Oliver Queen

42 years ago - Oliver Queen is born

25 years ago - 17-year-old Oliver has an affair with a local girl in Tibet while on vacation. She gives birth to Connor Hawke.

20 years ago - 22-year-old Oliver is shipwrecked.

18 years ago - 24-year-old Oliver is rescued from his island, and begins using his newfound skills to battle injustice as Green Arrow.

17 years ago - 25-year-old Oliver comes to the rescue of Arthur Curry, saving him from The Fisherman. He first meets Bonnie King, who tries to become his partner. He rejects her. He first fights Lester Buchinski.

16 years ago - 26-year-old Oliver begins sleeping with Bonnie King, despite having no desire to take her on as a partner. Archery phenom Malcolm Merlyn challenges him to an archery contest. When Merlyn loses he frames Green Arrow for murders he committed, forcing Oliver ot go on the run until he can prove his innocence, exposing Merlyn as the killer.

14 years ago - 28-year-old Oliver tries to keep China White safe, fleeing across the city, when Malcolm Merlyn is hired to kill her while she is in police custody & being moved for extraction. Merlyn finally kills her & shoots Oliver off a building, taking him out of comission for months. He later joins the Justice League, and meets Dinah Lance.

13 years ago - 29-year-old Oliver takes in Roy Harper, and trains him to become his sidekick, Speedy. They regularly battle new Star City vigilante, Eric Needham.

11 years ago - 30-year-old Oliver comes into conflict with Shado as she tracks and kills her father's murders, but ultimately he joins her, killing someone to save the people they are trafficing.

10 years ago - 32-year-old Oliver protects Queen Perdita Vladek of Vlatava from the League of Assassins as she returns to her country to assume the throne, escorting her across europe. he defeats their leader, Malcolm Merlyn in another ongoing archery battle. Later, he regularly clashes with the Queen's uncle Werner Vertiz before he goes traveling with Hal Jordan.

9 years ago - 33-year-old Oliver is present when the Justice League votes on what to do with Arthur Light after he attacks Sue Dibny on the satellite, and votes not to alter Light's mind. Oliver & Hal Jordan track down & imprison Noah Kuttler. The League of Assassins send Ben Turner to test him, but Dinah Lance proves to be the bigger threat.

8 years ago - while 34-year-old Oliver is away with Hal Jordan, Dinah Lance discovers Roy Harper's heroin addiction & takes him to rehab. He is shot by Shado while trying to help her in her play against the Yakuza and they become romantic during his recovery before she gets away. He stops the killing spree of Liam Hawkleigh with Dinah Lance's help.

7 years ago - 35-year-old Oliver's relationship with Dinah Lance becomes more serious when her mother dies of cancer. He begins working with Helena Bertinelli. He finally imprisons Werner Vertiz when his diplomatic immunity is removed. He confronts the Royal Flush Gang.

6 years ago - 36-year-old Oliver meets his son, Connor Hawke. Malcolm Merlyn traps executives of Queen Industries in their building, forcing Oliver to fight to keep them alive with the help of junior programmer Felicity Smoak, leading to a final confrontation on the roof of the building before Merlyn is finally captured.

5 years ago - 37-year-old Oliver sleeps with Helena Bertinelli. When Dinah Lance discovers them, she ends their relationship. He saves Mia Dearden from the streets.

4 years ago - 38-year-old Oliver is brought into space by Rip Hunter to help Kyle Rayner stop Hal Jordan from breaking time. He works with Grant Emerson, admiring the young man's talent and potential. He tries to talk Hal down, but when he sees him murder Grant, he knows Hal can't be saved and is forced to kill him. He reties as Green Arrow, passing the mantle to his son Connor Hawke.

3 years ago - 39-year-old Oliver begins training Mia Dearden as she takes on the role of Speedy.

2 years ago - 40-year-old Oliver Queen begins his campaign for mayor of Star City. He is protected from assassination by Malcolm Merlyn by Connor Hawke.

now - 42-year-old Oliver becomes Mayor of Star City.

There are a few long-time benchmark heroes in DC that seem completely immune to evolving or aging. Three, really. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. We're dealing with that problem elsewhere. What is actually kind of interesting, though, is that with the exception of those three there are also whole groups of heroes that have stood out and establish specific eras of DC, and one of the biggest is the Silver Age Justice League. While he wasn't a founding member, Oliver Queen is one of the characters that helps define that era.

