Looking for a different version of this character? As a result of the New 52 in 2011, the entire line of DC characters was relaunched, incorporating properties belonging to the company's imprints: Wildstorm, Milestone, and Vertigo. As such, elements of this character's history have been altered in some way from the previous incarnation. For a complete list of all versions of this character, see our disambiguation page.

I've failed this city. I've left it alone and left the people I should be protecting exposed. I'm never going to let that happen again. — Green Arrow src

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History

Origins

is the Green Arrow , a vigilante who uses a bow and arrow to fight crime at a street level, while espousing socially liberal values.

While in high school, Oliver rolled his car on a curve an ended up in the hospital with more than a few broken bones. Robert wouldn't stop crying. When Oliver asked him why, his father told him, "Because you're me."[1]

As the young heir to a billion dollar corporate dynasty at Queen Industries, Oliver Queen was a wild socialite. His behavior so shamed his father Robert that he was relegated to clerical work on an oil rig in the Pacific. Naturally, Oliver turned the rig into a hub for his parties. At one such party, a helicopter meant to be carrying a famous rock star was commandeered by oil-thieving terrorists, who soon took over the rig.

Against the warnings of his friend Tommy Merlyn, Oliver recklessly faced the terrorist leader armed with only a bow and arrow, courtesy of his father's to this point fruitless training. The terrorists were armed with a detonator to a battery of explosives, including some which they had strapped to Oliver's girlfriend Leena. Oliver managed to shoot the detonator out of the terrorist's hand, but it bounced and activated, blowing up half the rig, and killing Leena. Fortunately for Oliver, his life was saved by Tommy - but his friend had taken the brunt of the blast, and was very badly burnt. After this, Oliver washed up on the shore of a deserted island, and was forced to survive with only his bow and arrow for a year.[2]

Zero Year

During the Zero Year, Oliver came back from the island and learned about the Gotham blackout, and the fact that his mother Moira Queen went there to help. Realizing that his mother could be in danger, Oliver insisted on going straight to Gotham to find her. She was being targeted by Killer Moth, who was stopped with the combined efforts of Batman and the Green Arrow.[3]

Diggle

One month after becoming the Green Arrow, Oliver became injured one night, bleeding out and in need of assistance. He payed a visit to his company's head of security, John Diggle. After Diggle patched Oliver up, Oliver asked him to join him in his crusade to protect the city. Oliver trusted Diggle due to him not revealing his identity to anyone or telling anyone he was back, and the fact that Diggle was willing to protect Oliver's mother's life with his own. Diggle joined Oliver's crusade and the two operated as a team to protect the city.[3]

Arsenal

Twelve months after becoming the Green Arrow, Oliver discovered that a young hacker named Roy Harper had hacked into the Queen Industries R&D department, and decided to bail him out of jail and offer him a job.[2] Though they worked together for some time, Roy began to want to work in the field, and Oliver was reluctant to let him put himself in danger, remembering Tommy's warnings that his recklessness would get people killed. Roy began to resent this, and took up drinking, eventually falling into alcoholism. Though Oliver put up with Roy's drinking for a while, he had to put an end to their partnership.[4]

Oliver had begun using his subsidiary technology company Q-Core as a front for his activities as Green Arrow with the help of a hacker named Naomi and an engineer called Jax. These activities, though, interfered with his real job as the CEO of Queen Industries, much to the annoyance of his father's old friend Emerson, who was the head of the board of directors.[5]

Even as he was warned that he would be removed from the board if he didn't do PR for Q-Core, Oliver was on the trail of a super-criminal called Rush, who was achieving fame by posting videos of his crimes on the internet.[6] After spending a harrowing evening fighting Rush, Oliver defeated him. By way of meeting Emerson's demands, he held a press conference to warn against giving up a life of accomplishment for one of apps and videos. This only served to anger Emerson, since it essentially condemned Q-Core's products as a waste of time.[7]



Green Arrow faces Midas

Oliver had made his assistant Adrien his proxy at Queen Industries, so Emerson forced him to sign over veto power to her, further weakening his grasp on the company he was born into.[8] Meanwhile, an assassin called Blood Rose and her companion Midas had staked a claim on the Seattle waterfront, taking control of its gangs. She had also targeted the billionaire Oliver Queen for death, unaware that he was the same Green Arrow that had been interrupting her gang activities.[9] At their first encounter, she was injured, making her mysterious protector worry for her.

