Gray’s book argues that, as created, Green Arrow was a “blank slate” (10), beginning as a pastiche that was “[p]art Batman, cowboy, vigilante, Robin Hood and soldier” (9). But as time went on, writers were able to use that blank slate to their advantage: “what makes Green Arrow unique is precisely that he is so malleable in the hands of an assortment of writers, but consistently human in all of them” (6). The book provides a comprehensive overview of the character; Gray divides his history into a number of eras, overviewing and analyzing the character’s development in each one.

The book is at its best when Gray has a strong angle on a particular era and highlights aspects of the character that move beyond fan truisms. For example, many dismiss the character in his early years as a mere Batman rip-off, and there is an element of truth to this—but as the quotation in my previous paragraph shows, Gray identifies other aspects of the character’s early formulation that often go unnoticed, especially Westerns. At some point, “blank slate” transitioned into “everyman” (119), and this became the basis for most interpretations of the character from the 1970s onwards. In writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams’s 1970-1972 run, the former millionaire became a social crusader, standing up for the oppressed of America alongside Green Lantern. The “Hard Travelling Heroes” era has been much discussed because of O’Neil’s social commentary, but Gray provides a close reading of the underappreciated realistic art style of Neal Adams, who used “photomontage and similar pop-art influences” (83), and provided the character with a sense of movement and humanity that grounded the social commentary.

Read the rest of this review in the SFRA Review.