Hal Pictures Green Lantern Butt's FOREVER!: Oh Oliver!

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Oh Oliver!

No, this is not about the musical Oliver. Which also had an exclamation point at the end, if my memory serves me. This is about the one and only Oliver Queen, aka the Green Arrow.

I haven't really talked that much about Ollie here, usually, I'm slobbering over Hal. But for the past couple of evenings, I've been reading the two Green Lantern/Green Arrow compilations so lovingly gathered by DC, with Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams. The art is mindbogglingly gorgeous of course. The writing was considered to be quite the thing at the time, with all of Denny O'Neil's over-the-top dialogue and the touching upon topics that were considered taboo at the time, such as drug use, and so on.

But...really, Ollie is pretty much a douchebag. And I LIKE Ollie! Most of the time.

Seriously, why Hal didn't just haul off and punch him right in the nose, I'll never know. Of course, there was a fair amount of fisticuffs between the two of them, but in practically every case, it is initiated by Oliver, not Hal.

My God, he's so...so full of himself! Ollie, not Hal. Although Hal does have a very healthy ego, at least he's not running around spouting off a bunch of half-baked lingo and gibberish. And poor Black Canary...stuck with the two of them!

Guy at his very WORST, when he was a brain-dead lout wasn't as bad as Ollie, when he had all of his brains, but apparently couldn't control himself. I consider myself reasonably liberal and moderate in my political leanings, but Geez Louise! Fatcats, Nazis,the downtrodden poor, hippies and evil cops...it's a bit much. But it's pretty hilarious, if you are in the proper frame of mind.

Ollie seems to have calmed down a bit as he matured. I will say, that Barry never did HALF of the stuff to Hal, that Ollie did. I can probably say with confidence, that Barry never once has called Hal a Nazi. Ollie used to do it with every other breath, or so it seemed.

6 Comments:

At 2:02 PM, Blogger notintheface said...

If I were Hal, I would have gone off on Ollie pretty much from the first issue after Ollie let Hal screw up with that crowd without giving him a heads-up on the situation. I mean, how was Hal supposed to know that middle-aged guy was a slumlord? It looked like a crowd watching a young guy beating up a middle-aged man and cheering. I would have broken that up, too.

I mean, geez, Ollie, thanks for the heads-up! What's the matter, you were all out of "keep your friend from screwing up" arrows? But then you wouldn't have had the excuse to blather about social issues, would you, Goatee-boy?

 
At 2:15 PM, Blogger SallyP said...

Annoying, isn't it? Hal's pretty even-tempered about it, which is rather surprising. Ollie's self-righteousness on the other hand, is pretty nauseating.

And the way that he treats poor Roy is outrageous.

 
At 6:26 PM, Blogger Sea-of-Green said...

Well, in those old stories, Hal was supposed to represent "the establishment," so he was pretty much a nearly-unyielding wall to Ollie's assault. Not only that, think about it -- Ollie is essentially trying to bully one of the most powerful super-heroes on earth. Hal is well aware of how much power he wields, even with the Guardians reducing the amount like they did. He's not about to go off on Ollie if he can help it -- probaby afraid of being tempted to use all that power against him. Barry could hold his own against Hal, so they were pretty much on equal footing. Not so with Ollie. Ollie has NO powers, so to Hal, that's not a fair fight.

 
At 6:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's always been the case - though I think the most memorable use of it was during Mike Grell's run, when Hal lets Ollie beat the snot out of him just to make Ollie feel better.

It's even more jaw-dropping because the last time these two spoke, Oliver basically said he had no time to listen to Hal whine about his (rather major) problems and told him to get lost.

Hal on his own can be irritating as hell - put him next to Oliver Queen and suddenly you want to nominate the guy for sainthood.

 
At 10:18 PM, Blogger LissBirds said...

Ha...we were just talking about the O'Neil Green Arrow/GL stories over at Idol Head! You must be on the same wavelength...

I'll have to read this sometime.

 
At 1:33 PM, Blogger SallyP said...

Liss, they are a lot of fun in an irritating sort of way, because Ollie is just SO incredibly over the top.

The art is so pretty though.

 

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