Midas was once a scientist, working on a method for using bacteria to dispose of toxic waste. He was seduced by a misinformed undercover eco-terrorist, who caused an explosion that - when caught in the blast - turned Midas into a monster. He had become a man made almost entirely of toxic waste. His only comfort was Blood Rose, and as revenge for her injury, Midas decided to kidnap Adrien in order to lure Oliver out.[10]

Green Arrow managed to get Adrien to safety and overcome Midas with his trick arrows, but Blood Rose appeared to rescue him, sparing Green Arrow's life in favour of killing Oliver Queen. After getting back to his base, Naomi revealed that Blood Rose was actually an android - and they could track her. Soon, Green Arrow bursted into her hide-out, and filled her body with a high-voltage shock. Midas turned on him, but was caught unaware by a new arrow that used the very same kind of chemical that he had been trying to develop to eat away at his body. While he saw to his wound, Blood Rose gave chase, only to be blown up by an explosive arrow.

Oliver returned her remains to Midas, who admitted that he had built her, and that he had fallen in love with her as well - but her robotic head began to count down to a self-destruct, requiring Oliver to run for his life. Presumably, Midas and Blood Rose were both destroyed - but in fact, Midas survived, and began the journey to Metropolis in the hopes of repairing his lost love.[11]



The Skylark attack Green Arrow

Swamped by work that had backed up for months, Oliver contemplated giving up his civilian life in favour of being Green Arrow full time. He was surprised to be attacked by three young women in his office who, once apprehended, claimed to be big fans of his. The three of them all went by the name "Skylark", rather than individual names. Highly attracted to them, Oliver was compelled to use the company's private jet to fly them all back to Canada with him to see their lab, where they and their father Leer had been genetically combining insects and animals with metal. Once landing there, though, the girls attacked him again, and caused his jet to crash, creating the illusion that Oliver Queen had died. Naomi was forced to pretend the jet had been stolen in order to prevent Emerson from seizing the company.[12]

Though Oliver escaped Skylark, he was attacked by genetically modified wolves. He refused to kill them, and that refusal saw one of the Skylark returning to explain that the attack had been a test by her father, who had thus been convinced that he was a good man. As they returned, she explained that pollution had caused a hole in the Earth called the Deadzone, and her father had gone mad while trying to genetically modify animals to survive it. Investigating her father's experiments, the pair were attacked by him once he learned that Oliver did not approve of them. After a fight with a genetically modified polar bear, they escaped.

Meanwhile, Emerson leaked news of Oliver's death to the press, as Naomi and Jax put forward a plan to use Robert Queen's will against him. They had learned that if anyone intended harm toward Oliver, all of Emerson's control over the company would be forfeit - but only if Oliver was really alive. Fortunately, they managed to track him to the Arctic.[13]

Oliver learned that the Skylark could not survive when separated from each other, and the sister he had grown to trust had grown ill. They discovered a village of miners who had their claims overtaken by Leer, and their river filled with cyanide. During some downtime, one of Oliver's companion's triplet sisters secretly takes her place, but left by morning. The replaced sister followed Oliver into the mines with some borrowed dynamite, unaware that her evil sister had drawn Oliver a map. When they arrived in a trap, and Leer claimed that she had betrayed Oliver (despite her having no memory of it), Oliver believed him, thanks to all of the previous deceptions. Meanwhile, the dynamite blew, burying all of Leer's labs under an avalanche. With Oliver's trust lost, the one good sister decided to stay with her doomed family, as Oliver was saved by Naomi in a helicopter.[14]

After returning to Seattle, Oliver foiled a plan by a man called Dr. Cognate to sell brainwashed humans as robotic slaves.[15] Despite feeling his company slipping from his grasp, Oliver put a stop to a pair of archers called the Dark Arrows, who were acting on behalf of the Occupy movement. In the meantime, Jax and Naomi had grown tired of Oliver's decline, and planned to quit working for him as Green Arrow. The loss of Q-Core to Emerson caused the majority stock to be sold off to a Chinese businessman named Jin Fang, who offered to sell it back to Oliver in exchange for some controversial facial-recognition software that would make him a surveillance superpower - with questionable ethics.[16]

