Chris Condon is well known to fans of Image Comics for his run on the critically acclaimed That Texas Blood, and spinoff The Enfield Gang Massacre. But now, he’s blowing up in a big way with his first ongoing DC Comics run, starting in Green Arrow #18. And the inspiration for the take on the character comes from a surprising source: Marvel Comics.
“The mandate was more Daredevil,” Condon told Comic Book Club over Zoom. “I was like, ‘I got it. I know what you guys mean immediately,’ which would be street level. What is Daredevil except street level? So that immediately spoke to me.”
Before DC fans get up in arms, just know that while ol’ Matt Murdock was the starting place, Condon is also a lifelong Green Arrow fan who knows the material inside and out. And while his run is a 180 from the more sci-fi oriented take writer Joshua Williamson tackled for the previous 17 issues and change, it does harken back more to the classic liberal vigilante days chronicled time and again in the comics.
Along for the ride is artist Montos, who revamped Oliver Queen’s costume for this street-level take that also pivots off one of Condon’s areas of interest: true crime.
To find out much more about what to expect from the upcoming run, read on.
Comic Book Club: There have been so many different takes on Green Arrow… This one seems to liberally pick and choose, so what were you pulling on for this story?
Chris Condon: It’s an interesting thing, going through Green Arrow… I’ve never written an ongoing DC book before, and I had never written any ongoing Marvel anything. I hadn’t done anything outside of my own stuff. This was all new to me. So I tried to figure out, how do I want to approach it? I went back to what I always loved, which was Neil Adams, Mike Grell. I really loved the Mike Barr, Trevor Von Eeden mini-series. So that was my landmark, that right there is what I really wanted to set out to do
I reread Quiver, the Kevin Smith series. And went back to the Brad Meltzer stuff, reread everything I could. But that was really the stuff that spoke to me, and what I wanted to do. And you said, deliberately, picked liberally from what I wanted, which is, to me… That’s Ollie. He’s a leftist superhero. So that was something that I wanted to bring back to it. That’s something that’s been not necessarily discarded, but they don’t really mention it so much, they don’t really play it up that much. And that was something that was important to me about that character…
Knowing all these liberal tendencies, I actually had wanted to do a story about the Love Canal environmental disaster, which I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it. But in Niagara, New York, there was an environmental disaster in the 1970s in which an entire community was poisoned by toxic waste that had been buried underneath their houses. Essentially, an affordable community was built. All these people moved into this community… And couldn’t leave, basically. So I had wanted to do a story on that anyway. I wanted to do a non-fiction graphic novel, is what I was thinking of doing. And then when Chris Rosa, the editor of Green Arrow, came knocking, I was like, well, that’s perfect fodder for our villain.
So that’s where the idea came from, this idea of, why can’t we have a fictional version of that? Why can’t we have characters who are affected by that? How would they have reacted in a world in which there’s superheroes and supervillains and Darkseid and Superman?
It was my love of Green Arrow, and then taking that and applying that to things that I already had an affinity for, an interest in. And that’s where this first arc came from.
This is maybe pulling too many threads together. But I was curious to follow up on the whole idea of going from writing a series like That Texas Blood… It sounds like working with real history gave you a little bit of that comfort zone to then explore the ongoing nature of this book?
Interesting. I never really thought about it, but it’s true. I wasn’t seeking the job of Green Arrow. It kind of came to me. And when somebody comes to you with an idea, “do you want to take over Green Arrow?” Well, first of all the answer is, probably yes, because that’s a really cool thing. But thinking about what I would do with the character, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to just sit there and go, “I know how I’m gonna do Green Arrow.” You have to think about, what what would be a story that would be worth telling? What would be a story that would fit within the criteria of what this character is and what his worldview is?
And that played into what my real world instincts would be anyway. So yeah, it fed into what I’m already interested in. It did work out that way. But it’s interesting that in that the same way That Texas Blood works out where we do delve into real world issues, realistic characters and situations fed into what we’re doing with Green Arrow as well.
It also seems purposefully — and maybe this is more of the from the editorial perspective — a 180 from what Joshua Williamson was doing, which was much more about the Arrow family and superheroics. This seems to strip it all that way and turn it around.
