Deadshot vs. Green Arrow

Simple premise: let’s take DC’s two best marksman and have them shoot each other.  Boom, easy money.  I love it.  And poor Green Arrow, using a children’s toy reserved for summer camps having to go up against another children’s toy reserved for summer camps (in some of the more southern parts of the country).  We as a society stopped using bows and arrows once we could make buffalo explode with a single click.  Have you heard of bow hunters?  It’s a real sport for people who think hunting deer with rifles is too easy, but it doesn’t compare to my new sport: you hunt deer naked and can only kill them with your bare hands.  Look, it’s late and my sleep medicine just kicked in hard, so let’s do this.

In a miniseries you should absolutely get because it’s amazing, we’re reading parts of Deadshot #1-5, volume two, written by Christos Gage and drawn by Steven Cummings.  If you need a recap of first miniseries, allow Firebug to do it for you:

But y’see, he has an illegitimate child with an escort from way back he didn’t know about until the beginning of this miniseries.  And they live in a really awful part of town.  While Deadshot (real name Floyd Lawton) may not have emotions like love or happiness, like hell is his child going to grow up in a dangerous, crime-ridden neighborhood.  So he cleans it up.  Violently.  Because he’s in Star City and he’s murdering truckloads of gang members, the local city’s superhero is bound to notice sooner or later.

Green Arrow’s at a fairly large disadvantage here.  Bullets tend to be much faster than arrows and Green Arrow isn’t even wearing sleeves.  But you know how the superhero business works — even the non-powered superheroes have talents far beyond what a normal person would ever be capable of. Disagree?  Tell that to Batman’s dozens of martial arts and doctorate degrees.

I’d like to ask a question that seems to be popping up about comics recently: why can’t we just enjoy them?  Reddit links constantly to my Deathstroke fights the entire JLA article, and while I’m eternally grateful for the bump in hits (as those are directly tied to my self-esteem), every comment on their website writes paragraphs calling “bull” on the fight.  My response?  Who cares?  These are fictional characters in colorful clothing with skills and ability dictated entirely by the writer, so can we just bask in a cool fight scene without the unnecessary outrage?  Look, Green Arrow probably can’t dodge a hailstorm of Deadshot’s bullets in real life, but he also wears a mask despite having a full Van Dyke beard.  In summary, I get that Transformers may contain some incredulous moments during their fight scenes, but it doesn’t make me enjoy robots punching other robots any less.

Ironically, Deadshot became the Robin Hood of this neighborhood instead of Green Arrow. Like all great supervillains, Deadshot’s far more complicated than at first glance.  Because while he’s cleaning up the neighborhood entirely for selfish reasons, he’s totally improving the lives of the hundreds that live there.  I mean, it doesn’t make up for the hundreds he’s assassinated, but you get the idea.  Comic book superheroes love those whose moral code involves rehabilitation and second chances, but comic book civilians always tend to favor those who opt for a more permanent solution to evil.  Like murdering gang members.

A feel good ending!  And to make sure that your warm fuzzy feeling bursts into the bloody sadness pile it’ll always end up at when you read comics, let’s continue with another scene from this miniseries on Friday.  It’s really hard to find this book in stores, even online, and I don’t think the creative team would mind.  Also on an unrelated note, the more Green Arrow I read, the more I adore him.