The CW Picks Up "Arrow"

[Surtur]

Personally, I wouldn't of minded if they did a spinoff with Smallville's version of Green Arrow.

[Little MY]

Why is Dinah's first name dropped and Laurel made the first name? I hope they're not aiming for a Lana Lang, Lois Lane and now Laurel Lance damesl in distress angle.

[pariah-1972]

Dinah Lance sounds better than Laural Lance.

Lots of weird random changes on this one.

[Godlike13]

Eww, really? A Green Arrow TV series.

[pariah-1972]

Eww, really? A Green Arrow TV series.

What you got against Green Arrow?

[Alton]

eh, just because I have never read a GA solo comic, doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in reading them, comics cost money, and I have always been poor, so during my comic book buying periods in my life, I have always been very selective.

I have read plenty of comics with Green Arrow in them though, Justice League primarily, and I have actually read solo adventures of his, in ye olden days before he had his own comic, when he had the back-up strip in Detective comics.

edit: Hell, I even have some glossy reprints they did of the GA/GL Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams run, howabout that? Do I qualify to discuss the show now? haha holy sh**




I've never seen the Flash show, they never broadcast it here in the UK on non-cable satellite(ie peasant) channels(again, poor, haha), I tried watching the pilot of youtube, but then the second part of the video didn't work.
Plenty of super-villans and superheroes worked just fine in Smallville, Micheal Rosenbaum was a fantastic Lex Luthor, you don't necesarily need them to have super-powers to be a great super-villan, they just need to have the grand plans and motives that all great super-villans do.

I guess you must have forgotten about the fact that Smallville managed a steady input of well-adapted super types throughout it's run, and on a modest budget.

edit: oh, and the reason I care, and would want to see a more comic-based approach was expressed in my post you quoted, ie, I want to see an actual superhero show on tv, with super-villans as a match for him, not just the usual run of drug dealers, murderers, etc, that you would get on the countless cop procedure shows we have had littered on our screens ad nauseum...if they looked at super-villans in the books who proved to work well against the protagonist, it will give the show it's own heightened flavour.

You and I were in the same situation economically.We could never afford anything other than basic cable and even after the syndication blizzard came it was hit or miss what actual time slot any station, local or early cable, would actually show these things. Flash was one of the few that made it to the networks.Usually they were buried in the after 11 pm time slot or for some bizarre reason Saturday mid afternoon when nobody was watching them.I could never figure out why program managers would buy these things and then bury them time slot wise.I have yet to see The 90's Zorro or what I believe to be a French TV version of Tarzan from possibly around the same time.I would love to hit the Lottery and program my own internet HULU style station to specialise in pulp TV.The saving grace is the DVD market ,but some of this stuff is still out of print or going for ridiculous prices,and some suffered from poor production or botched sequencing of episodes. So you have to be careful even there.I suppose your You Tube issues may have to do with being on Dial Up service which botches up all the time.I'm glad you got to read some classic GA,but there are later runs that were even better.I don't know what the price of Trades are over there. Arrow seems to be taking from the most current run of DCnU Green Arrow comics which I haven't been following.Arrow reminds me of Highlander,and an occasional superpowered adversary could be fun if it isn't camped up.I'd rather see a solid action adventure base for this thing to launch from first, and go from there,but I'm in the minority on that, post Avengers, which has audiences salivating for pure comic book entertainment.Basically, I forget the younger crowd sometimes that grew up with Transformers,He Man,Space Ghost,Turtles,and remember this era fondly.The success of Avengers is due to it being nothing more than a better version of Transformers.I'm hoping Arrow will be better than that.

[dupersuper]

I am more concerned that they will throw out all the fantastical elements of a comic-book world, and the show will end up being a bit dull and similar to any old cop show, like what happened with the Human Target adaptation(although, I only saw a few eps of that show, but that is what it felt like to me).

...What kind of cop shows do you watch? It was more like A-Team.

[Zak213]

Funny thing is, GA has over 40 villians in his rogues gallery if wikipedia is to be believed.

I probably would have done a show on either roy or connor as i found them more interesting than the old ollie.

I hope ollie doesn't spend all of the 5 years on that island as i rather he spend about a year and than got off and traveled the world, trying to be someone else. The world would have believed ollie was dead in the shipwreck so ollie decides to go be someone else and fails at that.

[Sighphi]

Isnt Starling a bird?

[pariah-1972]

Isnt Starling a bird?

She is also a bird of prey.

[kalorama]

I am more concerned that they will throw out all the fantastical elements of a comic-book world. . .

Mike Grell did just that in his Longbow Hunters series, which was successful, critically well-received, and very fondly remembered by fans, and the ensuing GA monthly book, which ran for more than 100 issues.

[Pauly T]

I don't know but that description sounds really good... in a trashy CW drama kind of way. That premise is just dripping with drama. None of the name changes bother me at all, but I just want Oliver Queen to be Oliver Queen, the dyed in the wool bleeding heart liberal charming rogue I've come to love.

As for fantastical "comic booky" elements, GA (or should I say "A"?) doesn't need them. Mike Grell was Oliver Queen's Christopher Nolan long before that could even be a reference. Street-level works quite well for a guy who fights crime with a bow and himself.

[mistergoodman]

Dinah Lance sounds better than Laural Lance.

Lots of weird random changes on this one.

Yeah, a lot of the changes sound a little tone deaf to me. Like, even if this was a new character, Green Arrow sounds like a more interesting title and character name than Arrow.

Don't know how good it'll be, but I doubt it'll feel any more like a DC property than No Ordinary Family. Changes for the small screen are inevitable (and I actually liked Smallville after the first few years). But this sounds a little meh.

[Kyer]

Okay, first I was excited (long time Errol Flynn/Robin Hood fan) because I liked GA in Justice League.

Now I'm wary over all the name changes. They don't make sense because there is no clear reason to change names that only comic geeks would recognize to names that nobody would recognize.

Was there some legal battle that kept them from using the 'real' names or is this just an excuse for 'creative license' to go in any direction their little hearts desire?

[kalorama]

People are really over-complicating the name changes.

The change form Green Arrow to Arrow is really inconsequential. Other than the comic bookish association, the "green" adjective is pretty much meaningless so its loss doesn't amount to anything. And just plain "Arrow" has a stronger dramatic/mysterious feel to it. As for dropping "Dinah" in favor of "Laurel" . . . when was the last time you ran across a woman under the age of 45 (if not older) named "Dinah"? It's a fairly old-fashioned name. (An argument could be made that "Laurel" is as well, but between the two, Laurel sounds a lot less antiquated than Dinah.)