Some thoughts about Green Arrow #6

Whatever happened to Emiko?

Emiko suffered a strange change of character recently and it all seems to be strangely connected to one of Green Arrow's oldest enemies.

You know, I actually didn't think this one was so bad at the beginning.

For one, the dialogue is not as terrible as before this time. Sure, it still has some of the classic Ben Percy's flaws of trying to be memorable in one way or another but fortunately, this time he doesn't try to sound profound this time as much as he's trying to sound witty which can be a bit of an improvement despite that at times it seems like he tries too hard. Shado still doesn't talk like an actual person though.

The problem comes with everything else, not only from a continuity point but also from the usual writing skills.

Percy simply doesn't follow continuity, that should be clear at this point. It seems like he just quickly reads the previous stories and then feels confident enough he can do a good job at following them.

What do I mean by this? Well, Clock King appears here and at least he seems to be physically the same person. The thing is that he's no longer a mob boss who is just obsessed with clocks like during Jeff Lemire's run. No, he actually owns a clock store where he sells watches that make people a some kind of addicts. Oh, and he also has a clock tatoo in his head because everyone at this point realize that this is pretty much what Percy says every day: "Subtle? WTF IS THAT?!".

This is not only a failure in terms of history but also degrades an actual cool character who had great potential to be a bigger threat. Oh, and Emiko apparently didn't know who he was. Why is that?

Also, the pacing. The story constantly jumps from time to time so much that gives me bad memories of Daniel H. Wilson's work on Earth 2. It just makes the issue feel pretty erratic.

Finally, there's an incredibly forced melodrama between Ollie and Emiko that pushed her into the wrong direction which is a believable course of action considering this is Ollie we're talking about but is not executed in a believable way due that the conflict pretty much came out of nowhere and now we're supposed to buy it.

Good stuff? Once again, the art. Stephen Byrne handles the artwork and is stunning with a semi-cartoony style that creates a great range of expressions for the characters and follows the "script" as best as possible.

Other than that, yeah, this is still not worth your time and effort reading it.