Green Arrow

Beyond dealing with intelligence services overreach, the environment or corporate malfeasance, the switch was also depicted as a mid-life crisis. Part of the Grell run hinges on Queen getting older, being a flawed man and wondering about the choices he made.

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Green Arrow is the world’s greatest archer. He is also a truly extraordinary tracker and hunter, a seasoned vigilante and adventurer, and a formidable brawler. He’s extremely hard to hit in ranged combat.

History

Oliver Queen was born in a rich socialite family from Star City, with roots in the diamond trade. He received his blond good looks from both parents. At an early age, his father gave him a bow and arrow set for Christmas because young Oliver was such a tremendous Robin Hood fan. The child got his first taste of death when he accidentally killed a rabbit with his archery later that Christmas day.

As a teenager, he was a rascal who would hot-wire his uncle’s Porsche to race around it around the streets of Star City to pick up girls.

Oliver was geared all through his school years by his father to take over Queen Enterprises. Mr. Queen sent him to Hudson University in New Carthage, New York to study business where he would receive his B.A. degree. Oliver returned to his hometown of Star City and worked on his Master’s Degree. He majored in Business Administration.

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Though coming from a conservative background, Oliver was exposed to the ideology of liberal movements and began participating in various demonstrations, chiefly about social issues and Civil Rights. Oliver attended several peaceful marches across the nation and though some radical anarchists tried to recruit him, he refused.

Ollie had all the fervor, values and vocabulary of those peculiar years for the American Left, made even more virulent by his guilt at being born in the upper bourgeoisie.

During this time period, in an untold story, Connor Hawke, his first son, was conceived with Sandra “Moonday” Hawke. Oliver didn’t learn of his illegitimate son until much later, when Connor was a young man.

Inheritance

During Oliver’s young adulthood, his parents died. He buried this past and left it there. Oliver hardly ever discussed his parents after their deaths. Left with an enormous fortune, Oliver began setting his course to take over Queen Enterprises.

Queen had another lifestyle change and veering of political opinions during this era, becoming a model hardworking conservative businessman. He tried to match what he thought would have have been his father’s expectations of him in this role, accumulating consequent stress from overworking.

To deal with this, Oliver would try expensive diversions when possible. He learned to fly planes and received his civilian pilot’s license. He tried skydiving, boxing, judo, and other combative arts with some upper class friends. Oliver excelled at his interests but still felt stressed and unfulfilled.

He also became a good friend of the much older socialite Abigail Horton, which resulted in constant, but mistaken, rumours of a relationship (Queen did date Horton’s daughter later on, but it didn’t take).

With mounting stress and a worsening feeling that he had chosen the wrong path, Queen turned toward alcohol and womanising. He became increasingly odious and overbearing, treating his employees and anybody not of his status with obvious contempt. Within years, he had become exactly what he had once reviled – The Man.

Island life

On his first vacation in over 6 years, the dilettante joined friends aboard the yacht Kristina for a cruise off the California coast. Oliver was looking for another diversion and wanted to try his hand at archery again.

The yacht belonged to the famed Hollywood actor/stuntsman and fellow archery enthusiast Howard Hill. Hill was the man who did all of the archery stunts in Oliver’s favourite version of Robin Hood, as well as numerous westerns. Oliver was ready for another wild weekend when something happened to change him for the rest of his life…

One evening, after a full day of overindulgence onboard, Oliver was taking a walk on deck, and feeling ill, bent over the side of the ship to vomit. He lost his balance and fell overboard in a drunken stupor. It is possible that he was pushed (perhaps by a criminal, or by a vengeful cabin boy he had been bullying), but Queen was simply too drunk to remember anything about that.

He drifted all night before washing up on the shore of a nearby island in the Solomon Chains .

He first came to an island where he found a beached derelict ship The San Miguel which laid on the shore. There he came across another marooned individual named Nicholas Kotero, also known in the media as “the Love Boat Killer”. He was a man who would meet women on cruises, strike up a romance, and then murder them for his sick pleasure.

Kotero deceived Oliver for the first few days, pretending that he was one Stephen Clothier, a marooned sailor. Oliver discovered the truth through detective work, including the fact that Kotero was using the name of the Captain of the San Miguel. Kotero had murdered the entire crew because the Captain figured out who he was.

Oliver confronted Kotero, fought with him, and won. Oliver Queen then decided to leave Kotero trapped on the island as a sort of life sentence in solitary. Years later, Kotero would escape from the island and come back and haunt both Oliver Queen and Connor Hawke.

