To @marcguggenheim

Look, I’m almost 100% sure that you will never read nor even see this post, I really am. This is mostly for myself, to express some things that I have or still need to say.

I understand, to an extent, what you were trying to say when you stated that your “favorite” fans are the non-comic book fans. Television requires much higher ratings than your average comic book subscription, so naturally you would try to attract viewers who never have and possibly never will pick up a comic book. Plenty of people either don’t like the format, don’t have the access, or simply don’t know where exactly to even start with stories and characters that have been going on for three-fourths of a century. Television and movies are a way of expanding an audience, simplifying things down and delivering these heroes and villains, icons, to people who might otherwise have never known them.

I was one such fan for most of my life, growing up on reruns of George Reeves’ Superman and the DC Animated Universe. I’d never read a comic yet still loved these characters and ideas that had been brought to life on the screen for me and others in my situation. It wasn’t until I became so disgusted with how Arrow was mistreating those same characters and ideas that I took out my first subscription to Green Arrow Rebirth.

So thanks for that, in a way. I’ve found I much prefer shelling out three bucks twice a month for quality content rather than sitting back and letting free garbage be shoved down my throat.

The thing I’d like you to understand is that while non-comic book fans help expand the audience and boost you to the ratings you want, comic book fans are why you have an audience - much less a show - to begin with. Your main cast of characters were from comic books; the story of Oliver Queen returning from being stranded on an island and becoming a vigilante, that’s all from comics; the reason why the network took a chance on your show was because it was from comic books and they know that’s what’s big right now.

And for comic and non-comic book fans, we didn’t mind the minor deviations from the comics, we didn’t mind the creative liberties, we didn’t mind the added characters - so long as they remained true to what Green Arrow, and Black Canary, is. No one expected you to take a comic book panel by panel and adapt it to the screen. But we did expect you to create stories that stayed true and respectful to the characters we love, that we tuned in to watch in the first place. Justice League Unlimited managed it just fine. It shouldn’t be hard.

And it shouldn’t have to be at the expense of non-comic book fans. As a writer, it’s your job to introduce non-comic book fans to the world of a comic book and those characters, to show the viewers what makes them and their stories so great and so lasting. That was your challenge. Not to slap comic book names on things that don’t even remotely resemble what you’re claiming they are.

Before you dismiss me as just another raging comic book nerd or whatever stereotype you want to use, please remember my story from before. I’d never read a comic before Arrow. This isn’t about me being some comic book purist. But I, as a non-comic book fan, was just as easily able to discern that this show was not being respectful to the source material, that it no longer cared about it’s original audience. And that, on top of a myriad of story and character issues that really would digress far too much, was enough to drive me away.

This shouldn’t be a comic vs. non-comic book fan thing. We should all want a good story with comic book characters brought to life on television for some new adventures. There shouldn’t be this wedge between us. But it’s there, and in a way, you’ve helped create it. And you’ve stated where exactly you stand on the issue. So now we’re at a crossroads because the fact is, your vaunted - largely imaginary - unified bloc of non-comic book fans clearly aren’t enough to save you from record-low ratings. That might go to show that a lot of non-comic book fans are savvy enough to see how terrible things really have become and all the mistakes that have been made. But still, you persist in saying that you do all these things for the non-comic book fans and that they are your favorite, further driving in the wedge and further alienating the people who came here for a comic book show whether they’d read a comic before or not.

It seems clear to me that you don’t care for the comic books, or the characters - you’ve killed or written off practically all of them. You don’t value the fans who got you a show in the first place, nor the fans who came after from word of mouth about a really good Green Arrow show. And I guess it leaves me wondering, why? Why do you bother to write for a genre and a story for which you have no respect and no love? Why do you instead do everything you can to tarnish the legacies of beloved characters and make fans look at this bizarro version of Oliver Queen like he’s a stranger? Why do you push and push a non-comic book character so hard on us to the point where a large portion of the viewers have simply taken to renaming the show in her honor?

You’ve claimed you’ve gotten a lot of hate for the decisions you’ve made lately, and I am sorry if it’s caused you undue grief. You don’t seem happy with the way things are - but neither are we. The people who have said things, whether online or in person, they say those things because they too are hurt. They feel betrayed. They feel you made a promise in helping to create Arrow, and that you’ve broken that promise. And can you really, honestly, say they’re wrong?

If what you’ve worked on for season five is more of the same of the last two seasons - and from what I’m hearing so far, it sounds like it - I can already tell you things won’t get better. And no one, you included, will be the happier for it.

So here’s my advice: if your true interest is in pleasing fans who don’t care for the source material you’re taking from, stop writing things that come from another source material. Stop promising people adaptations of things they love and delivering something completely the opposite or unrecognizable. Create your own show, your own original characters and stories and ideas that maybe fans will get to know and love. Simply put, go and make something that’s not Arrow, because continuing with Arrow seems to be an exercise in futility for you and Green Arrow fans.

You can’t ride on a comic book’s coattails and preexisting fanbase and then claim you don’t have to respect that. You can’t parade your comic book show around at comic book conventions and take our money and then shower praise and favoritism on non-comic book fans while shunning comic book fans. You can’t have it both ways, and sooner or later something’s gotta give.

And yes, I know I might as well be shouting into a void for all the good this will do; I would hardly qualify for one of your special one-on-one interviews. But on the off chance you somehow do stumble across this, I hope you’ll at least consider the points I’ve made, instead of brushing me off with a “get over it”.

Sincerely,

You least favorite fan