Hello, it’s your old pal Justin (note: it is acceptable if you do not consider us old pals). Something in the world of superhero comics commentary has been gnawing at me for a while, but I sort of missed my original window of opportunity to talk about it. Now that the character is back in the news again (well, comic book news anyway, or, if you prefer an in-universe source, perhaps in Newstime), I thought I might as well ask.
Can somebody explain to me, slowly and backed up with math if you can provide it, why exactly the name “Red Arrow” in considered such an abomination by comics fandom.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as though I’m in love with the name or anything. But I mean, you’ve got a guy called Green Arrow, his sidekick used to dress in red, and he’s a grown-up now, so he’s Red Arrow. I have to say, this sounds perfectly acceptable to me.
Do people miss the name “Arsenal”? I could get that … even though the name has that kind of 90s Image-y sort of ring to it, it’s no “Bloodaxe” or anything. I’m not that familiar with the character, but the deal at the time is that he used all sorts of weapons and wasn’t beholden to using arrows, right? It signifies a very practical sort of superhero; a man who is prepared for whatever job is at hand. But I’m not sure.
I just thought I would ask the question, because I haven’t really seen it examined anywhere. I’m not fixin’ to start a fight or anything; again, I don’t think it’s a great superhero name, but I don’t think it’s terrible, either. I don’t quite understand why “Green Arrow” gets a pass and “Red Arrow” is met with contempt.
And in the interest of being constructive … is there a better name we could call this guy?
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Red Arrow seems acceptable to me, but I’m more of a Marvel guy than a DC guy. In a universe with Black Canaries, Green Lanterns, Red Tornadoes, etc., I see no problem with a Red Arrow.
That said, a better name would be Dididoomed. Or possibly Refrigerator-in-Training.
For me, it just seems kinda pointless. It wasn’t a plot point that necessitated Roy change his name. Meltzer just wanted to, so he came up with a lame reason to change it. Arsenal is perfectly good and functional.
In a related (and totally self serving) note, here’s a link to my idea on how to make some good come out of Justice League: Cry For Justice – http://panelsonpages.com/?p=20703
I think “Green Arrow” is fine; “Red Arrow” is fine, but “Green Arrow’s sidekick Red Arrow” is too much. It’s like Batman and Batgirl driving the Batmobile to the Batcave to load up on Bat-Shark-Repellent in their Bat-Thermal-Underwear.
I also think it might have been more tolerated if we hadn’t recently had “Red Robin” show up.
“Red Arrow” just makes Roy’s codename an offshoot of Ollie’s, whereas “Arsenal” was him trying to be his own man and something other than a knockoff of his surrogate dad in a different hue.
It is interesting to note that both Red Arrow and Red Robin come from Alex Ross’s “Kingdom Come”, where a lot of his ideas for former sidekicks basically amount to making them knockoffs of their mentors.
It was mostly Red Arrow sounding like a step backward from arsenal but it’s also the facts it came from Kingdom Come and had me waiting for Mia to start calling herself Yellow Arrow so they could start directing traffic together…
And yeah, and Arsenal does describe what he carries more than who he is. I suppose Crack Shot might be a little insensitive though…
Nothing wrong with Speedy. Just saying, is all…
BECAUSE HE IS A FUCKING COMMUNIST. I MEAN, RED ARROW?!
It’s just as reasonable as anything else said.
As Sean said – Red Arrow works best BECAUSE Roy’s just a knockoff of Ollie. He’s not his own man, any more than Nightwing is. He’s a sidekick, just a grown-up one. Once a sidekick, always a sidekick, that’s your role.
It was just meaningless to either character.
Dick becoming Batman to fill in makes sense, legacy-wise. But Roy hasn’t been Ollie’s sidekick since forever. I mean, Ollie was dead, and Roy wasn’t in a big hurry to strap his quiver on.
There’s a whole other Green Arrow and a new Speedy, either of which would make more sense for this sort of legacy pandering.
In short, it was a huge step backward (the opposite of their intention, obviously) for the character.
Now it didn’t work, so they tore off his arm, killed his daughter and are making him “darker” and “edgier”… by calling him… Arsenal… again.
Good job.
–M
I have no problem with Red Arrow. It flows off the tongue a lot more cleanly than Green Arrow.
Also I’m SO SHOCKED that comics fans are upset over a name change. And that’s all I have to say about that because I’m not quite grumpy enough today to go and insult several thousand people at once.
I don’t read DC much (haven’t read comics in general for the last year or so) but I always used to call him red arrow thanks to kingdom come! didn’t realise the name change was official or that it was a big issue
People complain specifically about the name “Red Arrow”?
I mean, I realize people complain about Speedy changing his identity from Arsenal to Red Arrow. But that’s an observation that Roy Harper didn’t seem to have a in-character reason to adopt an identity that’s derivative of Ollie Queen, a man who abandoned him and then shunned Roy when he started using heroin.
is there a better name we could call this guy?