Another island life

Oliver took a raft he and Kotero had made. He floated his way to a deserted nearby isle called Starfish Island in the Channel Islands . There, Oliver managed to stay alive for 11 weeks. The key to this survival was a makeshift bow and arrows, and through long trial and error he learned to hunt and to kill for his survival. This is where Green Arrow was born.

Queen finally managed to go back to the States when marijuana farmers came to the island to check their crops, and he captured them. Though these events occasionally got exaggerated, Oliver would later point out that there were only two of them, and that he captured them after they got thoroughly stoned.

Sailing the weed growers’s boat, he delivered them to the Coast Guards, requesting that he remain anonymous to avoid further troubles.

The press loved this story, calling the anonymous vigilante “a modern day Robin Hood”. Over time it would get embellished, until the best know version involved the mysterious island archer capturing a whole band of well-armed pirates.

During the 6 months he had been gone, Queen’s company’s performance had kept steady. All the hard work and going through the rituals of the C-level executive didn’t actually seem to have that much of an impact. He started disengaging himself from the business, which would in time result in a loss of control over Queen Enterprises.

Feeling much better after this decision, Oliver joined an archery club and continued to practice with great vigour to recapture how he felt in the Channel Islands. He also left the persona of the snobbish, bullying, macho socialite behind. Queen arced back toward his previous ideals.

The coming of Green Arrow

Shortly after his return to civilization, Oliver was attending a charity costume ball in, of course, a Robin Hood costume. A thief named Lester “The Gooch” Norton burst in to rob the guests. Though Queen sensibly didn’t wish to intervene, Gooch forced his hand when he took a random woman hostage outside the ballroom.

Queen’s first shot was a superb one, pinning the Gooch’s tie to a tree and forcing him to let go of his hostage as Queen had hoped. The thief then decided to shoot the archer with his shotgun. Queen hurriedly released a second shot.

He accidentally drew an arrow with a golf ball stuck on it – a result of a trick shot challenge he had just been a part of. The unusual projectile struck the thief in the privates, forcing him to drop his gun and surrender.

As Star City police were taking “The Gooch” Norton away in handcuffs, the thief exclaimed that, “you never woulda caught me…if it hadn’t been for that big, green, arrow-guy !” This lead to GREEN ARROW GRABS GREEDY GOOCH headlines in the Star City press.

Even though Oliver thought that the reporter had no sense of style, he had a lot of fun. More than he had in years. He had the money and time and nothing better to do. Already missing the adventures he had found himself on the islands, Oliver decided to embark on a career as a crime fighter.

As the “modern-day Robin Hood”, the Green Arrow, Queen popped up several times in Star City over the next weeks. Green Arrow then caught the attention of the country when he stopped an assassination attempt on a Presidential candidate.

The wonder years

Shortly after beginning his work as Green Arrow, Oliver took on a young orphan named Roy Harper as his ward. Roy also became his partner in crime fighting, using the handle “Speedy”. The two moved into the Queen Estate mansion, set up the Arrow Cave, and fought the villains of Star City together during the youth’s early teens.

During the first couple of years, a clean shaven Green Arrow wore a simplified green utilitarian outfit with red gloves and red boots. The youth took on a outfit that looked liked Green Arrow’s except it was red with yellow gloves and boots. They would fight villains such as Clock King, the Rainbow Archer, Bulls-Eye, and other two-bit bad guys.

With Oliver’s wealth, they had all the money a crime fighting duo could want. In keeping up with what Batman and Robin had, Green Arrow and Speedy acquired :

• A mustard coloured “Arrow Car” (which had a catapult Oliver loved to spring himself and Speedy up into the air to go head to head with criminals in tough spots).
• An “Arrow Jet” which Oliver would eventually crash.
• An “Arrow Cave” underneath the Queen mansion.
• And every bit of “trick arrows” money could buy.

The Star City police even fired a “Green Arrow Bolt” into the Star City skyline when there was trouble, much like Batman and Commissioner Gordon’s “Bat Signal”. Basically, Green Arrow was playing at being Batman and Robin.

Green Arrow also joined the Justice League of America, back when it was a bit less than a year old. He was the first non-founding member to join. He would continue serving with the JLA through the first 5 years of the team’s operation, although he left and came back on several occasions.

