Review by Win Wiacek

For most people their wedding day numbers among the happiest of their lives, but for Black Canary and Green Arrow there was tragedy when he died. As later revealed, that wasn’t exactly what happened, but despite a global search the pair have yet to confront the mastermind behind what did happen. Family Business ended with Ollie and Dinah believing they’d at last found Ollie’s son and fellow Green Arrow Connor Bradley. Instead, a cryogenic chamber opened to reveal Plastic Man.

A semi-delirious Plas joins the expanding cast of hunters for new story arc opened by Judd Winick and Mike Norton with ‘Rubber and Glue’. It introduces an alternative/impostor League of Assassins with their own outré agenda and incredible resources but as Team Arrow ‘Step Up to the Plate and Swing Away’ in ever stranger locales, it becomes increasingly clear that ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’ is not someone they regularly face.

In fact ‘The Son of the Father, the Father of the Son’ exposes a friend not an enemy behind the plot; albeit one motivated by tragedy and desperation and trapped in the vile manipulations of a true mad scientist mastermind’s vengeance-tinged plot and opportunistic attempts to build a super-powered slave army…

Unexpectedly defeated by the valiant acts of Team Arrow, the malign malefactor gets his comeuppance and a vastly changed, amnesiac, but mostly cured Connor rejoins his family in ‘Home Again, Home Again’ and as father and son seek to bond as they never could before, Oliver Queen realises that always ‘One Door Closes, Another Opens’

All the above action and tragedy is also found in the bulkier 2021 Til Death Do They Part, but what’s not there is ‘The Parting Shot’ by Winick and Diego Barreto. Here what begins as a recovering Connor and Ollie taking a little archery practice turns into a wild myth and fantasy prompting deception and regret.

Blending fun and fan fondness with an increasingly dark tone reflecting what was coming in TV series Arrow, this saga sets the scene for a new kind of heroic ensemble adventure. The series continues under Arrow screenwriter Andrew Kreisberg with Enemies List.