A Monday Born Monster — Reviewing ‘Absolute Green Arrow’ #4

Unsurprisingly, the more wealth and power a person amasses, the more they treat the world as a personal play thing. The extremely wealthy throw funds around in the pursuit of selfish goals that often leave damage, loss, and bodies in their wake.

This is certainly the case for Hector Hammond and his ilk as Absolute Green Arrow #4 pulls back more of the curtain surrounding the mysterious archer and the deceased Oliver Queen. A lot is said in this chapter as Pornsak Pichetshote, Rafael Albuquerque, Marcelo Maiolo, and Jeff Powell bring the first arc of this series closer to its conclusion.

Mysteries are a delicate thing. String them along too far and the audience becomes frustrated or uninterested. Seeds that are too obvious have the same sort of effect, causing the want to be detective audience off easily. Somewhere between is the sweet middle ground, where the mystery continues but what is around it keeps us locked in.

Pichetshote has easily achieved that with this series. While the title might be Green Arrow, this is Dinah Lance’s show. She has a firm grip on the book. All of the character depth really heightens the overall goal of the story. Each character — most of them shadow altered versions of icons we know —  feels fleshed out more than they should for just four issues. They’re ready to waltz right off the page into the world as living, breathing, and powerful beings.

Body horror meets realistic societal horror at every turn. How the story delves into the rich and the mad pursuits of those with too much money and claimed smarts is done splendidly. It’s dark and bright at the same time, shining a light on things we know too well are wrong with our current world. All of this is perfectly reflected in the work that Albuquerque keeps churning out month after month.

His is an art style born out of roughness. Textures are sharp and ready to bite at any moment, meshed together with something a bit softer. This keeps the characters and their features, as well as their overall physical language, more grounded. There’s just enough to allow some exaggeration and whimsical beats to take root but not enough to dull the sharper horror edge.

We experience that through the colors on the page as well. Maiolo dances through light and darkness with such ease, giving the world a stunning pop of brightness that dispels the darkness to an extent, while also keeping it alive and well. Those flashbacks are an area where the light is turned up and they are some of the darkest, in nature and tone, pages outside of the body horror as the power of men and their money is laid bare alongside the “heroic” delusions that so many of them harbor.

Horror comes with sounds that are unnatural and terrifying. Here we get that through the dialogue and the way that Powell lays it all out. From the amorphous ever expanding bubbles and font from the amorphous and ever expanding Solomon Grundy to the more natural beats of others voices, all of it keeps the authenticity of these voices at the forefront.

Absolute Green Arrow #4 is now available from DC Comics.