Posted by
Daniel Crandall on Saturday, March 03, 2007 1:12:15 AM
I predict that the next superhero to see action on the silver screen will the Green Arrow. Some screenwriter in Hollywood must be working on a script; some executive must have a development deal in process.
What, you may ask, leads me to this conclusion? The answer lies in the origin section that closes out week 42 of DC Comics' so-called event "
52".
A brief origin story about various DC heroes is included at the end of most issues in this weekly series. Week 42 reviews how the character Oliver Green became the Green Arrow. He was a "millionaire playboy" who came to on a deserted island. He survives by teaching himself how to use a simple long bow that washed ashore with him. When smugglers make their way to the island, Oliver attacks them and makes his way back to civilization.
The wealthy playboy takes up the bow and arrow to fight crime in the concrete jungle. His crime-fighting ways, however, cost him his fortune and he is left penniless living in a tenement. Justice (liberal comic book "justice" that is) required Mr. Green to be divested of his wealth and power in order to "temper his soul" (I guess Green Arrows writers never read Batman).
"Gone forever was the dilettante hero. In his place stood an armed-and-ready political activist ... A passionate Left-wing crusader and urban avenger dedicated to protecting the less fortunate." (emphasis added)
Wikipedia notes that the Green Arrow was created in 1941, during comics Golden Age. "In the late 1960s, however, writers chose to have him lose his fortune,
giving him the then-unique role of streetwise crusader for the [so-called] working class and the underprivileged." Writer
Dennis O'Neil thought the character needed a harder edge. So he had the character "...lose his fortune and become an outspoken and strident advocate of the underprivileged in society and the political left wing. For instance, he once saved a child's dog playing in a railyard, but instead of feeling satisfaction, he brooded on the larger problem of how the child had nowhere in the city to play safely." Conservatives, i.e. the political right wing, care nothing for the poor and children who have nowhere else but busy railroad
yards to play in.
In Green Arrow's
latest incarnation, following DC's
Infinite Crisis series, the Star City Mayor Green, using "an open interpretation of the town charter to perform same-sex
marriages in Star City as a both a political statement and a way to
boost the local tourist economy." Bet you didn't know that same-sex unions were a big draw for tourist dollars (your kids are reading this stuff, don't ya know).
This character has Hollywood blockbuster - summer tentpole feature - starring Matt Damon as Ollie Green written all over it. Someone in tinseltown
has to be working on this.