Kevin Smith

From Green Arrow


Kevin Smith
Birth Name:	Kevin Patrick Smith
Birth Date:	August 2, 1970
Birth Place:	Red Bank, New Jersey, USA
Death Date:	None
Green Arrow media written:	Green Arrow: Quiver and Green Arrow: The Sounds of Violence

[edit] Green Arrow Comics

In 2000, Oliver Queen is revived in a new series, Green Arrow (vol. 3), written by Kevin Smith and illustrated by Phil Hester and Ande Parks. Picking up the thread from "The Final Night", Smith reveals that Hal's resurrection of Oliver was a flawed one, in that Hal opted to resurrect Oliver in a form that had no memory of the events of "The Longbow Hunters" mini-series or of the subsequent events that followed up until his death. This was because, unwilling to 'play God' again, Hal had travelled to Heaven to ask Oliver if he wanted to come back, and, when Oliver had refused, Hal had eventually convinced him to agree to let him resurrect his body with his memories prior to killing Black Canary's torturer, Oliver regarding his life as having gone into a downward spiral from the moment he took that life and wanting a chance to start over again. Oliver quickly returns to crime fighting, but is evidently traumatized by the experience of resurrection. He lives as a vagabond in the back alleys of Star City, creating a costume and weapons from garbage and castoff material. Oliver is found, confused and delirious by Stanley Dover (a possible pun on the expression "standover man"- one who extorts from people who are on the edges of legal society), who takes him to his home to recuperate. Dover, while appearing altruistic, is a practitioner of black magic, and recognizes Oliver's body as lacking a soul.

Dover soon realizes that Oliver believes it to be several years earlier, and decorates his home appropriately (old computers, etc) to ease Oliver back into reality. In the meanwhile, Oliver is being attacked by monsters. The Demon Etrigan attempts to destroy Queen, and finally explains that his soulless body acts as a gateway for demons wishing to enter the world. In addition, his lack of a soul makes him a target for Stanley Dover's calling of "The Beast with no name." Dover was a Satanist looking for a way to capture souls, which brought him into contact with mystics Jason Blood and the Magus Burgess, who had imprisoned Neil Gaiman's Sandman character. Dover stole the book "The Magdalene Grimoire" from the Magus and used it in attempts to summon the beast while holding his infant grandchild, to which it bonded instead of him. The beast escaped the grandson's control, and Dover is unable to find it. He intends to transfer himself into Queen's younger, healthier body as part of his overall plan for power and immortality, and search for the Beast from the Justice League Watchtower. Connor Hawke locates Oliver, but is caught in the fight for Oliver's body. Queen's soul finally makes the decision to return to Earth to help his son Connor Hawke fight a mass of demons. Dover is defeated and actually consumed by the Beast, who then leaves of his own accord. Queen also finds himself independently wealthy again, as Dover had transferred all his financial assets to Queen in anticipation of taking over his body. He also picked up a new sidekick, Mia Dearden, who would become the new Speedy under Oliver's tutoring.[2]

After the resurrection storyline, Smith wrote a second and shorter arc involving a super-powered serial killer named Onomatopoeia that sought to claim Connor Hawke as his latest victim. Smith then left the title, with Brad Meltzer taking over as writer. Meltzer went on to write the mini-series "Identity Crisis", which heavily featured Green Arrow as one of the story's main characters. During the mini-series, Meltzer had several members of the Justice League- Queen, the Flash, Green Lantern, Black Canary, Hawkman, Zatanna, the Atom and the Elongated Man- fight Deathstroke the Terminator, culminating in Oliver stabbing Deathstroke in his empty left eye-socket when he effortlessly defeated the team in combat.

Meltzer's single storyline for Green Arrow featured Oliver and former sidekick Roy Harper reuniting and going on a cross-country road trip to pick up old possessions of Oliver's, most notably a spare Green Lantern power ring entrusted to him by Hal Jordan many years earlier. It explored several of the ramifications of Queen's return from the dead, such as his seeming strained relationship with new Green Lantern Kyle Rayner; he described his reaction to Kyle as being like a man discovering a boy dressed as his own dead best friend at Halloween. The story also revealed that Oliver knew all along that Connor Hawke was his son and was even present at his birth, but that Oliver ultimately abandoned Connor and his mother due to his fear of becoming a father.

During this time, Queen was briefly recruited into a new Justice League by an emergency program created by Batman in the event of the death or loss of the League; other members of this team included the Atom, Hawkgirl, Major Disaster, Faith, Firestorm and Jason Blood, with Nightwing as the leader. Shortly after this team disbanded, Queen was recruited by the newly formed Justice League Elite- a superhero 'black ops' team created to eliminate metahuman threats to the population before they went public- to act as a tactical advisor and political left-winger. During this time, Queen had a brief affair with Dawn, the wife of the team's magical expert Manitou Raven, but the relationship ended shortly after the team disbanded following their confrontation with the spirit of Manchester Black as he tried to drive his sister to destroy London.

Meltzer's storyline would continue into the mini-series "Green Lantern: Rebirth", which featured Kyle Rayner discovering the existence of the Parallax entity and how longtime Green Lantern enemy Sinestro was responsible for it corrupting Hal Jordan and turning him into a murderer. During a battle between Kyle, Oliver and Sinestro in the JLA Watchtower, Sinestro mocks Oliver over his jadedness and use of lethal force, even upon Hal Jordan. This forced Oliver to use his spare Green Lantern ring to shoot an emerald energy arrow into Sinestro, wounding him, although it took a great deal of effort as his cynical willpower cannot properly use the ring. In the end, Oliver and Kyle were able to keep Sinestro occupied so that Hal Jordan could be purged of the Parallax entity and resurrected, with the spare ring serving as Hal's new power ring.

Writers Phil Hester, Ande Parks and Brad Meltzer all contributed to the Green Arrow Story during Smith's run with the comic series during he was there and after he left. That series with those writers including Kevin Smith lasted from 2000 to 2004.

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