As time passed, Queen’s social conscience grew, and he created many projects that benefited others through his organization, the Queen Fund. As radical school of thought and activism developed among the Civil Rights movement, Queen also gradually adopted some of their points of view and vocabulary.

No more Mister Rich Guy

Queen’s efforts as Green Arrow began to consume Oliver’s time. He soon let his attention to business matters wander, opening the way for John Deleon. Deleon, Queen’s ruthless business rival, faked documents that showed Oliver had mishandled Star City municipal bonds for his own personal profit.

Oliver was unable to prove his innocence. Though he was never convicted on any charges stemming from these forged documents, his stature in the business world was destroyed. He was forced into bankruptcy. Deleon bought Queen’s estate as well as the Queen Fund.

His personal fortune gone with his business holdings, Oliver threw himself full time into his work as Green Arrow. The experience radicalized Queen. He was no longer interested in wealth. He was willing to fight for the weak and downtrodden even when that fight set him up against the establishment and the law.

Oliver was willing to defy the law if he believed it to be unjust – his Motivation clearly changed from Thrill of Adventure to Seeking Justice.

Green Arrow had also fallen in love with the second Black Canary (Dinah Laurel Lance) while they were working together with the Justice League of America. They often worked in tandem together and would continue to do so for almost a decade. The two saw each other often and would work on each other’s cases as time permitted.

Hard-Travelling Heroes

After losing his fortune, Green Arrow would team up with his partner Green Lantern (Hal Jordan). Hal was of a conservative nature and saw justice and law as a black and white issue where one was either right or wrong. Oliver’s saw more shades of grey, and he knew that ’justice‘ was often a tool of oppression of the poor and minorities.

The two took a journey to look at what America was going through. Oliver was trying to prove to Hal that he was forgetting about the common man on Earth. He figured Hal lost touch with the everyday human beings because his head and worries were in the cosmos he patrolled as Green Lantern.

That long journey, which was done in a battered old truck, made them confront their own political beliefs and nature as heroes. It also forged a robust friendship between them, which would endure even through death. Hal Jordan, in particular, would later consider this period to have been the best in his life.

Oliver and Hal would work together on and off in crime fighting together in several adventures for a few years together. Usually Dinah (Black Canary II) would join.

Separated from Oliver from months and not receiving any attention, Speedy decided to experiment with drugs – such as heroin. Oliver discovered by accident that Roy was a junkie shooting up. Oliver confronted his ward (whom he considered to practically be his son) angrily which put a rift between the two, which lasted for decades.

It would take Dinah Laurel Lance and Hal Jordan to actually help Roy Harper break his addiction.

These events, plus numerous other problems (financial problems, his failure to save a martyr’s life, and troubles in his relationship with Dinah) meant toxic amounts of stress. It all culminated in Oliver accidentally killed a sniper in a heist. For the first time in his life, a bowshot from him didn’t do what it was supposed to.

Oliver had a nervous breakdown. He tore up his outfit and broke his bow and arrows. He took the “Arrow Plane” and crashed it into a mountain, parachuting out in the nick-of-time. This to him was the last anyone would hear of “Green Arrow”.

The monastery

Queen made his way to a monastery called the Ashram (the one that Connor Hawke was growing up in). He requested asylum in order to help him forgive himself. During this stay, Oliver shaved his head and took on monk’s clothing.

Oliver would learn under Master Jansen a few points of Zen philosophy. This would lead Oliver to his first contact with kyudo – the Japanese approach to the bow.

Oliver began to rediscover himself. He realised that he would not be able to repress his character of being a swashbuckler, as he had been trying to do before his disappearance – trying to act more like a grown-up. He would have to live out his life in the spirit of what his character was. Master Jansen told him to not battle his soul, but to accept, be, and become.

At this time Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) found Oliver and took him out to help a troubled Black Canary. Ollie and Hal returned to the JLA shortly after. Green Arrow and Green Lantern continued to work as partners outside of the JLA on several adventures.

Queen tried to be more involved in his social activism by taking on those jobs as Oliver Queen. Yet he still had the playboy nature about him, and lived that way the best he could since losing his fortune. At the same time he devoted himself to his role as Green Arrow with gusto and many trick arrows.

After Ollie returned to the JLA, he and Dinah became lovers. She allowed him to open up a Public Relations Agency in Star City above her floral shop. Meanwhile, Speedy joined the group known as the Teen Titans. Later, Dinah and Oliver moved in together in an apartment in Star City.

