Green Arrow - Other Versions

Other Versions

Many alternative versions of the character have appeared in DC Comics publications. The original version of the character became established as the Earth-Two version of Green Arrow who was a member of the Seven Soldiers of Victory and All-Star Squadron in the 1940s, along with his sidekick Speedy. Aside from their origin, which states the two were trained together on a mesa top, their history nearly parallels the history of the Earth-One version, up until the point when Green Arrow and Speedy, along with their teammates, were thrown into various periods of time during a battle with the Nebula Man. He was killed during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. A retcon was made, in Crisis on Infinite Earths, that the Earth-Two Green Arrow had brown hair, as opposed to Earth-One's Green Arrow being blond. Similarly, the Earth-Two Speedy has blond hair, as opposed to Earth-One's Speedy having red.

The character appears in Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and the sequel Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Despite missing an arm (implied to be because of Superman), Oliver still proves to be an effective archer (he grasps the nocks of his arrows in his teeth). The Emerald Archer later acquires a cybernetic replacement for his lost arm from Batman in the sequel. The death scene in Green Arrow #100–101 pays tribute to Miller's story. Superman's only course of action to rescue Green Arrow is by removing his arm, but Queen refuses to let him--admitting later in Quiver that he refused due to both his own issues at this point in his life and the more practical issue that he would be useless as an archer with one arm--thus bringing about his apparent death. In The Dark Knight Returns, Queen is portrayed as an anarchist, while in The Dark Knight Strikes Again he is explicitly described as a "billionaire turned Communist."

An older, balding Green Arrow would appear in Mark Waid and Alex Ross' futuristic vision Kingdom Come, where Oliver has joined forces with Batman to oppose Superman's army. He married his longtime love Dinah Lance and they have a daughter, Olivia Queen.

Green Arrow appears in League of Justice, a The Lord of the Rings–inspired fantasy where the character is renamed "Longbow Greenarrow," a mysterious wizard resembling Gandalf; JLA: Age of Wonder shows Green Arrow as a defender of the poor and an enemy of oppression.

In JLA: The Nail and its sequel, Oliver is a featured as a crippled ex-hero, having lost an arm, an eye, and the use of his legs in a fight with Amazo, the same battle resulting in the death of Katar Hol. Bitter and furious, he is now wheelchair bound, and spreads fear on Perry White's talk show about the JLA being aliens and claims that they are planning to conquer the world; his former teammates speculate that this is his method of coping. In the sequel, Oliver's brain is transplanted into Amazo's body--the Flash having removed Amazo's computerized brain in an earlier fight--restoring his sanity, allowing him to defeat the creature threatening the universe at the cost of his own life, after mending fences with his former teammates.

In Batman: Holy Terror, Oliver Queen is mentioned as having been executed, found guilty of supporting underground Jewish "pornographers;" and he has a cameo as Bruce Wayne's society friend in Dean Motter's Batman: Nine Lives. Green Arrow has also appeared in the Justice League Unlimited spin-off comic book. Oliver Queen also appears in Mike Mignola’s Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham, where he is portrayed as a latter-day Templar equipped with magic arrows dipped in the blood of Saint Sebastian. He is killed in issue #2 by Poison Ivy.

DC's weekly series 52 established a new 52-Earth Multiverse. On Earth-3, an evil equivalent of Green Arrow is a member of the supervillain co-op called the Crime Society of America. In Tangent Comics (Earth-9), Green Arrow is a type of soda with the slogan: "Hits the Spot." On Earth-15, Roy Harper has replaced Oliver as Green Arrow. The Kingdom Come (Earth-22) and Dark Knight Returns (Earth-31) stories and their variations of Oliver were later amalgamated into the 52-Earth Multiverse. In the gender-reversed world of Earth-11, Oliver is now Olivia Queen, and that world's version of the Black Canary closely resembles him in appearance.

In the alternate timeline of the Flashpoint event, Oliver Queen is the head of Green Arrow Industries, a major military contracting company, and leads an ex-military band of Green Arrows. Even though Oliver is an inventive genius, he steals advanced gadgets from super-villains for military use. In one day, Oliver discovers his Green Arrows were killed by a female raider. Taking his weapons and gadgets to hunt down the woman in battle, Oliver shockingly learns that the woman reveals to him that she is a daughter of Vixen, Oliver's former lover, and the reason she attacked him was because of his industries build factories which specialize in testing super-villain weapons in American towns that inadvertently became targets for the super-villains looking to gain their weapons back. Shocked by her revelation, Oliver had only been stalling before his daughter is killed by his reserve teams he earlier called.