Beyond The Hub Arrow Batman Reskinned by DJ Forrest

If I have learnt anything, it’s that anything is possible. Such as, rebranding an old name and crafting it into a new. Taking something that worked, and reworking it in such a way, that although you know what it is you’re watching, you’re liking the new setting, the new location, the new cast but you’ve still got that one big niggling question, why, of all the other DC characters, why was it necessary to reskin Batman?

I guess it’s because for a newer generation that didn’t grow up with the caped crusader, that Arrow is a lot more believable in the fact that the setting looks like any other city. It’s not all dark and sinister like Gotham, with characters that you know you’d never meet in a month of Sunday’s.

But yet, there are characters that you have heard of before, such as Deadshot, and although the doctor in the mental hospital (not Bedlam) didn’t carry a scarecrow mask with him in a briefcase, or was physically seen pushing the Vertigo drugs that were polluting the city, you knew from the moment Oliver awoke strapped in the chair, that you’d seen this particular scene with the chemistry set somewhere before. And as for The Count, there did appear something of a Joker in his behaviour, but that would be pushing it, wouldn’t it?

 

And trawling through the endless reams of documentation regarding Arrow you discover a lot of similarities between Batman AND The Green Arrow DC character that begun its life back in 1941. 

Only The Green Arrow and the series Arrow couldn’t be more different. Although there are some similarities, the age, the description and the family background has been completely shredded and tossed into the air, and scattered for all time.

Laurel Lance in the series is Dinah Lance in the comic.

Malcolm Merlyn in the series is Tommy Merlyn in the comic.

Oliver Queen lost his father during the sinking of the Queen’s Gambit in the series, but both his parents were mauled to death by lions in the comic.

Speedy in the series is referred to his sister Thea, but Speedy in the comic book is Roy Harper.

It’s with this level of research that had me screaming at the computer, drowning in the amount of data on all three characters, Batman, Arrow and the Green Arrow. So many similarities, I needed a dark room with a cold compress. I have so many questions for the creator of the new series. Yet, I doubt I’ll find the answers.

So what did I think to the reskinning of my favourite caped crusader? 

Arrow, for the most part, is an enjoyable action packed series that has many edge of the seat moments and breathtaking fight scenes. It has a delicious cast who gel well together and who for the most part survive at least till the end of the series. Yes, I knew Tommy wasn’t going to make it but it was still sad at the end.

The one thing I’ve come to realise with any great series, especially one that airs ahead of us in the UK, is that, you can’t, unless you live in a cave with limited wifi, escape the Spoilers. They’re out there, and no matter how much you try to avoid them, you can’t.

And stupidly for me, Wikia Arrow and DC comics have the full breakdown of the entire series from start to finish. So even if I didn’t invest in the next 3 box sets, I already know what’s going to happen to the entire cast, which is kind of sad really.

What’s interesting though is the way the television Arrow story appears to work in a kind of backwards approach to the Green Arrow story. There are also chunks of detail removed from the television series, as to what happens in the Green Arrow story, and yes, I get it that, the television series is based on the DC comic character, but even with Batman, these were played as close if not precisely as they were in the graphic novels. So why was there a need to change the details?

I can understand if it was about the setting, about the locations of the story, updating an old classic comic book hero to the present day can present some issues, I can understand some levels would need to be changed. But a lot of Ollie’s playboy behaviour happened much later AND Ollie (Green Arrow) was handy with a bow and arrow before he went to the island, so why was there a need to change that part of the story.

But Green Arrow aside and Batman back in the picture, I found perhaps too much added into the Arrow series, and not just characters but quotes and phrases and the way in which Arrow portrays himself when he speaks to those he wants to interrogate or help. That gruff voice reminds me so much of Christian Bale’s Batman!

The similarities with Batman and Arrow become less of a surprise the further into the first series you get, so I’m interested to see how many more I’ll find in the next three seasons.

Let’s look at the Batman and Arrow similarities.

Oliver Queen is a playboy and the son of a billionaire who was reported lost at sea. Although Oliver knew the truth about his father’s death, he didn’t until the end of Series 1 know the full extent of who was behind the Queen’s Gambit boat disaster. 

Bruce Wayne saw his parents murdered in the streets of Gotham but it wasn’t until he was much older that he discovered the truth about his parent’s deaths and who were behind their murder.

Oliver Queen spent 5 years trapped on an island in the Pacific surviving on his wits and doing what he had to in order to survive. He learnt combat training from Yao Fei and his daughter Shado, a female soldier who had been held prisoner by Fyers and his band of mercenaries. Oliver returned to Starling City a changed man, and became a vigilante known as The Hood, in order to reset the balance by taking out those who had failed the city. But after discovering the symbol on the inside cover of the notebook given to him by his father, did he see the full picture, and discover the meaning behind The Undertaking.

Pretend Playboy, philanthropist Bruce Wayne never stopped searching for the truth about his parent’s death, and adopted the mask and ID of the Batman in order to find those responsible. He trained himself to fight, honing his skills in martial arts and using all manner of weapons to aid him. After overcoming his fear of dark spaces and bats in general Wayne built a bat cave beneath his home, where he kept his toys in which to fight crime.

The only other person to know of the cave’s existence was his best friend and confident, Alfred his manservant.

Oliver Queen converted the old family steel mill into a work space in order to carry out his vigilante work, building a nightclub above it as a decoy for what went on below stairs. After saving the life of his bodyguard John Diggle after a run in with Deadshot, opened up about his role as the hood. Diggle joined the team as an equal.

