“Amnesty International’s “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence” is an annual campaign to raise awareness and donations to help fight gender-based violence worldwide. In support of this effort, a small group of comics bloggers (Modern Mythologies, Arousing Grammar, and The Speech Bubble) will be drawing attention to this social and humanitarian issue by highlighting some of the moments where comic books have failed to defend against gender violence. The campaign runs from November 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women) to December 10 (Human Rights Day). For more information on our comics-related support of the campaign, click HERE. To learn more about Amnesty International, how you can help, or to donate, please click HERE.”

As we arrive on the last day of the campaign, the time has come for my contribution. I racked my brain hard, mulling over the various topics I could cover but in the end I came to the conclusion to cover Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters. First up, I want to share with you the issue and then we’ll cover the aftermath. Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters was a three-issue prestige format comic book mini-series that was published in 1987. Written and drawn by Mike Grell, it featured the titular hero alongside his long-time love interest, the Black Canary. What occurred over the course of the series would irrevocably change the two characters but it is the damage inflicted on Black Canary in particular that I want to focus on. Be warned, that we are going to get a little graphic here as we broach this very serious subject. Now, onto the issue itself:

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Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters

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The two heroes were on different paths: Oliver Queen (Green Arrow) is after the slasher who had been murdering prostitutes while Dinah Lance (Black Canary) is on the trail of a drug cartel. Being a strong, independent woman, she refutes Oliver’s attempts to help her, wanting to see this through on her own.

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After a night of passion, Oliver reveals he’s thinking of more, thinking of marriage and having children but Dinah doesn’t want children. Why you ask?

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Because of the dangerous lives they live. In one of the best and most poignant lines in the mini she states that she’d love to make babies with him but she won’t make orphans.

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Oliver tells Dinah to take care of herself. She mentions always. If she only knew…

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Dinah is making headway and leaves Oliver a note asking for his understanding.

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Oliver still struggles with the notion, wanting to help her but understanding where she is coming from. She’ll be alright he says…

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But she isn’t. We start merely with a shot of her legs, blood dripping down them, puddling on the floor. Oliver has heard that the drug dealer she was on the trail of has had his body found by the authorities and races to find out what has happened to her.

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He finds this waiting for him: Dinah, bloodied, beaten, bruised, clothes torn, tied up. A gruesome shot.

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Then we have the one man ask the other if he would like to rape her before she is mutilated beyond recognition.

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Oliver erupts with rage and kills her torturer as she looks on.

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Oliver comes to her rescue, no remorse regarding the life he has taken.

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Oliver cradles her body, haven saved her, the line uttered from her lips breaking our hearts and his.

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Oliver relives the moment afterwards, the violence seen from another angle yet more sexualized in nature.

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Oliver waits by her bedside, the worse having passed. This harm to the woman he loves spurns him into action to find the head of the criminal empire.

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Shado lays it out plain and simple: both of them are here for vengeance of a different kind but vengeance yet the same.

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Her reply to Oliver is biting. He didn’t have to kill the man who was torturing Dinah but did so nonetheless.

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Eventually they catch up to boss and the deed is done by Shado.

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Dinah is looking better and eager to make the bad guys pay. Oliver informs her it is all over, he avenged her, depriving her of her own justice in the process.

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The mini-series ends on a somewhat upbeat note. Dinah says that one day she may reconsider having kids after she retires. The choice is still hers…or at least she thinks it still is.

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Aftermath

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The brutal and graphic scenes of Dinah found in the Longbow Hunters sought to accomplish one major idea: a return to a more grounded Green Arrow title. One way they did this was to push Oliver to the edge so that he was willing to kill someone, using the severe beating of Dinah to act as a motivating factor, a crutch that is used all to often in stories and movies whether it be the female character being beaten or even killed. The beating also resulted in Black Canary losing her Canary Cry, an iconic power of the character that she would be without for many years to come.

A big contention of debate is in regard to the matter of rape though. Some fans believe that she was indeed sexually violated and tortured while others think it was merely a beating so severe that she was on the verge of death. The writer of the series claimed it was never his intention to imply rape and that fans were simply making the leap there. This would have been all well and good but one of the other side effects besides the loss of her Cry was her inability to conceive children. That choice had been taken away from her. You can see why fans would think this. Here is a small sampling of thoughts I read from a forum discussion HERE on the topic. Some of the highlights follow:

“Even if they *never* intended to have Black Canary get raped, this still doesn’t contradict the argument that the treatment was misogynist: the scene still has all the “advantages” of showing sexualized violence and implying rape, but the creators can’t be blamed for actually including a rape. Intentionally or not, it seems all the evidence points to the fact that the violence was sexually motivated and linked, and ultimately the words and pictures on the page are going to carry more weight than the author’s later statements. Intentional or not, a rape scene is a rape scene.”

“If the scene *is* heavily sexualized, and even you say that you picked that up the first time around, whereas GA’s torture had no implications of his sex being a factor at all, then it seems like sex and the abuse of a particular sex really do play into it. Honestly, I didn’t think of the scene as a “let’s beat up the girl” scene. I saw it as a “Let’s give Ollie a major shock and turn his character around” scene. It was a blatant plot device, but I didn’t think it was particularly sexist. I got the impression instead, that they’d have done the same thing to Ollie to force the same change on Dinah, had it been Dinah’s book. My point is, if the violence really *is* sexually linked, really is happening because BC is a woman, then the scene is still sexually charged and still misogynist, regardless of what Grell later said. Yes, but I don’t think it’s safe to say that it happened because Dinah is a woman. I think it’s safe to say that the “want a piece of this” comment was thrown in because she was a woman, but I definitely find the claim that the whole *scene* was just because Dinah is female to be suspect. A scene that implies rape unintentionally still implies it. And when most readers pick up that implication, then I think it’s something you can meaningfully address as a specific part of the work.”

“Actually, the answer depends on what you are referring to. If you mean, in official DCU continuity, did Dinah get raped, then the answer is no. Grell and Gold said so, and that’s that. But if you ask, was Dinah raped in The Longbow Hunters, then the answer is yes. Whether intended or not, rape is implied in that scene. I doubt anyone can read the story and not infer that she was raped. It doesn’t matter what Grell said. If you saw something happen on panel and the author later said it didn’t happen, who is right? The author wrote it and denied it, but you SAW it, so it happened. Just like things that were retconned out of existence still happened, even though DC says they didn’t.”

Regardless of which side of the debate you are on the simple truth is that this moment defined both characters going forward. It was a shocking scene much like the infamous scene in Green Lantern when Kyle’s girlfriend was stuffed in a refrigerator. What makes this one standout even more for me (and not in a good way) is the amount of shots, the graphic realism, and the sexualization of the act. That Dinah was able to overcome such trauma speaks to the strength of the character but it is a harsh reality that many women cannot recover from without help. That is why I once again encourage you to visit Amnesty International and donate. It is a simple click away: http://www.amnesty.org/en/womens-rights/16-days.