Like many other characters, there have been foundations laid within comic continuity that allow Oliver Queen to evolve as a character beyond his career as a vigilante. He has a small army of ex-sidekicks but also has a bonafide replacement for the actual role of Green Arrow thanks to the brief part of the early aughts when he was dead (and got better). He even has a career lined up thanks to his actual in-continuity run as the mayor of Star City. Of all the classic Silver Age heroes Oliver is perhaps the best prepared to evolve into a new life beyond his superheroics, and it just falls to us to assemble that story properly.

Oliver Queen's Comic History

You really can't get a much simpler concept that a superhero version of Robin Hood. The character, first appearing in 1941, was clearly a reaction to Batman with his trick arrows, Arrowcar, Arrowcave and so on. It wasn't until Neal Adams and Dennis O'Neil updated the character in the early seventies that he started to adapt his own identity. Rather than just modeling him visually after Robin Hood, he became an ideological equivalent to the character as well, championing decidedly liberal ideas that often conflicted with other superheroes who's methodology can, at least on paper, seem decidedly fascist.

It was a bold characterization, as comics were still usually treated as a children's medium, but it allowed a great deal of growth with the character and let him stand out among other characters even though his actual power set was essentially useless: he wasn't there because being an archer was an especially good power, but because he was a representative of an ideological perspective the team lacked otherwise. He was the one character that would fearlessly call everyone else out when he disagreed with them. This obviously meant that he was often depicted as being deliberately antagonistic. Over the decades he became a unique voice in the pantheon of DC characters, and his legacy has permeated much of the fabric of the story. It's fascinating because no one is ever going to argue that archers make good superheroes and yet we see them all the time, and that is entirely because of the unique energy invented by Oliver Queen.

Our Oliver Queen Story

Oliver Queen is a moderately interesting superhero, but he is an utterly fascinating character. His relationships are complex, and while he's clearly an idealist he also suffers from a pretty severe blindspot when it comes to his own life and choices. I don't know if it was ever deliberate, but time and time again we see him failing the people around him in hugely damaging ways, even though he's never deliberately tried to hurt anyone. His sidekicks are victims of drug abuse, HIV, and perpetual abandonment. His romantic relationships are plagued with poor choices and infidelity. Oliver might be a hero for the people, but he isn't exactly a good person. Some of the writers have tried to make him a sort of superhero James Bond: depicting him as a perpetually womanizing gentleman adventurer, but that was just playing into the idea of his misanthropy. It's his failings that make him so compelling, and they should be embraced.

To that end, we focused on those relationships. We structured his life around the people he meets and interacts with, and all the myriad ways he's affected their lives, good and bad.

And of course, we were able to bring him full circle when his son is able to claim his hood and remake Green Arrow into a new, more focused, dedicated hero, even while Oliver himself takes up a role so often occupied by people with bold dreams and low-level narcissism... he goes into politics.

Oliver Queen's Future

Not a lot of superheroes wind up retiring. Longevity aside, from a fictional character standpoint... you can't really expect a comic company to allow a character that is successful and selling comics to age that character out of their prime and allow them to do something else. This is why it's so interesting that the storytelling building blocks are there to allow Oliver to actually be one of the very few characters to choose to step down, pass on his superhero identity, and take up a new role in the story.

Oliver has always been most interesting thanks to his very liberal political views (especially contrasted with his status as a billionaire). Lets face it, being the best archer in the world is awesome, but it's not the most effective superpower. This is why he's able to have so many proteges, because his superskill is so teachable. He's in a unique position as a character to be able to pass along the mantle of Green Arrow to one of his worthy successors, and really take ownership of the qualities that make him an interesting character. Oliver is absolutely someone who would run for office., and truth be told it's actually a better fit for him than super-heroics. A huge part of his story has always been that he's really not great at his job, He's selfish and a little bull-headed... but those qualities combined with his idealism actually make him someone that could flourish politically. The idea that this change is brought about when he is forced to kill his best friend to save the world is dramatic, but it also feels narratively complete.

Connor Hawke is such a different character, and It's exciting to imagine the idea of Oliver deliberately passing him the role of Green Arrow. He's not a mentor, really... Connor is already better at this than Oliver ever was, but it's a great element to the ongoing story of Green Arrow that the OG version is still around. That's something we never get.

Allies, Teams & Enemies

Shado