NB of the Week

Green Arrow #10
I'm going to be honest here: I think Arrow has an unfair advantage. Believe me when I say that I have never read an Arrow title as good as this new launch has been and I don't want to take anything away from it but at the end of the day it's still a Green Arrow book and I think that may always push it's greatness above other great things. I expect Geoff Johns to be brilliant. I expect Captain America to be amazing. Arrow just always seems to work against itself so it's greatness seems that much more each issue. But I digress.
Jason Blood and the demon Etrigan have been separated. Now Blood fights alongside Arrow to protect the forest that Etrigan now plagues. But this issue is mostly about Galahad. At the end of issue nine, Etrigan opened the forest up and swallowed Galahad. This issues shows that may have been a bad move. The forest is now "healing" Galahad's mind. He goes through a journey where he comes across a church. Inside, he stumbles towards a knight's armor laid across a table as if it were a dead person, all while we are reading lines from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Sir Galahad and The Holy Grail. As he makes his way closer and he opens and helmet's visor, we see a young girl. A quick flash to a hospital shows Galahad, looking all to human, crying over the girl's body, the doctor telling him "she's gone". We then get the real story of this "Galahad" as he recalls caring for his sick daughter Amber. He once taught literature. His passion was Arthurian Legend.
"When she died, I simply couldn't take it. My life came crashing down and I needed something... A purpose. A passion. A quest. I know now. I see the truth. My name was not Galahad. I was just a father. I wasn't a knight. But because of her... I am now."
And with that Galahad crashed out of a tree, striking Etrigan with the sword laid upon his child's body. With it's last effort, Etrigan raises some more demons, including the Green Arrow that shot the real Arrow in the head in issue 3 (...did I forget to tell you that?). We are left with a final page of Ollie looking at his evil self saying, "The black heart of evil. It's the forest."
Again, I know Arrow shouldn't be this good but this is damn good stuff. I love the vibe JT Krul has brought into this book. After so many years of Arrow never quite hitting a stride, this book pops up and makes him a force. The mysticism of old Camelot, the bravery and honor of old Errol Flynn. It's everything they based Green Arrow on but never actually made him be. And the power of the forest and the While Lantern is suppose to be explained in the last few issues of Brightest Day which is coming this next month and I can't wait for it. I look forward to a lot of great stories to be told in this title.