Lemire & Sorrentino on Green Arrow, is it too late to redeem GA?

 

Lemire & Sorrentino on Green Arrow,  is it too late to redeem GA?

I think few people would debate that Green Arrow is by far one of the best characters that DC has to offer, he has history and a great appeal, the sense of a cool American Robin Hood with a great attitude but still with human flaws.
and I think even fewer people will debate that Green Arrow is one of the worst titles that have come out of the new 52, pretty much systematically destroying everything that made Green Arrow interesting or original along the path
you might say Im exaggerating but one of the aspects that i have found more interesting than anything else is the seriousness of the character, Green Arrow is a mature IP, not necessarily means that he is a mature character but is something that is not a childish or juvenile character
well, Lemire said this in a tweet

and he also added

I wanted to make Green Arrow a hunter again. A street level hero of the gutters caught up in a world of violence, betrayal and conspiracy.

on his interview
I point this out for 2 reasons
1- is that i love Green Arrow Year One and Longbow Hunters

2- the new Green Arrow book IS NOTHING LIKE THAT

in fact, the book has never been like that in a very long time
Green Arrow is a character that has been screwed around for the last few years, periodically getting worse and worse, I would say that it started with Winick's Green Arrow run, not to say that it was bad, just that it wasnt good, his biggest contribution to Green Arrow was making Mia into the new speedy, and then making Ollie the major of Star City, but such plots never really went anywhere after the initial launch, this wasnt a short run either, this was a long period of time in which GA just stagger.
Which i think eventually lead DC to do this

The Wedding of Green Arrow and Black Canary, its an idea that has been going around ever since Ollie returned to life and even explored on Archer's Quest, the same ring made with the head of the Diamond arrow is what Ollie uses to propose. and in case you were never aware of this, this idea bomb hard
Green Arrow/Black Canary has to be one of the worst ideas in DC recent history, the whole idea of the wedding was very lighthearted and comedic, but what happen next was not comedic, it was an extremely underwhelming parade of poor designed villains one after the other with very little emphasis in them as a married couple, it was just a mediocre Hero book
but amazingly, it still could get worse, far worse

We got Justice League: Cry for Justice, probably one of the most controversial comics ever made, and one of the most hated comics too, the problems with this book are legendary at this point, constant editorial mandates, fails at meeting deadlines one after the other, problems with the art, problems with the writing, problems with the dialog, the overuse of the word JUSTICE in the entire thing, Characters who were suppose to be on it were removed by other writers vetos and the font of the title on the cover makes it look like it says GAY for Justice instead of CRY, which i think is hilarious
But most of this effects had nothing to do with the Justice League, in fact the book was created and promoted to be the big launch of a new era for the Justice League, and it was entirely inconsequential for it, the biggest impact of this book lied on the Green Arrow and the effect of that was that the entire Green Arrow Family was effectively wipe out, Green Arrow was exiled from Star City and Dinah left Ollie
Basically Green Arrow was once again alone and Once again DC tried to boost Green Arrow by tie it to its new event Brightest Day, the gimmick was that Star City was almost entirely destroyed and thanks to the power of the white lantern a huge forest in the shape of a star came out of the ruins, this new forest was "magical", it was like an ever changing maze, no technology could work on it, no magic could work either, it was the ultimate equalized ground, Honestly it had a ton of potential and even Geoff Johns in an interview said that the idea was to give Star City an identity
The problem was that Geoff Johns didnt wrote this, it was written by JT Krul

The best thing that i can say about this final pre-nu52 run was that the forest was cool, but that was a problem, since the very first chp you could tell that Krul had a very long run planned out and a ton of ideas, none which had anything to do with the magic forest and all went nowhere because half the focus of the book was the forest, and the other half were this ideas that just didnt mesh at all with the forest, for example Krul wanted GA to be more like Robin Hood, literally by having a new group of "merry men" which at the end of his run amounted to 1 guy, there was nothing robin-hoody about Green Arrow and reason was cause all this ideas had to deviate to the magic forest plot and non of them were really interesting at all.
But by the end of this time Flashpoint was about to happen and the New 52 was upon us, and with all the mess that Green Arrow had to suffer though in the last years a reboot was inevitable.
Its very understandable really, Green Arrow still kept the same origin that he always had with the same adventures since the Golden Age, he grew into Grell's Green Arrow, then he died, then he returned, and all the history and changes were going to meaningless if there was a continuation coming out of Brightest Day, The Green Arrow family was over so what was the point of bringing it up, and bringing them back was out of the question cause the idea of rebooting GA was just simpler

