. TV's Oliver Queen is getting a much cheerier attitude, and a brighter green costume without sleeves (much like in the comics). And, finally, he's renamed himself Green Arrow.
But that's not all. Starling City has been renamed Star City, and Roy Harper has left -- to be replaced by Oliver's sister Speedy, who's learned combat skills from an assassin cult. So, at last, Green Arrow and Speedy are the protectors of Star City. And it only took three years!
But those aren't the only from-the-comics shenanigans going in Arrow. As of the third episode of Season Four:
* Serious Ink: In the 1960s, Green Lantern used to fight a criminal named Tattooed Man, whose tattoos were made from super-scientific chemicals and could come alive. Yes, that is a stupid super-power. There have been several Tattooed Men since, all of them with some variation of this power, although now it seems mystical instead of chemical.
In the Arrow episode "Restoration," a character named Double Down can bring playing cards tattooed on his skin to life, and throw them like knives. That's not quite the Tattooed Man, but it's pretty close (although the concept also seems to borrow more than a little from Daredevil villain Bullseye).
* Getting Bee-zy: The Hierarchy of International Vengeance and Extermination (H.I.V.E.) has been doing evil things in DC Comics since it was introduced in 1980. H.I.V.E. has been mentioned several times on Arrow and is allied with this season's big bad, Damien Darhk.
* Darhk Times: Speaking of which, yes, "Damien Darhk" is a stupid name. But he isn't a stupid character, being a mystical threat in some incarnations of Teen Titans and a big player in the (current) origin of John Constantine, DC's mystical anti-hero. If TV's Damien Darhk looks familiar, it's because he's played with evil gusto by Neil McDonagh, who played Dum Dum Dugan in Captain America: The First Avenger and on TV's Agent Carter.
* Abracadabra: Speaking of Constantine, Matt Ryan will reprise his role from NBC's short-lived Constantine in this season's episode five, "Haunted." That's a character jumping networks intact, which is a pretty rare -- almost magical -- event.
* Mr. T, Too: DC revamped a 1940s character named Mr. Terrific -- yes, that's another stupid name -- in the 1990s, as an African-American genius named Michael Holt, whose signature T-mask and T-spheres (round computers/weapons roughly the shape and size of tennis balls that fly around in his wake) have already appeared on Arrow. The T-mask appears on John Diggles's helmet, but that appears to be a red herring. Because an African-American genius named Curtis Holt has been introduced at Palmer Industries, inventing something that looks very much like a T-Sphere.
And if that isn't enough to make Green Arrow required reading, it's enough to make a TV show pretty entertaining.
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Replies
Even as a kid I could see that they were ripping off inspired by a lot of the Batman toys and gimmicks.
I hadn't thought of it before, but I wonder how Bob Kane felt about their using so many of "his" ideas for Green Arrow. I also wonder if DC was hedging its bets with a character that wasn't partially owned by someone outside the company.
You may have something there.
Also, though, Weisinger's three biggest creations were all rip-offs: Green Arrow (Batman), Johnny Quick (Flash) and Aquaman (Sub-Mariner). Weisinger may have been valued enough as an editor that they gave him a free hand on such things.
That's pretty complicated, but the TV show decided it wasn't complicated enough, splitting Black Canary into two characters, sisters named Lance who have both dated -- and broken up with -- Oliver Queen. On TV, Sara Lance was the original Black Canary, who kicked the bucket at the beginning of Season Three. Her sister Laurel is the current Black Canary, but is no longer tied romantically to Oliver, who is shipping with Felicity.
I'm assuming Tribune Content indirectly dictated some verb choices, there.
By speaking of Sara in the past tense? I meant to mention later that she has returned (to co-star in Legends of Tomorrow) but it got lost in a rewrite. It happens!
Actually, jaded me was thinking about Laurel and Sara having both dated Ollie.
Stan Laurel and Ollie Hardy?
Sort of a knee jerk action on my part to defend Green Arrow. Maybe if I do it often enough people will begin to question the "imitation Batman" myth. First of all, every comic publisher in the Golden Age had at least one archer. It might have been required to get second class mailing permits, for all I know. Green Arrow specifically is named after a character created by Edgar Wallace in 1923, The Green Archer, who starred in two movie serials, one in the twenties and one about 1935, available for free on You tube. Wallace created all kinds of memes during his career which still exist in comics, including the superhero team, The Four Just Men, ancestors for everybody from Doc Savage's band to the Fantastic Four and the Justice Society.