…”Got-No-Arm Boy”?
(ahem)
I’ll get my coat.
Because it’s lazy. Instead of thinking up a real name, it’s just, “Um…howabout Red Arrow?” I appear to be in the minority, but I actually feel the same way about “Red Lanterns, Orange Lanterns, Blue Lanterns, Black Lanterns”, et cetera. Just changing the color designation and treating it as a massive act of creativity seems to me to reek faintly of lameness.
But that could just be me.
I think it may be reminding people a little too much of the “Red Hulk” deal over at Marvel. Also, it’s flipping the color directly – red is the opposite of green. So it seems a tad kitschy, like the written equivalent of Dr. Zoom’s costume versus the Flash’s. He’s, what… opposite Arrow? Why not Black Arrow? Or Silver Arrow? I admit, on its own Red Arrow would be a fine, vaguely sinister sounding name, but when it’s up against Green Arrow…? Pf. Little weak.
It probably doesn’t help that the scene where he took the name was particularly awful, self-congratulatory near-fanfic. Green Lantern and Black Canary are recruiting for the new League, so they pass over Green Arrow entirely (I guess they can’t stand him either) and tell Roy that, after years of sidekicking, leading the Titans and Outsiders, being a Checkmate agent, and whatever else, he’s *finally* ready to join the team that’s historically been the home of such icons as Vibe, Tomorrow Woman, and his mentor’s long-lost son who had the foresight to copy the name first.
(As if to underscore the point, Geo-Force joins the team in that arc too, with no ceremony whatsoever.)
I kind of wish they’d at least released a one shot called “Red Arrow & Blue Canary” (or some colour). It would have been amusing.
There was actually a character in the Legion called Arm Fall Off Boy.
I love (and by “love”, I mean I am disappointed) that DC feels that they can’t stray too far from the Green Arrow concept. What, are they afraid fans won’t grasp that he shoots arrows like GA unless, of course, he calls himself Red Arrow? Readers didn’t seem to have much trouble figuring that out when Roy was called Speedy (and that was downright confusing…shouldn’t Kid Flash have been called that instead?).
If they’re really serious about establishing a brand name, they ought to lock up “Archer”, which suits the purpose just fine.
Because he isn’t an RAF aerobatic display flyer?
Why not stick with “Roy”? It worked out for Mr. Furious.
I think now we can just call him “Lefty”…. What to soon?
While we’re suggesting other names for Roy, how about “Victim Lad”?
I’ll agree that Red Arrow’s a bit lazy. I sometimes wonder if *all* the DC archers should get Color Arrow names to make it more of a branding effort and not a matter of “We’ve got nothing better to call this one guy.” Connor Hawke could be, I suppose, Blue Arrow (A, because blue’s a superheroy color, and B, you’d have the RGB additive color model going for you). But yeah, it’s what’s going on in Green Lantern times a hundred anyway.
It’s a bit Power Rangery as well, but then again, kids are into Power Rangers and not into Green Arrow so much, so hey DC, you could do worse!
And “Victim Lad” and “Roy” are about right. I know quitting is antithetical to the “never give up” attitude of superheroes, but if we’re insisting on doing “realistic” superheroes (well, *I’m* not, but plenty of people are), I don’t think anyone could begrudge this guy saying “You know what? Clearly this is not a lifestyle I can handle.”
Red Arrow sounds too much like a traffic signal.
Green Arrow does, as well, but that name gets a pass for being totally descriptive of a dude with a Robin Hood getup who shoots arrows.
Damn. Warren K. beat me to Lefty…
Alternate names:
…. Disarm?
Red Arrow sounds like a penis metaphor to me
As Andrew said, Red Arrow sounds like the communist counterpart of Green Arrow.
He should call himself “Red-White-and-Blue-Arrow”
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The idea behind the renaming never bothered me that much, but I don’t like how Red Arrow sounds – the words seem too dissonant, if that makes any sense. Maybe something like Crimson Arrow?
Perhaps it’s a subconscious thing. A Green Arrow, as a phallic symbol, seems to promote life and fertility, not unlike English legends of the ‘Green Man’; a Red Arrow, by contrast, suggests blood, violence, severance and castration. Small wonder that the character has recently lost both a limb and his offspring.
I never liked ‘Arsenal’. It basically metamorphoses in my brain into a bastard portmanteau of ‘Arse’ and ‘Anal’.
(Yes, I am a literature student.)
As John Seavey says – it’s lazy. It’s just not a good name. It is, however, a somewhat better name than “Arsenal”, which is a name that screams “It’s 1992 and we’re trying to be as EXTREEEEME as Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood!”