Ollie would have some friction with members of the JLA and especially Hawkman (who had strong conservative opinions), the Red Tornado, Superman, and the Phantom Stranger. His reputation grew to an all time high as a loud mouthed liberal complainer.

Focusing on Star City

Green Arrow quit the JLA for several months. He felt the JLA had forgotten about the average guy on the streets. Ollie also questioned his own usefulness, operating among other heroes who could move small mountains with their powers. He wanted to concentrate on the non-cosmic adventures and help the common man.

He continued to live with Dinah, but was particularly bitter and aggressive during this specific stage of his crime fighting career.

During this time, outgoing Star City mayor Jack Major nominated Oliver Queen to replace him and to run for mayor. Ollie got caught up in the politics and thought this might be a new avenue for an ageing hero. He received the backing of his friends in the JLA. However he lost the mayoral election to a corrupt candidate with Mafia syndicate backing.

Oliver Queen then became a newspaper editorial columnist for local newspaper the Daily Star. He wrote an opinion column called “Queen’s Gambit”. Green Arrow later returned to the JLA after the team members all convinced him that they needed him.

Green Arrow continued fighting criminals, usually with the Black Canary’s help. New foes included Slingshot, Count Vertigo, Rainbow Archer, Printer’s Devil, Merlyn the Archer, or Ozone.

Oliver briefly inherited millions of dollars from his long time friend Abigail Horton and then investigated her death and tribulations.

The JLA satellite then fell to Earth and the situation of the JLA became troubled. Black Canary and Green Arrow left. Some time after, the Anti-Monitor brought about the Crisis in which the Flash (Barry Allen) and Supergirl (Kara) were killed, among others.

The Seattle years

After the Crisis, Oliver and Dinah decided to change their lives. Queen had a sour taste in his mouth of Star City. His attempts at being a businessman, a politician, a local activist, a journalist, a public relations consultant, and a member of the JLA had all failed.

They moved to Seattle, Washington, to start new lives. Dinah opened the “Sherwood Florist” flower shop. She would hire her lover to be both an assistant florist and delivery man.

In this new city, Oliver Queen, now firmly in his 40s, experienced a mid-life crisis. Trying to go back to the basics to find what was missing in his life, he stopped using trick arrows, put away his recurve bow and took back the longbow like Howard Hill used.

Green Arrow donned a new hooded outfit, more acclimated to Seattle’s weather, that Dinah made for him for his 43^rd birthday. Ollie even became a grandpa of sorts when his ward Roy Harper became a father.

During these first few weeks in Seattle, Oliver asked Dinah to marry him. She turned him down. Though Dinah wished to have children and start a family with Ollie, she was too afraid that this would only result in orphans.

The longbow hunters

Green Arrow soon ran into Shado. She was a Japanese kyudo mistress and assassin on a mission of vengeance against a band of American WWII vets. The dishonours she was avenging were decades old, but she eventually killed all the men but one, Jankowski, who had fled to Seattle.

At first opposed in their methods, Green Arrow and Shado eventually came around working together against a man named Magnor. He ran a cocaine smuggling operation and who worked with Jankowski, Shado’s target.

Magnor’s men kidnapped Dinah, and tortured her horribly. This also badly shocked Oliver, and in a moment of rage killed her torturer, Jankowski. Shado let him do so, feeling his revenge was more important than hers – but later remarked Oliver’s eyes had now changed and that he now could kill.

Green Arrow refused to believe her and tried to justify his action in every possible way. As to Dinah she was traumatized, but hid it all from Oliver. She almost committed suicide in secret but slowly recovered, both physically and psychologically, and gradually regained her heroic strength.

Afterwards, Green Arrow would acclimate himself to Seattle fighting everyday criminals. He no longer wished to fight the super-villains he and Hal faced in their journeys together in the cosmos or with the JLA.

A few years went by. Adventures came and went, and Oliver got involved again in Yakuza business in order to help Shado. During this adventure, Oliver was accidentally shot in the chest by Shado. She spent a few weeks nursing him back to health. That was during one of the weak periods in Dinah and Ollie’s relationship, and he betrayed her with Shado.

That tryst led to a pregnancy, though Shado didn’t tell Queen that her son was also his.

Another year later, he would help Shado rescue the child from the Yakuza. Oliver gave the child the necklace with an arrowhead he used while marooned on an island years earlier. Shado still found it better not to tell him the truth, and Ollie didn’t notice the child’s green eyes.

