Sep 1971
Snowbirds Don’t Fly
by Denny O’Neill, Neal Adams, John Costanza
Oliver Queen gets attacked teenagers who want his money to buy drugs. He tries fighting back but the fight ends after one of the teens shoots him in the shoulder with an arrow from a crossbow. He barely makes it to an emergency room. He calls Hal for help after the doctor patches him up.
Hal and Ollie find the teens, who are no match for Green Lantern’s power ring. Roy Harper (aka Speedy, Green Arrow’s sidekick) is with them but the two superheroes don’t make anything of it. They convince the other teens to lead them to the source of the drugs. Things don’t turn out exactly as planned. Green Lantern and Green Arrow get knocked out and drugged up.
Roy comes to the rescue and helps Hal and Ollie get back home. It is there that Ollie discovers that Roy is a junkie.
This is a decent read. I love the visuals and the layouts but some of the elements of the story don’t flow as neatly as I hoped they would. Roy shows up fairly fortuitously just in time to help Green Arrow and Green Lantern. I can understand how Ollie might not suspect that Roy has a drug habit but the company that his young friend was keeping should have made him at least a little suspicious.
I love the facial expressions, specifically Ollie’s reaction to getting shot, Chucky’s plea for more drugs, the face on the monster version of himself that GL creates when he is high.
The last panel looks very similar to the cover to this issue. One could also say that the cover gives away the very end of the issue. It does not give away the end to the story which continues in the next issue.
There’s no doubt that this would have been groundbreaking when it first hit the stands. I’m glad I’ve read it. It is good but it falls short in terms of the content in my opinion. The visuals are fabulous but the story itself, which isn’t over yet, has yet to impress me.
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