The Elevast Corporation wants to build a mega tourist center to bring a little life back to Star City. Trouble is, they want to evict residents of a neighborhood called Lamb Valley to do so. Lamb Valley is filled with construction workers that Elevast helped immigrate from Zimbabwe to build the project. Understandably, a lot of them are angry. Green Arrow has to chase them away from the construction sites they once worked on, but are now bent on destroying. By day, Ollie funds the lawsuit against Elevast, led by Joanna Pierce. The niece of Jefferson Pierce, Black Lightning, has an appropriately electric personality that Ollie finds himself drawn to. But things are finally patched up with Dinah… he can’t throw that away. Besides, those Elevast construction sites are now overrun with ogre-like creatures. Ollie’s love life is just going to have to go on the back burner.

Either it had been so long since I picked up this series that I’d forgotten, or the last volume wasn’t as bad, but this volume was more violent than I’d remembered this run being. There was also a women in refrigerators plot point, which I’ve had enough of in my Green Arrow – see my post about Arrow Season 4. There is, however, plenty of emotional turmoil to go with your action in this run. Winick, as Meltzer did before him in Volumes 1-3, does a good job of balancing Ollie’s inner conflicts with the outside wars and drawing parallels between them. A side I haven’t seen a lot of yet reading GA comics is Ollie’s corporate fighting side, which was fun. Personally, I keep coming back for Hester and Parks’ art, because I’m finding the writing falling back on disappointing tropes.

– Kathleen

Winick, Judd, Phil Hester, and Ande Parks. Green Arrow (Return, Vol. 4): Straight Shooter. 2004.