Oliver returned to Seattle to continue in his role as Green Arrow. He declined explaining to Dinah where he had been for all this time, making her furious and further damaging their relationship. The public learned during this period that Green Arrow was actually Oliver Queen. For months it had been an open secret, not really hidden.

Arrow abroad

Oliver had worked several times with a freelance spook, killer and general mercenary named Eddie Fyers. They didn’t trust each other at all – and Fyers was obviously attracted to Dinah. Fyers, passed himself for a DEA agent and promised to help Green Arrow on a difficult case. But he actually recruited him to become a catspaw for a terrorist operation sponsored by the US government in Panama.

Queen took the fall, and in a very public trial declared a traitor. However Fyers secretly helped him escape.

Evading the government, Oliver Queen left the country for about a year and travelled to Canada, the British Isles, and Africa. There he had a supernatural encounter with a Celtic god named Herne the Hunter who let him know that he considered him his spiritual son. During this time, his beliefs evolved toward firm environmentalist stance.

At that point, Oliver, who has become a bit cold hearted, was quite able to kill in self defence or in the defence of innocents. Gone was the remorse over taking a life that had originally driven him to the Monastery years ago – he grievously wounded and probably killed goons during his wanderings. The events surrounding his meetings with Shado had brought out his hunting and killing instincts.

Dinah’s and Oliver’s relationship finally crumbled after his return to Seattle. They tried to work on it but it failed. Over the next year, Oliver continued fighting crime as Green Arrow.

The final straw that broke the camel’s back came when Dinah caught Oliver kissing another girl named Marianne on New Year’s Eve. Dinah also learned of Ollie’s and Shado’s child. This was the worst as Dinah had recently learned she couldn’t become pregnant due to wounds suffered while tortured. Dinah left Oliver.

Bitter and alone, Queen wanted to fight crime as a vigilante, but also wanted to give up the Green Arrow identity. It reminded him too much of his life, which he thought was a failure. He retreated to the Monastery where he had years before in order to find balance again.

While in the Monastery, he met Connor Hawke (whom he didn’t know was his son). They immediately struck up a strong friendship with Connor eager to learn from him.

Zero Hour

Then Zero Hour happened. Oliver saw what he thought was an alternate universe, in which Oliver Queen died. Hal Jordan went over the edge and started to call himself Parallax, wanting to destroy the universe and remake it for the better. Most other heroes couldn’t stand and watch Hal destroy everything, and it is ultimately Green Arrow who killed Hal with an arrow in the heart.

Hit hard by the fact he had to kill his best friend, Queen nevertheless returned to the role of Green Arrow with Connor at his side. Eddie Fyers also became entangled with them again. After a turning of the spirit, Fyers appeared to become one of the good guys for a change. Connor then introduced a new look for him and Green Arrow.

Queen finally learned Connor’s parentage, and intensified his efforts to teach his son.

A few days later, the battling bowmen and Fyers attempted to prevent the detonation of a virulent mutagenic compound over Metropolis. Things went wrong as Oliver was infiltrating the organization, called Hydrax. Green Arrow found itself holding a double dead man switch that prevented the device to detonate, amidst corpses.

Superman arrived at the last second and appraised the situation with Oliver. It seemed that the only way to prevent the compound from detonating over Metropolis was for Oliver to die, since he immediately refused Superman’s desperate offer of amputating both his arms in order to save his life.

The plane exploded and although Green Arrow’s corpse was never found, the compound wasn’t released.

His son, Connor Hawke, would immediately take up the mantle of the name Green Arrow and become Green Arrow II. He even joined the JLA for a time.

Death and the archer

Green Arrow actually went to Paradise. Given his impression that his life had been a failure, this came as something of a surprise to him. There he met Parallax, who hadn’t actually died to that arrow. Jordan was looking for redemption, which he would soon find by sacrificing his life to save the solar system from a Sun-Eater.

Hal had another plan – to resurrect Oliver. Green Arrow was his best friend and a hero, and Jordan wanted to give both back to Earth before he sacrificed himself. Since Oliver didn’t feel like abandoning his Heavenly afterlife, they reached a compromise where Jordan would force-grow a clone from a cell from Oliver’s corpse, and give him his memories from the journey through America.

This body and memory would carry on the Green Arrow legacy on Earth, while the soul stayed in Paradise.

Back to his loud politics and swashbuckling panache, the Green Arrow clone had obsolete memories. He took a long time to understand that he had somehow been out of existence for decades. He also couldn’t trust the then-current current JLA at all.

