Though the Arrow tv series has done an excellent job of creating and portraying a much younger version of the Green Arrow character in a slightly alternate telling of the classic Green Arrow, it is not the rebooted telling of this character which was the doing of Mike Greil several decades ago. So I shouldn’t be surprised that the folks at Warner Animation should be the ones to do a tight story that evoked all the aspects of the classic story even including the trick arrows.
Oliver Queen, Green Arrow in the classic telling, is on the way to pick his girlfriend Diana lance, otherwise known as the Black Canary, at the Airport in Star City (changed for no apparent reason to Starling City in Arrow, an amazingly bad name) when assassins attempt to kill a young girl. Oliver gets involved (and yes, he has a quick change into his Green Arrow costume) and discovers she’s now the Queen of a Central European kingdom as her mother, the Queen, has just died. And Count Vertigo, her uncle, will be King if she dies.
So you’ve got three iconic DC characters excellently portrayed, but how’s the story? Even better, the short run time means everything is told in a very focused manner. I could tell you what happens here but that definitely would spoil your fun of seeing it, so I won’t. Let me just say that I’ve watched it several times.
The animation is some of the best the animated folks have done over the past twenty years. The only better animation they’ve done is on the two seasons of Young Justice which just ended.
It’s available online, just use a search engine with the terms ‘green arrow dc showcase’ and you’ll see multiple venues for seeing it. It’d be nice to think a live action feature length Green Arrow film will happen some day! It’s also one of a number of shorts bundled together as the Superman and Shazam versus Black Adam DVD.
(Warner Animation, 2010)
