Green Arrow #65

Green Arrow #65
I'm still loving this book. Every month, I love this book. And it's not the same thing every month. Here, Judd Winick shows us exactly how smart of a politician Ollie is. This book is becoming less about Green Arrow and more about Oliver Queen, and I love it. Half of this issue is dominated by a political talk show where one guest attempts to castigate Queen for destroying the moral fabric of America...basically he's pissed that Ollie has begun marrying homosexual couples in order to draw revenue to Star City, and he tries to find any excuse to bolster his condemnation. He seems to be giving as good as he gets from another pundit speaking in support of the Queen administration when she drops the bomb on him...Star City suffered massive devastation last year, and the United States and its citizenry did NOTHING. That shuts him up but good. She concludes her breakdown by saying that whatever Mayor Queen does to draw money and attention to the city, he should be universally supported, because even now, one year later, the United States government is still doing nothing to help these citizens who relied on their government to support them and then were massively let down.
This sequence draws the focus away from a fight scene, where Ollie and Mia fight side by side for the first time in a very long while. Apparently, she and Connor are living together. Let's just hope they're using protection. After all, we want Hawke to still be around for his solo miniseries later this year.
(A great real-life deus ex machina would be for a true cure for HIV to be found this year. Apart from bringing relief to millions of people across the world, it would neatly give Brad Meltzer the finger for thinking it was a good idea to give Mia HIV in the first place. I shudder to think what he might do to the JLA these coming months...rape and HIV as plot devices. Riiiight.)
[Edit: It has come to my attention that I am an asshole. It was Meltzer who gave Mia HIV, it was Winick himself! So he'd give himself the finger? Sorry.]
Apparently, Mia has been working on her combat technique without Ollie's assistance, and she makes quite a good show for herself. And then Hal shows up, rounds all the druggies up, and carts them over to STAR labs where it turns out they were dosed with a massive nerve toxin which Ollie's chief political foe, businessman Theodore Davis, had arranged to be mixed into doses of medical morphine. It also turns out that Mr. Davis was also responsible for the attempt on Mayor Queen's life by Deathstroke. When confronted with proof by Ollie, Davis is forced to become the Mayor's pawn in order to avoid prison. "That's...that's blackmail..." he stammers. "Well, duh. Welcome to the world of politics," is Ollie's perfect reply.
Deathstroke pled guilty to attempted murder last issue in order that he be sentenced to Alcatraz where there is an inmate with valuable information about Oliver's actions in the past year. Perhaps he hopes to learn something which will be useful to him in exacting vengeance upon Ollie. We'll find out.
That's where this issue leaves us, with a promise of next month's being the beginning (or "continuation" - what?) of the story of what Ollie was up to during the unchronicled year. A major gap in continuity however is the complete disappearance of Brick between issues. Where did he go? My only other quibble is that this issue's front cover seemingly has no relationship with this month's story. Winick probably decided at the last minute to decompress his story a bit to offer us a bit more enjoyment of Ollie's mayoral technique. But the cover had probably already been comissioned. That's okay, it's still an VERY GOOD issue of an EXCELLENT title. Even Ex Machina doesn't do it this well.
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