Saturday, November 17, 2012

There's an Actual Dragon in It

"There's an Actual Dragon in It" from Connor Hawke: Dragon's Blood #5 (DC, 2007) by Chuck Dixon and Derec Donovan
I thought that since the Green Arrow portion of our experiment would favor Ollie, I'd throw Connor a splash through his mini-series. Connor Hawke came at a time (specifically, Zero Hour) when DC was really building the legacies of its top tier heroes. The Flash had long been Wally West, Green Lantern was Kyle Rayner, and we'd had Reign of the Supermen, Knightfall, Artemis as Wonder Woman, etc. which created lasting legacy characters beyond those events. So when Green Arrow "died", it seemed inevitable that one of his illegitimate children would come out of the woodwork and take up his name. Not since GL John Stewart had a high-profile name been given to a non-white character - Connor's mom was half-Korean, half-Black - but that did seem to cause problems for artists and colorists, and at times, it seemed like Connor's features and coloring were more Caucasian than others. Dragon's Blood restored his ethnic background, but also introduced mild superpowers like regeneration, speed and strength from bathing in dragon blood - perhaps a necessary step to differentiate him from the original Green Arrow who had returned from the dead - but this was pretty much ignored by other writers. Poor Connor.

And like everything else that made DC's heroes "old", he was wiped from the face of creation by the Flushpoint.

1 comment:

  1. Connor! It's so nice to see Connor. Dang it, I miss all the young guys like Connor and Wally, and all the dead people, and...and...!

    (This is where I break down, sobbing uncontrollably.)

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