So who did DC look to reboot Green Arrow, well JT Krul, since he was the last writer
why?
at this point im not sure that JT Krul is entirely to blame by the reinvention of GA, since it looked like he was still following editorial mandates, his run lasted for 3 horribly written issues that culminated in Green Arrow breaking the 4th wall and complaining about the use of social networks like Youtube, Kruls departure was also very hasty, leaving Dan Jurgen and Keith Giffen with only 3 issues to fill in while DC get a new writer
I ask again
Why Krul?
Its obvious because of this that DC had absolutely no real plans for Green Arrow, if he was going to be important in the future, that really didnt matter, the only thing that matter was that they needed to have a title ready, but for half a year, the title had no consistent writer, and what was worst of all is that Green Arrow no longer kept anything inside of his previous self.
at this point we knew that he was in an island for some time but we didnt knew much about it other than he was saved by Aquaman, we knew that he had Roy Harper as a sidekick but it didnt work
why even keep Roy if DC made sure to utterly destroy the green arrow family? why give baggage if you want to start fresh?
And Star City is gone, replaced again by Seattle, i guess the identity that Star City got wasnt good enough
Green Arrow was now more like James Bond mixed with Iron Man, except that instead of using an armor he used a bow
the end of the first year didnt improve either, the coming of Ann Nocenti into the picture obviously left the fans unsatisfied as the sales keep declining and it left the editors on DC discouraged that started to look for a replacement very quickly
There is nothing that i can say about Nocenti on Green Arrow, its boring the plots are confusing and the character of Ollie is just plain dull
to put even more salt in the injury Green Arrow 0 by Winick gave him an entire new origin that makes little sense and just doesnt fit the character at all, Ollie was having a party at sea, he is attacked by a cyborg pirate, he tries to save everyone but he fails and all his friends die, and he ends up in an island
Guilt is a quite important factor in the new series of Arrow but i would have never thought that it was important to Ollie now, he is not like that in this comic which begs the question
Why Winick?
DC approached him to take over Green Arrow but Winick had to decline since he was pursuing a new project, so why is he writing issue 0, why not Lemire since he is taking over the book now, or not let Nocenti do issue 0?
13 months and 5 writers, with the enter of Lemire that would make 6 in 17 months
This kind of left me with a very interesting Epiphany
DC has no idea what to do with Green Arrow, HOWEVER, they want to do something, and at the same time not let the writers write, or they just dont care how they write
They want Green Arrow and BC to be married, why not stick with a comedy, the whole wedding was a lighthearted comedy, so hire someone who is funny, and then they turn it to tragedy, but the tragedy was so horribly receive that they decided to ignore it
DC has Failed at Green Arrow, It failed once and it failed Again, and again and again and again and 4 more times in a row

what makes DC think that this time will be different?

I do consider Jeff Lemire to be a great writer, I love Animal Man and Sweet Tooth, and Andrea Sorrentino is an Excellent artist, his work in I, Vampire was brilliant and one of the reasons why the book have survived this long
But there is an old saying which i think is from the bible that reads "The Wise man built his house on the rock, the foolish man built his house on the sand."
and as good of a writer that Lemire is, and as good of an artist that Sorrentino is, their book is build on the mediocrity that has been the Green Arrow Title
its being build under the rotten foundations that DC put here and has lead them rot for years
Lemire said in in his interview that he wanted to build a new mythology for Green Arrow, that the days of Longbow Hunters will be back and that his work will resemble the likes of the Question.
my point with all of this is
Will DC Allow that to be good?
I guess the pressure was too big when Marvel have something like this