Due to tense international relations with China, Oliver's visit there provided him with numerous difficulties - not the least of which his disinterest in giving up his technology to a man like Jin Fang.[17] Allying with a Chinese agent named Suzie Ming, Oliver found himself in a battle with ghosts of Jin Fang's ancestors. Though they made it out alive, Oliver still had to decide whether to give up his facial-recognition tech. Ultimately, he decided to do so, but with a modification that allowed Suzie Ming to keep her own eyes on Jin Fang's activities.[18]

Back in Seattle again, Oliver had an encounter with Hawkman, resulting in a tentative alliance.[19] Afterwards, he dumped a weapons shipment into the harbour, angering Harrow, the man who bought them, enough to put a $50,000 hit on Green Arrow's head. Using the bounty to his advantage, Oliver drew out an assassin and beat an address out of him, learning of a dog-fighting ring owned by Harrow. After breaking into it, Harrow was so enraged that he doubled the bounty as he was carried away by police.[20]

Later, Harrow's girlfriend revealed that there was a warehouse full of explosives, with which Harrow's mutinous thug Pike intended to blow up both himself and the stash during the Sea Day Parade. They arrived in time to convince Pike to stop, but Harrow had already escaped jail and arrived on the scene. The struggle on the roof caught the authorities' attention, and Oliver hooked Harrow and his girlfriend to a police chopper's rescue cable. Pike, unfortunately, accidentally activated the detonator, giving Oliver just thirty seconds to save both of their lives. The explosion that followed was mistaken for a fireworks display by parade-goers.[21]

Some time later, Oliver learned via the newspaper that Emerson had sold Queen Industries to a rival called Stellmoor Industries. When confronted, Emerson explained that he lost Queen Industries because he was too focused on keeping Oliver on track with Q-Core. He explained that Oliver had never been ready to accept the Queen legacy. Before Oliver could question that, one of his own arrows crashed through the window, and killed Emerson. A line attached to the arrow yanked Emerson's body out, and down onto the street, attracting the authorities' attention, and placing blame for the crime on Oliver. Hoping to escape to Q-Core to regroup with Naomi and Jax, Oliver was horrified to see the building explode with his friends inside, just after receiving a cryptic message suggesting that they had been forced to do something. Frightened, Oliver suited up in one of his safe-houses, and emerged to find himself at the mercy of a superior bowman calling himself Komodo, who claimed that Oliver had squandered his destiny. Oliver's life was saved at the last by a stranger called Magus, who claimed that Oliver was never supposed to have left the island he was stranded on.[22]

In order not to be found, Oliver hid in a shipping container, and woke to find a note from Magus urging him to go to the Black Mesa in Arizona. Meanwhile, Oliver begged Steve Trevor and the JLA to keep the heat off of him for 48 hours, to clear his own name. For help, Oliver sought out an ex-employee named Henry Fyff who was fired for stalking Naomi. Together, they returned to Queen Industries, where Oliver snuck into Emerson's office and discovered a secret room. In it, he discovered a photo showing his father with Emerson and another man on the beach of the island on which he was stranded for a year. Magus appeared, warning Oliver to go to Black Mesa for answers, before Komodo killed him, and offered a cryptic hint about something called the Outsiders. It was too late for Oliver to leave, though, as the police soon arrived. He attempted to rappel out through the still broken window, but Komodo cut the line, and he found himself plummeting to the ground.[23]

Though he survived the fall, the run-in with the police at the office made Green Arrow a wanted man. Unbeknownst to Oliver, Naomi had been kept alive, watched by Komodo's young but cruel daughter Emiko. She was forced to watch as Komodo caught up to Oliver and beat him within an inch of his life, while he admitted that it was he who murdered Robert Queen. Despite his weakness, Oliver managed to regain the upper-hand, until Emiko herself appeared, and saved her father with her own archery skills. As they escaped, Oliver passed out from the pain and blood loss of being pierced by several arrows, leaving Henry to rescue him.[24]

Komodo belonged to a group called the Arrow Clan, and his superiors were angered to learn that Oliver Queen still lived, warning him to complete his task, or return to Prague. Meanwhile, Henry discovered from the Q-Core feed that Naomi was still alive, and woke Oliver to tell him. Following the clues, Oliver determined that she was being held at the Queen Family Mausoleum, and set out, despite the fact that his wounds hadn't healed. When he found her, she had been rigged with explosives, and he left Henry to defuse them while he chased down Komodo. In their fight, Oliver thrust an arrow into Komodo's eye, but before he could unmask him, he threw a smoke-bomb and escaped. Naomi, freed of the explosives, insisted that she help Green Arrow as vengeance.