Yeah. I mean, that was the only mandate from editorial was, the way that they had described it was — and maybe I shouldn’t say this, because it’s not DC… The mandate was more Daredevil. I was like, “I got it. I know what you guys mean immediately,” which would be street level. What is Daredevil except street level? So that immediately spoke to me. And again, my favorite Green Arrow stuff has always been that street level stuff. All the stuff that I enjoy is where the the Arrow family has been excised, or didn’t really exist at that point. Obviously, in the Denny O’Neil, there’s really important work with Speedy. Obviously the heroin story is an all-timer.
Hearing from the fan base, everybody loves the Arrow family, but it’s funny, because you hear two sides of the coin. There are some people that are excited that we’re going back to street level, we’re going back to a solo Green Arrow. But then you also hear from the people who are like, “Oh, I was really enjoying reading the Arrow family.” Going forward, it made sense after Absolute Power to have Ollie separate himself. I know that he’s forgiven immediately by everybody at the end of it. But I really wanted to, even just psychologically, within himself, doing something like what he did impacts somebody. You can’t lie to everybody. Even if you believe that this is how you believe, which Martian Manhunter played a role in it… That does something to you. And so I thought it would make sense that he would want to separate himself, and process this and see how he feels.
We didn’t get rid of the Arrow family. We didn’t get rid of any of these characters. They’re still there. And in fact, we mentioned them, and Dinah is the one who gives him his suit at the beginning of our story, in issue 17. So there’s there’s stuff that’s there, but it was important to me to a as a writer coming in, doing my first ongoing… I wanted to do Green Arrow solo.
This is a little bit of a non-sequitur, but not really. They give you 20 pages to tell a story, right? So you have to look at it logistically. As a craftsman, you’re looking at, okay, I have 20 pages to tell a story. If you have however many members of the Arrow family that there are, you have to somehow fit all of those characters in in 20 pages and have everybody feel like their story beat mattered. And I unfortunately don’t tell the kinds of stories that Joshua Williamson tells. So I’m not going to be telling a globe-trotting, universe-hopping, time-hopping story. That’s just not something that I’m going to be doing with a character like Green Arrow, where the stuff that I love is that stuff that’s all crime-based, street-based. I’m just not going to be doing that kind of a thing, personally. So it just it didn’t make sense to me to be aping what he did.
And also, at the end of the day, as a creator, you have to come in and do your own thing, right? I mean, you can’t write somebody else’s story. When I was back on Twitter, which I’m not anymore, thank god, but when I was back on Twitter, I kept hearing from people, they were like, “Oh, are you going to finish this story? Are you going to do this? Are you going to do this? Are you going to do this?” And I just would stop responding, because at the end of the day, I just need to tell my story. I need to tell my Green Arrow story my way, and I can’t really have somebody else dictating how I’m going to do that, even if it’s something that somebody really wants.
At the end of the day, fan service to me is never really a good thing. But if you have a fan of the material writing, you’re inevitably going to service those fans. And that’s exactly what I’m bringing to the table is, I’m a fan of Green Arrow. I’m a huge DC guy. It’s my bread and butter. That’s what I grew up reading and loving. So I think that at the end of the day, while it might be disappointing that we’re going on a solo Ollie adventure for at least this seven issue arc, I think that they’ll be happy. If they’re not? I’m sorry.
I did want to ask you about the costume because you brought that up. I don’t think this is a spoiler for the issue, but he’s masked up there. Why that choice? Because it feels like the horse is out of the barn on that one in terms of him running around, showing his whole face?
We ran it by editorial, and yes, his secret identity is concealed right now. For me, it was just one of those things that it’s like, well, if you’re going to be wearing a domino mask and your secret identity is… I remember reading old Green Arrow issues, and Oliver Queen would be running around and [saying], “you know, I’m buddies with Green Arrow.” And I’m like, “No s**t. Are you kidding? The one guy running around with the very distinctive facial hair on his face, blonde facial hair, obviously it’s you.”
So that is just, for me, a no brainer. If he actually wants to conceal his identity, it makes more sense. And also, the way that we were approaching the costume… In the Williamson run, the did more of an armored look, and then they did get back down to a more streamlined costume towards the end. But even that had an armored feel to it. And my feeling was, if we’re going to go street level, let’s embrace a cat burglar type costume. Sleek, slim, no armor. He gets in and out of places easily.
And so that’s what I wanted to capture. And Montos knocked out of the park. He added the little cape to it, which was fun. A lot of people seem to be enjoying that. But yeah, the covering in the face just seemed to be something to me that if you’re going to be doing what Ollie does a lot in this arc, which is breaking and entering, he’s going to want to be covering his face.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Green Arrow #18 hits stores on November 27, 2024 from DC Comics.
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