Furthermore, he was a fully functional mind and body without a soul, a “hollow”. This attracted the sinister attention of the hordes of Hell. Jason Blood, aka The Demon, even resigned himself to destroying the Queen clone as being way too dangerous and too easily possessed.

Green Arrow and Connor Hawke ended up trapped in a house with hordes of demon and no way out. Watching from Paradise, Oliver Queen decided to leave the heavens and project his soul into the cloned body, making his full return to Earth. He now has his complete personality, memories, and a measure of inner peace gained during his death.

Description

The illustrations chiefly represent the Seattle costume.

Personality

There are several levels to Green Arrow.

Swashbuckling

First is the swashbuckler aspect. He is dashing, charming, with funny and cool lines, and he relishes in the thrill of putting himself in dangerous situations for the good cause.

That aspect was strong at first and gradually eroded as Queen became older and grimmer – but rarely completely went away. This is, at the very least, an attitude he likes to have and a role he likes to play. He’s more likely to act that way when there are attractive women present, including of course Dinah.

Brooking no injustice

Oliver is a man in search of justice. He reacts to what he sees around him, and especially can’t stand social or ecological injustice. This is closer to a vigilante than a swashbuckler.

If the man responsible for an ecological catastrophe disappears, Oliver will hunt him down. If the police does not intervene to close a crack house, Oliver will look into it. This aspect of Green Arrow grew strong during the Grell run, and after finding Dinah tortured became dominant.

As a vigilante, he *will* kill in self-defense – especially if he has reasons to believe his opponents would not flee when wounded. He will not commit murder, but a killer trying to deter him by taking an hostage he will probably be killed – Green Arrow is good enough to be almost certain he can kill the hostage-taker without the hostage coming to harm.

Mere street punks will probably “just” have an arrow stuck in their hand to disarm and incapacitate them.

Even as a vigilante, Green Arrow is not as full of certainties as, say, the Punisher. He needs to understand why people act the way they do, and he will almost always try to discuss with everyone involved, including the bad guys, unless the situation looks very simple.

Oliver is very aware that he wields a deadly weapon with a deadly level of skill. Everything is mostly fine since he’s such a skilled, accurate professional – but a mistake, while very rare, is likely to devastate him.

At one point he almost killed an innocent paintball player whom he thought was going to shoot a cop with a real gun (visibility was extremely bad), and Dinah had to call Hal Jordan to forcibly take him fishing in order to snap him out of his drunken self-pity.

Manhunting

Oliver is well in his 40s and has seen many horrors, crimes and injustice. These have drowned the illusions he had when he was younger. He knows that sometimes, in some cases, the only solution is to hunt and kill. In those cases he acts as a cold, grim hunter of men, with no swashbuckler aspects at all.

While Green Arrow is still mostly liberal and a progressive, some crimes are just too horrible, and sometimes the law cannot do anything. Those cases started to appear in the last years of his life.

Weaknesses

Queen himself appears as a charming, dashing gentleman with something of a white knight charm, a ready smile and a knack for making the ladies laugh. But under the charm he’s has his share of weak points.

He is a womaniser. This made him feel guilty toward, and ultimately destroyed his relationship with, Dinah. He loves sex and romance, and often seems to *need* it, even if that breaks his wish for fidelity.

He is somewhat attracted to alcohol, and when really depressed will likely throw himself into a drinking binge.

Oliver does not have many certainties. He *has* to be Green Arrow since he needs to struggle against crime and injustice. But since his mid-life crisis he’s very aware the Green Arrow is not the ultimate answer. Something is lacking in his being and what he has done with his life, and he just can’t place it.

This mid-life crisis and his egotistical nature make him somewhat self-centred.

Quotes

“I’ve been to a lot of places, Dinah. And seen a lot of things. It took me a long time to realize that unless you’re running to something, you’re running away.”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Mike Grell’s run on Green Arrow in the late 1980s.

Helper(s): The history section was taken (with numerous additions and editions, and large chunks getting rewritten) from the Scott McCullar’s Green Arrow Compendium web site. This site then disappeared from the web, making me glad I’d saved up the texts, but it’s now back in a different take .
It doesn’t have the biography anymore, but the two oil paintings by Grell in the illustrations bar are from there.
Some tweaks were also done after finding very old Grell’s Green Arrow DCH notes from Thalstrak. Kal El el Vigilante also helped.
One sketch by Matthew Clark from his blog .