Mort Weisinger, former SF fan and friend of Julie Schwartz, was an editor for Thrilling publications, before coming to Detective Comics Inc. As one of his first assignments he was put in charge of revitalizing More Fun Comics and sprucing up the back features at Action and Adventure. In a very short time, he redesigned Doctor Fate and the Sandman and created the Vigilante, Tarantula, Johnny Quick and Green Arrow and Vigilante. Then he got drafted. He came back later and took over Superman after Siegel and Shuster were forced out.
Green Arrow and Vigilante, debuting at the same time, are obviously a bookend set- old west characters brought to modern times, the cowboy and the indian recreated as super heroes, Vigilante's mighty steed is his motorcylcle and the Green Arrow's is the Arrowplane (which is a weird name for a car, but there it is). Both strips, despite their modern days settings were treated as westerns.
Green Arrow as originally created had no Batman like accoutrements, He didn't have any gimmick arrows, he didn't have a stately mansion, he didn't have a secret cave. He certainly didn't have a butler. He and Speedy, a young archer raised by Indians battle crime across the deserts and mountains of the west, basically just shooting them with arrows, very similar to the way later Mike Grell version.
Long after Weisinger and replacement writer Joe Samachson wandered off to do other things, Batman editor Jack Schiff took the character over and transformed him into a "Batman lite" as it were. He even recycled some Bill Finger scripts into Green Arrow stories making the character look even more unoriginal. It made sense that Green Arrow was never a success in the Silver Age. Aquaman got his own comic, Martian Manhunter got the cover slot in House of Mystery. Green Arrow got an occasional reprint in the back of World's Finest.
But he started out strong and the original version deserves more respect.
Thanks for the information, Bob, and your effort does you credit. Glad to have you aboard!
It doesn't help that DC's official history contains the quote that I included in my column, nor that DC's Green Arrow reprints begin with Jack Kirby's run in the late 1950s. The few 1940s GA stories I've read were from the occasional reprints in DC's dollar books and such. I haven't read enough of them to have formed a gestalt, so your defense is pretty compelling.
Bob Hughes said:
Welcome to the board, Mr. Hughes! And an excellent start, it is.
I have nothing to contribute or detract from your robust defence of the original Green Arrow. But your passage above provided me an opening to, perhaps, clear up a puzzler which strikes nearly everyone who reads those early tales of the Emerald Archer.
I have no authoritative information to back this, but it's always been my opinion that the term "Arrowplane", as applied to Green Arrow's automobile was a bit of a pun, derived from the Terraplane, a popular model of car manufactured by the Hudson Motor Car Company from 1932 to 1938.
The Terraplane was designed to be a low-cost-but-high-performance machine, targeting the devastated household incomes that accompanied the Great Depression. By employing several inexpensive design techniques, such as reduced weight and redundant wiring to increase electrical reliability, the Terraplane delivered a stylish, comfortable, and powerful ride at a low cost. The Terraplane quickly became a best-seller and outpaced all of Hudson's other models.
By 1938, though, other auto manufacturers had caught on and were producing competitive models. Despite its name-brand popularity, sales of the Hudson Terraplane dropped dramatically. 1938 was the Terraplane's last year of production.
Though the Terraplane was out of production by the time the first Green Arrow story was published, it had been such a ubiquitous vehicle that it was still in the public's common knowledge, and ripe for Mort Weisinger using a play on the name for the Green Arrow's auto.
The Arrowplane (the car version) appeared in the Green Arrow's debut, in More Fun Comics # 73 (Nov., 1941), and was consistently referred to by that nomenclature until More Fun Comics # 101 (Jan.-Feb., 1945), and the story "Formula for Doom". It is in this tale that the name changes to "Arrowcar", and remains so for the rest of the Battling Bowman's history.
Hope this helps.
Thanks to both of you for the Golden Age info. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any pre-Arrowcave stories of Green Arrow.
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