Green Arrow #4

Written by: Benjamin Percy

Art and Colour by: Juan Ferreyra

Lettered by: Nate Piekos

In the last issue, in an effort to determine what the Ninth Circle was, Green Arrow broke into his own company, Queen Industries. After taking out several guards with tranquilizer arrows, promising them a raise when he gets his company back, Ollie finally confronts his fathers friend and the new leader of Queen Industries. It is revealed that he is a member of the Ninth Circle, the worlds largest criminal bank, providing loans and safe storage of money for criminals, super villains, and dictators. Green Arrow escapes the building whilst being hounded by Shado, only to be surrounded by the police outside.

This issue picks up as Ollie is surrounded by the police. A scuffle breaks out, and he manages to get away from all the cops but one, who prepares to shoot Ollie before being taken out by Diggle, having returned to the city due to news of Ollie's death. The nature of their adversarial relationship is not made clear, but they quickly reconcile and return to the task at hand, finding someone to hack into the laptop that Ollie stole from Queen Industries. Meanwhile, Black Canary finds herself taken captive after having infiltrated the Ninth Circles floating stronghold, and as Ollie, with help from his tech expert friend, discovers the location of the stronghold, a message is sent to him, demanding the laptop in exchange for Black Canary. The story is okay for the most part, but it still seems like we are piling on questions without getting many answers. Hopefully as this arc begins to come to a close, we will get some closure on these questions as well.

The art is where the real joy in this book lies. Every page drawn by Ferreyra is just gorgeous. He takes full advantage of his role as not only artist, but colourist and creates a stunningly beautiful image. The attention to detail, the fluid motion of the characters and the artistic landscapes and layouts combine to make an issue that is phenomenal to simply look at. I have no issues with his art in this issue at all, and look forward to seeing anything that he draws and colours in the future.

Overall I enjoyed this issue. The story is progressing towards its logical conclusion, and while there are still many questions left to answer, I am sure that at least most of them will get a satisfactory ending. The only worry that I have is Emiko, a character that I quite liked back in the new 52 who is currently on the side of the Ninth Circle. Hopefully this will change by the end of the arc, however, as it would be a waste to simply dispose of a character so tied in with the current history of Oliver Queen. I would highly recommend this series to anyone even casually interested in Green Arrow, as well as fans of fantastic artwork in general.