Finally heeding Magus' advice, Oliver travelled to Black Mesa, where he was stopped on the highway by a sheriff, and knocked unconscious. He woke in the desert with nothing to his name and nothing to survive on.[25] After days of starvation and wandering, Oliver finally discovered Magus' tent. The man offered answers in the form of a hallucinogenic, giving Oliver visions of the past. His father had been obsessed with finding the home of the Arrow Clan, and had brought Emerson and his friend Simon Lacroix on a journey to find it. His obsession had left his company and family floundering, and bothered Emerson greatly.

Magus appeared to Oliver in the hallucination, explaining that the Arrow Clan was just one of several clans from which the leaders were chosen to become members of an elite circle called the Outsiders. Each clan had a totemic weapon, and each leader wielded that weapon, which was said to imbue true enlightenment. Simon Lacroix had learned of this, and killed Oliver's father in order to make himself the leader of the Arrow Clan, following Oliver's own failure to follow in his father's footsteps. In fact, it had been Emerson who arranged to send Oliver to the island with nothing but a bow in order to force him to be ready for Komodo's eventual challenge.

After coming down, Oliver met with a man called John Butcher, who was leader of the Axe Clan. Magus warned that the pair would have to trust each other if they intended to bring down the Outsiders. In accordance with a vision of a three-headed dragon that Oliver saw, Magus advised him to seek out the second dragon in the eastern European country of Vlatava. With this in mind, Oliver returned to Seattle, giving up any hope of running Queen Industries, and deciding to fight against corporations as a street-level vigilante.[26]



Green Arrow and Shado

Following Magus' advice, Oliver travelled to Vlatava, where the second dragon was supposed to be. He and his friends assumed that the dragon would likely be connected in some way to the international criminal and ruler of the country; a man called Werner Zytle. After breaking into Zytle's compound, Oliver discovered a woman imprisoned in the basement. When she saw him, she initially mistook him for his father Robert, but soon realized that he must be his son. Their escape attempt was thwarted by Zytle, who had christened himself Count Vertigo. He seemed to be using electromagnetic energy to disorient them and alter their perception of balance. Thanks to some inventiveness by Henry Fyff, Oliver's quiver was used to detonate an EMP blast, to nullify the effects of Vertigo's power. Rather than fight him, the woman and Oliver escaped. Afterwards, the woman introduced herself as Shado and revealed that she was the mother of Komodo's ward Emiko, who was in fact Robert Queen's daughter, and therefore, Oliver's half-sister.[27]

The Outsiders War

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Broken

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Outbreak

Oliver encountered the deadly assassin, Deathstroke, during his hunt to find Doctor Miracle, a man whose blood could heal anything. Oliver ran into Slade when he arrived in Africa to retrieve Doctor Miracle, where Deathstroke was attempting to do the same. The two engaged in a fight that Deathstroke ultimately won. Deathstroke then impaled Oliver with his sword, seemingly killing him, although Oliver survived due to Slade being unaware that the blade had some of Doctor Miracle's blood on it.[28]

The Death and Life of Oliver Queen

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Island of Scars

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Emerald Outlaw

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The Rise of Star City

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Hard-Traveling Hero

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Invasion of the Dark Multiverse

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Powers and Abilities





Abilities

Paraphernalia

Equipment

Green Arrow Suit: The Green Arrow suit is used during missions. It includes a hood and quiver.[35]

Weapons

Compound Bow : Oliver uses a green compound bow. [36]

: Oliver uses a green compound bow. Trick Arrows: Oliver uses assorted trick arrows.





Notes

Trivia

Green Arrow is 25 years old.[37]



Oliver Queen as a warg.

For a brief period of time, Green Arrow (Oliver Queen) was a Warg.[38]

Related





Team Arrow member

This character is or was a member of the Green Arrow family of vigilante super-heroes, who fight crime using archery and martial arts. They are a loose connection brought together through family bonds and shared experiences. This template will categorize articles that include it into the category "Team Arrow members."