During the first series, Oliver tangled with many an unsavoury character, none more so than Deadshot, who was responsible for killing Diggle’s brother. Diggle’s vengeance alone at capturing this individual drove a wedge between him and Oliver.

Bruce Wayne found an ally in the Police force, Commissioner Jim Gordon. Although it was hard to prove to the police that he was doing them a favour by bringing those guilty to justice, it was often Gordon seeking help from the Batman.

Oliver Queen’s ally is Quentin Lance, father to Sara and Laurel Lance. He’s a police detective in the Glades and fights to protect his daughter, hating Oliver for the death of his daughter Sara, and is determined right through the series to bring the Hood to justice. But it’s only at the end when Quentin realises that the man he’s been chasing all along is the man he should have trusted from the start.

The doctor who I previously mentioned at the mental hospital rang Scarecrow bells at me.

Back in Batman Begins, a character that would play a large part in the DC world was going to have a significant impact in the Arrow world, and although he’s not been physically mentioned, the idea of sending two bombs into the centre of ‘the Glades’ in order to flatten it and restore the balance, sounds one hell of a lot like the chemical bomb that Henri Ducard was transporting into Gotham City in order to ‘restore the balance’.

Knowing that the Hood and Batman wouldn’t stand for this, it’s a race against time to stop the threat and save the day. But as with all bad guys, it’s never a case of stopping one bomb is it? There are always two!!!

Although in the Arrow story, it’s Malcolm Merlyn’s idea to flatten the Glades, the idea of the Undertaking however, is not. And when it’s discovered who is behind this plan, the last piece of the Batman puzzle is revealed.

Oh and if you needed any help in working that out, just remember, everyone has an alias. 

Resources

Wikia DC

Wikia Arrow

Wikia Green Arrow

  

Beyond The Hub Arrow: Malcolm Merlyn by Tamie Wiggins

My own accidental first impression of the character beside the point, we see Malcolm as a business-savvy and extremely charming man–how much of that is John’s natural charm coming through and how much is the character, we’ll probably never know–but with a terrible secret hidden beneath the charm.

Malcolm the family man

Officially, our first time seeing Malcolm with his son shows us that either he is a total jackass with his family… or is so much the business man that he doesn’t have the slightest clue how to show that he cares.

Given later scenes, in which he is shown gazing at a photo of his son and we, the viewers, are the only witnesses to that oh-so-tender expression, or the knowledge that it was his wife’s murder that broke him and turned him villain, I would lean towards the second theory, that he hasn’t a clue how to act with his son, but crossed quite a bit with the Tough Love approach.

Case in point:

Revoking every possible source of finances from Tommy in their very first interaction, under the guise of forcing Tommy to grow up and take responsibility for himself. Now, I don’t know how the economy works in Starling City, but here in the real world, not having things like a permanent residence or reliable transportation tends to count against you in finding a job, unless you can wrangle some kind of government assistance.

Tommy might’ve been given the chance to earn his wages at Oliver’s bar or in Malcolm’s company later on, but that doesn’t change the fact that both those jobs, and moving in with Laurel, were all, to some extent, a charity that he simply had no choice but to accept.

Although on the flip side of that: why do people who need money reject job offers simply to refuse charity? Sure, the offer was made to help that person, but it isn’t free money; it’s a chance to earn that money–and at least one instance had the job offered to someone who had the qualifications anyway–and yet, the rejection is there.

And then, following that financial fiasco, we see Malcolm actively trying to get in Tommy’s good graces (and even having a good motive for closing down the mother’s clinic if you can ignore the source of that motive), and trying to protect Tommy when running from a sharpshooter.

So in this context, I deem him someone who genuinely cares about his family and is absolutely terrible at showing it.

Malcolm the villain

As mentioned before, Malcolm Merlyn can be a very charming man when he wants to be.

We the viewers could see, almost immediately after his introduction, that he is a bad man, but most of the characters he deals with (and some of the viewers, in fact), can be forgiven for being lulled by his behavior and believing that he’s one of the good guys.

In fact, though his willingness to murder thousands of people whose only “crime” was living in the same area as where his wife had been murdered is more than a little unsettling, it’s made quite clear throughout the first season that his ultimate plans for the city are effectively good intentions with a horrible application.

And that makes him one of the most dangerous kinds of villains: the kind one can sympathize with, the kind that seems to make sense in his own way. The kind that truly believes, himself that what he is doing is for the best for everyone else.

He is even more dangerous when you realize that, had he not broken, he and Oliver would have been on the same team.

Malcolm’s original plans to “clean up” the city were exactly what Oliver began as the Arrow and it was the combination of grief at his wife’s death and frustration and anger at how long it was taking that persuaded Malcolm to take other steps. And yet those “other steps” turned him into the very corruption he sought to cleanse, the very corruption that Oliver was succeeding at cleansing, prompting Malcolm to try to eliminate the Arrow before he could be targeted himself.

And yet, for all that we know that about him, the charm remains.

We see him as much through the other characters’ eyes as we do through our own, and he does a very good job at persuading people that his plans are justified, or even simply misunderstood.

It isn’t until the end of Season 1, in what I personally find to be the most frightening display of his character, that he drops the charm… in front of his son… displays just how badly he’s lost it, right before he takes the final steps to put his plans to murder thousands of innocents into motion.

‘Malcolm Merlyn’ is an extract of a larger article taken from Tamie’s wonderful Wordpress account. To read it in full, go to:

https://sidequestpublications.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/character-review-arrows-malcolm-merlyn/