Review of Green Arrow #3

In Green Arrow #3, Oliver Queen begins to piece his life back together starting at Queen Industries. Things fell apart in the last few issues when he was left for dead and saw his friends abandon him but now that he knows he’s on his own, he’s gotta find out who betrayed him and who’s behind his downfall.

Issue: Green Arrow #3

Name: The Ninth Circle
Published: 2016 by DC Comics

Blurb:

Creators:

Writer: Benajmin Percy
Artist: Juan Ferreyra
Letterer: Nate Piekos

Characters:

The Good: Green Arrow, John Diggle, Black Canary
The Bad: Cyrus Broderick, The Ninth Circle, The Burned, Shado, The Underground Men, Dante, Emiko Queen
The Undecided: Virgil

My Reading:

Green Arrow has decided it’s time to find out what’s really going on in Seattle. His company, his friends, his life have all gone to crap but he’s determined to find out who’s behind it all and what he needs to do to fix things. So he starts at Queen Industries, and finds it infested with The Burned.

Meanwhile, John Diggle tries to figure out what’s gone on with Oliver and who killed him, but he approaches things a bit differently. He seeks out people in the know…a man named Virgil in Italy who tells him about the Ninth Circle. Apparently they’re the forces behind most of the crime in the world, a bad guy bank so to speak.

Back in Seattle, Ollie fights his way into confronting Cyrus who admits to being a board member of the Ninth Circle. As such, he’s brought in Shado to stop Green Arrow. Before they actually engage though, Oliver grabs Broderick’s laptop and jumps out the window. The chase is on…

Down at ground level, Black Canary questions dock workers and finds out that the Underground Men were behind the kidnappings we saw a couple issues ago and she manages to stow away on the barge carrying the latest shipment.

As Shado and Green Arrow race through the streets of Seattle we see Dante on his floating fortress of evil and he’s pretty pissed off that Oliver Queen is still alive. He threatens Emiko because he’s starting to suspect that Shado is either working with Oliver or incompetent. And as Shado chases Ollie, we learn why she’s working for the bad guys…apparently she had a blood oath to the Yakuza and they lost it to the Ninth circle after a bankruptcy.

As Oliver is captured by the police, possibly intentionally, we see Dante express his distrust of Shado but Emiko thinks she knows how to take care of Green Arrow…they do after all have Emiko, who Ollie will certainly try to rescue, but she also spots Black Canary on a ship headed to Dante’s floating fortress. It looks like things are set up for a pretty big confrontation in the next issue.

What did I learn:

• The Ninth Circle is a bank.
• The Yakuza had a blood oath from Shado.
• When the Yakuza defaulted on a loan, they gave Shado’s blood oath to the Ninth Circle.
• Shado’s blood oath somehow includes Emiko Queen so she is indebted to the Ninth Circle now as well.

My Thoughts:

I liked this issue more then previous ones, probably because it was more about the heroes and bad guys and less about preaching at me about social justice. It could also be that I’m getting to know the characters better and can see where the story is headed while previously I was a bit confused.

While I’m still not 100% sure about the difference between the Underground Men and The Burned, I accept that they are both working with the Ninth Circle and that this is a pretty large organization. Apparently they’ve been using Queen Industries to launder money and put a good face on their nefarious dealings, which clearly are worldwide.

Speaking of worldwide, I liked the use of Diggle to get an explanation of the story and I think he’s gonna get more physically involved soon since he seems to be piecing together all the strands of information about the Ninth Circle. He may have been in Italy in this issue but I think he may be headed to Seattle soon or maybe the floating fortress.

I’m not sure why, but this issue features a different artist and I enjoyed his pencils though they are slightly different from the previous few issues.

My Rating: B+

This comic can be found on Comixology or at your local comic book shop.

Daily Ramble 270.4 | Comics – DC Rebirth – Green Arrow #3