However, it’s not like it’s easy to come up with names for former teen-sidekicks who aren’t supposed to be sidekicks anymore. All but one of the former Teen Titans have name issues, and the only reason “Nightwing” works is because it’s a decent enough name that actually has some history to it.
Donna Troy hasn’t been able to hold a name since they stopped calling her Wonder Girl. Aqualad has “Tempest”, which is a name that is only slightly better than “Arsenal”. Kid Flash avoided the bad name trap by retiring, then coming out of retirement to replace his mentor, so he never needed to find a new name. It’s tough to take a character who was built to be a mini-clone of another character and give them their own identity – and the fact that most of the non-silly superhero names are only “non-silly” because of the weight of their history doesn’t help much.
And just to throw a wrench into things – most of the objections I’ve read about “Red Arrow” aren’t objections to the silly name itself – they’re objections to the trend of taking elements of Kingdom Come and shoving them backwards into regular continuity. Even more than “Dark Knight Returns”, “Kingdom Come” is a decent story that should sit by itself – there’s no reason to shove elements back into regular continuity. Especially given that “Kingdom Come” is, at its core, a screed against the then-current trends in comics and a call to look back to the more heroic ideals of previous eras. Taking elements from Kingdom Come and pushing them into continuity kind of feels like the writers doing it missed the point.
Wasn’t there also some flap, at least initially, saying that Red Arrow was inappropriate in light of Roy’s whole “raised by Native American stereotypes” thing?
I agree with Matt. “Green Arrow” works only because he’s a Robin Hood superhero from the early silver age. Tradition = acceptance (seriously, if you created Batman in 2010, what would you call him?). Red Arrow is without any such context or history, it just changes the color. Arsenal might be 90’s, but it has the benefit of sounding like a superhero, and it’s a lot less on-the-nose than say (gag) Shaft.
Maybe he could call himself “Broadhead”
Because when he was Arsenal, he was pretty much Bullseye in terms of abilities, he was his own man, had a functional costume, and had a better relationship with his kid than Ollie did.
To have him wear a pallet swap of Green Arrow’s costume, and go back to the bow and arrow seems kind of lame.
Maybe Scarlet Arrow – it ties Roy’s new codename back into the whole Robin Hood vibe, giving it something other than just a colour change. Although maybe permanently cements him as a sidekick? Hmm.
I don’t think Red Arrow is bad as it is wholly derivative and comes from creators (Alex Ross and later Brad Metzler) who should really know better. Green Arrow only gets a pass because he was created in the 1940s.
Arsenal wasn’t that much better than RA to be honest, but it was bad in a way that showed some attempt at original thought (even if that “original thought” came by way of DC trying to imitate Youngblood.)
Imo, DC should just do the sensible thing and amalgamate all his pseudonyms. Who doesn’t want to read the adventures of the Speedy Red Arsenal?!
What I want to know is why red? I get the Green Arrow Robin Hood issue, which is still a little lazy but I guess we all agree that old-timey laziness is ok. I get that sidekickery is a habit you will never break, and we should be grateful there aren’t a bunch of guys running around calling themselves RobinMan. I totally get laziness, because I am a lazy lazy bastard. But what’s with the red? Did he just randomly pick something off the color wheel, but then he decided Puce Arrow was too weird? Is he supposed to be trying to be aggressive and ragey?
Well, the red color choice I assume came about because the Speedy costume was red, and I think at least one of Arsenal’s costumes had a lot of red in it as well. Basically, “I already have socks that match.”
“Red Arrow” doesn’t have a ring to it like “Green Arrow” does. In my head, anyway.
Also, Roy Harper sucks and I hate him.
@Cookie McCool: Why red? I blame Will Scarlet. As maybe Robin Hood’s third-best-known sidekick, he both suggested an easy visual and made the most sense for a kid Sidekick.
I dislike the name change because:
It’s arbitrary – he had a perfectly suitable name that he’d used for years and served to define him as something other than Green Arrow’s side kick. In many ways, he’d evolved.
It represents more than a simple change – it also wiped out the above mentioned evolution. Now instead of being a weapons expert (which they also gave to Green Arrow) with deadly markmanship, he’s once more just an archer. Who has to look to his mentor to define himself.
As for a name that would work now, what about Risk?
I think the whole colored arrow thing needs to be taken to its most extreme conclusions. We can rename Connor as Blue Arrow. Speedy can be Yellow Arrow. Arrowette can be Pink Arrow. Merlin can be Black Arrow. To cover for them never running out of arrows, they all will be awarded magic quivers, but these magic quivers will require that they each say their own special Arrow Oath about “Straightest arrow” or something. Oh, and we’ll bring back whatever random Oriental mentors that assisted them along the line, but also assigning them greater symbolic importance. Each will have a special magic giant ArrowForge that has to be protected too.
