Arrow, Roger Stern Avengers

After the DC TV four-parter last week, my wife (Raindancer) has been clamoring for us to watch Arrow, as it’s not in our regular rotation.  (Only Flash and Supergirl from the CW.)   I know where she’s coming from; I’m tempted every year to give Arrow a shot post-crossover, and sometimes I even give it a try.  But it always ends up too bleak for my taste, and it never sticks.  

Raindancer’s reasons are sound.  Well, there’s really only one.  FELICITY!  We both love her so much.  She needs to join Team Flash full time, and then we would never have to worry about Arrow.  

SO MUCH.

At any rate, we started watching season 1 today.  Two episodes in and I’ve already driven Raindancer nuts.  Whenever Ollie goes into his narration, I can’t help but follow each of his lines with, “I am...the FLASH!”  It fits so well.  

It’s funny watching this show from the beginning, knowing everything that’s going to come for the Arrow gang.  Sara Lance is on screen for a minute in the pilot before she dies:

Don’t worry.  You’ll be recast, come back from certain death as an assassin, become Black Canary, die for reals, come back again, become White Canary, join the Legends of Tomorrow, and hook up with badass Alex Danvers.  Worth it. 

And so on for everyone else - Diggle, Ollie, Thea, Laurel.  The interwebs say second season is the best, so we’ll probably stick with it through that.  Apparently episode 3 is when FELICITY! shows up, looking forward to that.

Avengers 262-266

Whoa, I had forgotten that the Avengers were the ones who found Jean Grey under the ocean post-Dark Phoenix.  I had remembered it as the FF (which is where the story continues after Avengers 263).  

Namor joins the team in these issues.  Fine, whatevs.  (And by the way, I really miss the heads-in-the-corner logo that the 80’s Marvel comics all had.)

If you're in the corner, you're in the team.

Ain't nothing like a good old fashioned clam bake.

265 and 266 tie in with the end of Secret Wars II, which I’ve never read.  (I hear it was a mess and not as good as the first one.)  Some nice colors by Christie Scheele to support Molecule Man summoning mountains out of the earth.  Panels on consecutive pages show what a difference colors can make:

Small panel on one page...

...Splash page on the next.  Love the depth and grandeur that the green creates.