Broken Frontier

While readers wait for the wedding, Ollie’s origin is retold, re-imagined, and updated (a little of each). It’s well done, but isn’t by any definition a Year One.

Conceptually, I have a big, big beef with this supposed "Year One" mini. As most will know, this now-franchised sub-title originated back in the 80’s with Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, followed by the sequels Year Two and Year Three as well as Batgirl: Year One, Robin: Year One, and JLA: Year One. In all of these, the central events took place within the title’s numbered year, telling the defining moments of the particular characters’ early costumed career. Now, two decades later, DC is looking to reestablish the Year One treatment with more of their icons. Unfortunately, the company has proven utterly determined of late to utilize name recognition, call it a tradition, and proceed to ignore all core criteria that might in fact define any given product as whatever exacting thing they’re claiming it to be.

Case in point: Green Arrow: Year One is not, in fact, the first year of Oliver Queen as Green Arrow. It’s his origin, a Year Negative One, or -1 (whichever your preferred visual aesthetic). Indeed, the Next Issue blurb states "The origin of Green Arrow continues" into issue number two, meaning that this entire series will, ultimately, be nothing but what fans already know. It’s a retelling of an established origin, which is adamantly not what the Year One heading has represented (not once) in the past, and to try to use it for an origin retelling makes the label a blatant fabrication, practically an outright lie. It’s hugely aggravating to have DC as a company fan about a designation readers will be well acquainted with, only to have them offer something wholly inappropriate to the name. It’s like sticking an Action Comics tale inside a Superman mag, or vice versa. It’s a Superman tale, kid, what’s the problem? Why’s it matter? Because it’s a different story than what I thought I was buying, that’s what and why.

Ridiculous and unforgivably faulty advertising aside, the story by Andy Diggle and Jock (reunited after all these years!) is a very decent retelling. Oliver Queen is wonderfully realized: flawed, arrogant, though well-meaning in nature. The qualities he’ll one day embrace as a hero are present and apparent, even though the current events, of course, have him a long journey away from these. He’ll one day become a liberal-minded, roguish hero, but for now, Diggle pens him rightly as just a conservative-lifestyled, wannabe-liberal rogue that admires other heroes.

The story takes its time, establishes Ollie as a young ne’er do well, desperately seeking something through money, multiple women, and life-risking jaunts to exotic frontiers. Diggle manages to flesh out a pre-GA Ollie so well, in fact, that the story is nearly worth overlooking the title.

Jock’s work is beautiful, the best he’s done since early issues of The Losers. Interestingly, he’s managed to divide himself into two current styles – a looser, more fluid beat he’s got going on over in Vertigo’s Faker, and here in GAYO (yeah, what an acronym) he’s put forth a more square-jawed, kinetic, solid approach. The action sequences are wonderfully executed, and Ollie’s world is suitably gritty, clean, dynamic, and sketchy, all in parallel.

Will the upcoming Year One minis (Teen Titans, Metamorpho, Black Lightning, Huntress) focus on these characters’ origins, or their beginnings as actual heroes? Is the current team of editors at DCU competent enough to know the difference between their own company’s terminologies? I’m highly upset by their proliferation of the Year One heading to entail anything remotely near or surrounding a character’s beginning, rather than in fact being the very explicit thing it claims to be. Primarily because I’m losing trust in a company I’d like to believe in, but cheap ploys like this bury the quality of a work, which is a shame, as the quality of this one is high. Nonetheless, calling a book something it 100% is not, is despicable, and is not an act that should be overlooked as the marketing manipulation that it is. Love the creators on this one; write many, many nasty letters to the editors.