Reddit reviews Green Arrow by Kevin Smith

I'm a big GA comic fan so I feel like I can go into more detail than the other comments here. Since I don't know if you're caught up in Arrow, I'll refrain from any overly-specific show spoilers.

To begin: Arrow started off with a lot of recognisable themes and aspects from the comics. Season 1 in particular. It is very rare that Arrow will follow any specific story line, but it is recognisable where the writers got a lot of their stuff from.

For the first 2 seasons, Oliver on the island was basically "Green Arrow: Year One", about Ollie being a survivalist. In the comic there are pirates on the island instead of soldiers, but it is basically similar. Aspects of Year One was also added to S4.

Season 1 of Arrow was very 80's Green Arrow. During that time period Ollie started killing criminals (for reasons I won't get into), but he still had his usual agenda. Comic GA's main adversaries have always been corrupt politicians, career criminals and rich people who took advantage of the less fortunate. S1 had that down. Mix a little New 52 in there (Which was brand new when they were making S1 and featured an Oliver Queen in his 20s) and you have Arrow.

There was no kill list in the comics - instead Oliver had to investigate to find his targets, or stumble upon crime in the streets. It makes sense why they would do that in the show - it is a good way to tie an episodic plot together. They also had to remove superpowers from the show, as they didn't exist during S1. This forced them to remove Dinah Laurel Lance's ability to Canary Cry, and had them re-evaluate characters like Count Vertigo and Solomon Grundy. Unfortunately as a result, some characters are unrecognisable (like Grundy).

S1 did introduce or change some characters though. John Diggle is a totally new character, but he has since been added to the main comics continuity. Felicity Smoak, having been originally intended as a throwaway character in the show is actually a small-time character in the Firestorm comics. She was briefly added to the Green Arrow comics as Arrow Felicity, but she was removed soon after. Thea Queen is named Mia Dearden in the comics and she isn't Ollie's sister - she is Ollie's sort-of adopted daughter. Laurel in the comics goes by her first name - Dinah. The Dark Archer has a different identity, but that was done on purpose to throw of viewers who knew the character's history.

Season 2 was also pretty faithful to the spirit of the comics. Sarah Lance is a brand new character, but she exists for the same purpose as comic Dinah Drake - the first Black Canary. They couldn't have both Laurel and her mother be Black Canary in the show, so they made it sister instead. Deathstroke was also a very faithful big-bad. While he was originally a Teen Titans villain and is most well known as a Batman villain, it was GA who shot his eye out - giving them a long-standing rivalry.

Beyond that, connections to comics get much weaker. Green Arrow has very little to do with the League of Assassins, and Damien Darhk was both a Titans villain and non-magical in the comics.

Oliver Queen's personality has also grown further from his comics counterpart. In the comics he is very much Robin Hood - the bleeding-heart protector of the poor, always ready to make a joke. Over time, Arrow's Oliver has lost that humorous side and very rarely deals with street-level crime.

 

I highly recommend you read some Green Arrow. Besides his New 52 run, Green Arrow has a standard of being very good. Jump on Amazon or down to a comic shop and pick up any one of these - you won't regret it.

• Green Arrow: Year One. I mentioned this one. This is the retelling of GA's origin story.
  
  
• Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters. This is the start of the aforementioned 80s comics. Dark, violent and with an (un)healthy amount of blood.
  
  
• Green Arrow by Kevin Smith. I adore this book. Written by movie writer Kevin Smith in the early 2000s, his book has a good mystery, great characters, is heartwarming and is oftentimes genuinely funny. This is the opposite of the 80s grittiness.
  
  
• Green Arrow: The Death and Life Of Oliver Queen. This book just came out. It is the first part in the Rebirth line that rebooted DC comics.
  
  Also, if you have 10 minutes to spare, DC released a short animated film on Green Arrow that is worth a watch: DC Showcase: Green Arrow.

I've seen them sold as one trade, for a family normal price. Here it is, I was really annoyed when I saw it, I would have bought that if I'd have known instead of hunting round for an old copy of Sound of Violence, which is now out of print.