Following the loss of his business empire, Oliver Queen relocates to Seattle with his girlfriend, Dinah Lance. Queen, aka Green Arrow, hopes to make a fresh start in a new city, but a series of brutal murders by a mysterious archer makes it hard for him to build trust with the local police force. Worse, Dinah (aka Black Canary) begins investigating a drug ring, and may soon be in over her head.
This is one of those collections that gets touted as a classic, so I read this out of a feeling of obligation. While I'm glad to check this off my to-read list, I can't say that I was really enamored of this book. The story was originally written in the late 80's (I assume, as the collection was first published in 1991), and the art comes off as a little dated (not just in terms of clothing and hairstyles, but the art style itself--colored pencil drawings, mostly--just wasn't my thing). This was also a time that comics felt that they had to have "social relevance," and apparently this book chose a strong anti-drug stance for its message. The preaching gets a little heavy-handed in places, making it hard to wade through for the action sequences. The plot itself was rather thin (not to mention predictable), and the ending didn't sit quite right with me. Not one of the better Arrow collections I've read.
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