Then we’ll have a company-wide crossover where it turns out that arrows were invented by Vandal Savage (the Grey Arrow) and that he can only be defeated by everyone shooting him at once, otherwise he’ll ruin them all with lawsuits. Green Arrow will become White Arrow by nocking all of the different colored arrows at once. He will shoot… and in a shocking twist, he’ll miss horribly, killing Roy’s forgotten other kid that he had with some other terrorist. Let’s say it was Kobra.
Then Superman and a bunch of other non-arrow-related superheros will get equipped with archery sets and it’ll all end when Supes nocks the Space Needle to the Golden Gate Bridge and shoots Japan.
@Ben: Your idea makes me sad that Seth Fisher is no longer alive.
The problem is, Arsenal stopped making sense when he returned to just using a bow and arrow.
Red Arrow? Weaksauce.
Honestly? Call him freaking “Brave Bow” after the guy who raised him.
Because Bow was already taken.
Y’know the guy with the heart on his chest from She-Ra, who was probably gay.
……..I’ll also get my coat.
Jer: Interesting that you mention the Kingdom Come connection as being a negative, because DC seems to think everyone’s still really gung-ho about wanting KC chocolate in their DCU peanut butter; the last couple years alone we’ve seen StarboyStarman, Magog, and even Alan Scott’s snap-on action figure armor.
Have…have I awoken in a finer world where this is no longer desired?
(Tip for comics writers: if you want to actually create status quo changes in superhero comics, create a nightmarish possible future, and readers will be aching to see it come true. See also: Days of Future Past, Dark Knight Returns.)
The Final Wraith hit the nail on the head; calling him “Red Arrow” makes him sound like you hit Start, Select and Up at the same time while picking Green Arrow at the Character Select screen. 🙂
I don’t like it when people badmouth the name “Arsenal”. They’re the best footy team on the planet. I’ll decline to elaborate on my benefit’s of Stig’s earlier observations…
How about American Arrow?
Then he can change his uniform to red, white and blue, and be a kind of DC Captain America with a bow?
Red Needle?
Duchess?
For those wondering about an in story reason, he never chose the name Red Arrow. Hal started to call him Roy in public, caught himself and then called him Red Arrow to cover himself. THey just ran with it.
I fail to see how Green Arrow is a less stupid name than Red Arrow, personlly.
I’m calling him Arm Fall Off Boy. ZING!
Red Arrow is fine. It only doesn’t make sense when he uses a gun. And there’s nothing wrong with Roy being a sidekick. He will always be a sidekick, no matter how far he moves or what names he uses.
But if he does change…’Arrowsmith’ is taken, but it always seemed like it ought to be an Arrowfamily name. He could go dark and be ‘Blood Arrow.’ I still like Arsenal fine–my City of Heroes clone is named ‘Artillery.’ I guarantee that another 15 years of it, and everyone’d think ‘Red Arrow’ is as fine as ‘Green Lantern’, for heaven’s sake.
Red and green are chromatic opposites. When you combine them, you get brown. A big, steaming pile of brown.
Personally, I thought Roy’s adopted the palette-shifted version of Ollie’s Bronze Age costume (followed by the “Red Arrow” moniker) because, after years of friction and resentment, the two of them had finally reconciled.
And to my personal amusement, what color does the evil archer in the recent JLA animated movie wear? Red.
hEH GaWD, DeMMm NErRDs~
With that out of the way:
It’s a dumb change for xactly the reason you say in your post.
But I mean, you’ve got a guy called Green Arrow, his sidekick used to dress in red, and he’s a grown-up now, so he’s Red Arrow.
It’s the laziest, most by-the-numbers thinking that anyone could have done, used to replace an ID that at least attempted to be creative.
Red Arrow works best BECAUSE Roy’s just a knockoff of Ollie. He’s not his own man, any more than Nightwing is. He’s a sidekick, just a grown-up one. Once a sidekick, always a sidekick, that’s your role.
As the above beautifully illustrates, it’s the sort of thing you come up with when you’re working from contempt, ignorance, and a total lack of imagination, and it shows.
Oh, and also because the comics where Brad Meltzer came up with this were altogether plodding, joyless, hackwork shit.
So, QED really.
I liked Red Arrow as a name. It showed the character growing up and into the legacy that he has always worked within.
I deplore a return to Arsenal. If he’s going back to the 90’s with the Arsenal name, the artist needs to put big shoulder pads on him and give him a couple of guns bigger than his forearms.
Puff: ForeARM. Singular. The other one got ripped off and will almost certainly be replaced with a gun.
I have no problem with it; in fact I quite like it.
I think it has to do with the fact that it came from the mind of the one person who is the absolute worst thing ever to happen to the DC Universe, and who should never, ever be allowed to write a single comic for them ever again.