Blogotional

I thought it would be fun today to look at the role of "the archer" in the comics. Both major publishers have their own such character. This is Hawkeye and he is the Marvel archer. Hawkeye has never had his own title, save for some miniseries, and appeared first, as a villan, in the Avengers, where he has most commonly been found through the years. He even did a stint as Goliath when Hank Pym was busy elsewhere.

This character has never been quite fully formed. DC's archer, wh we'll see below had ben around for a while with minimal success and so I think Marvel just sort of decided the archer could never be more than a supporting character so they never really tried. Even the miniseries were more nods to hardcore fans that wanted to know more about the character than they were real efforts to flesh him out.

I also have my questions about his appearance. The costume was way cool when it first appeared in the '60's, and provided a stark contrast to the DC archer, but I don't think it has aged well. Any attempt to update his look has; however, been fairly feeble and unsuccessful. Technically, Hawkeye is dead right now, but that has never kept a good character down. I hope they use the occassion of his ressurection to realize the potential of this character.

This, by contrast, is the DC archer - Green Arrow. GA has that classic Robin Hood look for an archer, but his character is strikingly different. He started way back when as essentially a poor man's Batman, with many, many gadget arrows, like Batman has gadgets in his utility belt. GA was hit or miss until he really started to be well formed as a near hippie in the now famous Green Lantern/Green Arrow run. Even after that he was relegated to supporting roles, mostly in the Justice League, until several miniseries in the '80's really caught on and now he has his own title.

GA has beena breakthrough character in several areas, most notably when his teen sidekick, Speedy, ended up with a herion problem. It was deep stuff. Now he has a whole poorly formed family, child out of wedlock who operates as "Arsenal" another archer, and other assorted stuff that in some ways makes him more soap opera than hero, but its interesting. GA is a character that should be cast darkly, as I think all essentially "normal" heroes should be, so having him in this sort of nether world works well.

While I like GA's look, I do not think he has ever had the kind of artictic treatment he really deserves. To me he always looks best with the top flight art talent in JL, but it is alwasy sencond stringers that get his solo stuff. I would love to see his solo book do a stint with some really top flight art talent, unfortunately his sales just don't warrant it.

Hey, awhile we are talking Superheroes, you might want to try this little quiz and see if you can tell the difference between a Superhero and a household cleaner. Even I did not manage a perfect score, but they got awfully obscure, not so much with the superheroes, but with the cleaners.