An Odd Friendship: Green Arrow and the Shade

[espanolbot]

It starts off in the storyline Archer's Quest, where the recently resurrected Ollie Queen is looking over the photographes from his funeral. Whilst looking over them, he finds someone at the funeral who doesn't fit in with the usual crowd of superheroes and their associates that normally attend superhero funerals: namely, Thomas Blake - Catman.

Worried that Blake might use the opportunity of the funeral to reveal the attending superhero's secret identity's to the world, Ollie uses Roy Harper's Checkmate connections to out where he is. Turns out that at this point in his career, Blake had turned state's evidence against the Brotherhood of Evil and had entered witness protection.

So, Ollie and Roy break into the house of a guy who is living in fear of being murdered by an enraged French gorilla, and abruptly nail him to a wall when he tries to defend himself. Suddenly, with a puff of darkness, a suprise guest appears to explain what Blake was doing at the funeral.

Roy doesn't take it well,




Ollie reveals that in the event of his death, he'd asked the Shade to take care of his estate, to ensure that his loved one's secret identity's wouldn't be compromised if someone was to stumble across his stuff at some point in the future.

Roy is, naturally, kind of baffled as to why Ollie chose the Shade of all people to carry out this task, something that confused Swift as well.

So, Ollie explains,



"...Your family and friends can take care of themselves."




The Shade explains that he got rid of everything that he was asked... except for things that would bring him into conflict with the JLA. Meaning something in the Flash Museum and the JLA satellite.

Anyways, this enables Roy and Ollie to go on a roadtrip to collect up the bits and pieces that Ollie left behind the last time he died. Pick up the story, it's actually pretty good.

The next time the friendship was mentioned was during Identity Crisis, in the funeral of Sue Dibny, where Ollie mentally strikes him from the list of people that could have murdered her. Which is just as well, as he knew the Dibnys any MIGHT have been at the funeral, in between Black Condor and Dart Allen, though that might have been the Victorian era detective that both inspired Ralph to become a crime fighter and befriended the couple after getting displaced in time.




Considering the Shade was friends, or at least was associated with, both the Dibnys and Ollie, it seems odd that he didn't step in when Dr Light started attacking them post-IdC. Though they also said that the Shade was a member of the Society of Supervillains, so even DC didn't seem to know what was going on with him at the time.

The last time that the friendship between the Shade and Ollie Queen came to the fore, was at the end of the Cry for Justice storyline. The Shade had approached the heroes after news of some nebulous evil scheme was brewing, and he thought that it was best to warn them as they were attacking lower ranked superheroes and the loved ones of the more high profile ones.

This got him involved in the main storyline, of Prometheus' illogical plan of evil, which presumably came about following brain damage caused by a combination of accidentally giving himself motor neuron disease and J'onn J'onnz mindwiping him, and since Ollie was one of those worst hit by the following disaster, the Shade found himself once again called on to help Ollie sort out a problem.

From JLA 42,



They teleport into Prometheus' lair in what is essentially a variation of the Phantom Zone, where Ollie does this.



And thus ends all of the interactions between Shade and Ollie Queen that I'm aware of.

The fact that these two are friends are kind of strange, considering their differing approaches to life.

Comments

[icon_uk]

If it sets your mind at rest, that can't have been the Shade at Sue's funeral. Wven if the Shade would were to be seen in a BROWN suit, it would NEVER be at the funeral, still less the funeral of a woman he thought highly of.

I love the Shade but can't really see him and Ollie being friends.

[espanolbot]

I think that they're wearing black clothes, it's just the sun coming in from the window that's making it look brown.

And, look! Jack Knight cameo with Courtney!

But yeah, the fact that the Shade was a possible suspect would make it kind of unlikely that he'd be allowed to come to her funeral, even if Ralph, Ollie, Jack, Jay and Courtney would probably have no problem with it.

[icon_uk]

If it were an ordinary person wearing a black off the rack suit, that would work, but this is THE SHADE. He's not just able to shape shadow, he IS shadow (at least partly). As you can see above, his clothing doesn't really have highlights, it's a solid pool of pure shadow.

[espanolbot]

I'd put it down to artist's error if anything. Like that Infinite Crisis tie-in where for some reason he has Green Lantern-ish energy powers for some ill-defined reason.

[icon_uk]

Don't know the particular scene you're referring to, but he does sort of have GL style powers. He can create solid constructs out of his shadows if he's of a mind to, as his shadowy snake heads here biting the heads of of Roy's arrows shows.

[espanolbot]

He had green energy powers in this one.

[icon_uk]

Oooh.... bad show DC colourist, bad show.

[silicondream]

I think he's more often drawn with highlightable, fabric-like clothing than not, actually. At least since Starman. See this or this, for instance. And when he's not working, he often wears some amount of color.

A suit of solid glorious brown remains unlikely, it's true.

[darrylayo]

Yeesh. Power Girl, what the fuck? What is Power Girl even doing? Everybody else is grieving or something and she's all "I'll kick your ASS, Captain Atom!"

[espanolbot]

I think she's telling him how she's gonna punch the person who killed Sue.

[icon_uk]

More like "I swear, just wait till I get hold of the unprintable unprintable who did this."

[mullon]

I finally read the end of those Starman omnibuses; that funeral is awful to see.

[espanolbot]

Sue's or Ted's?

[icon_uk]

Ted was never in Starman, Ralph and Sue were, they actually relocated to Opal City at the end of the Starman run (Partly to take over as local heroes since Jack was retiring, partly to be near Ralph's all time hero, detective Hamilton Drew)

[espanolbot]

Errr... I mean Ted Knight, the original Starman, not Ted Kord. Ted Knight was definately in Starman, as was his funeral.

[icon_uk]

Ahem.... oops! Indeed he was, and Jack's eulogy remains one of my "One Perfect Moments"

[mullon]

I was talking about this funeral, but both were awful to see. At least that one was awesome.

[thehefner]

Brad Meltzer's Green Arrow run never seems to get any credit. I'd consider it one of the very top GA stories ever written, if not the greatest. It's a quiet little character study (with one randomly-inserted-yet-utterly-badass fight scene) that explores just how much of a complex bastard Ollie Queen really is.

[auggie18]

Why on earth is Robin in the front row? That always bothered me...

[blackruzsa]

Subbing for Batman? I don't see him there....

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

According to Brad, he's casually discussing his secret ID, allowing Jean to target his father later.

Yeah...

[icon_uk]

Indeed...

[arilou_skiff]

How many heroes/villains are there with names like Shade/The Shade anyway? Because every time someone posts about them I get confused. Can someone draw a diagram or something?

[espanolbot]

In DC there's the Golden Age former Flash villain called the Shade, whose real name is Richard Swift and has spent the last two hundred or so years making his way as a proto-superhero for hire, superpowered private investigator, gentleman thief, supervillain and finally a legit, if morally ambiguous, superhero of his adopted hometown of Opal City.

Also in DC and Vertigo (though as of Flashpoint he's back in the DCU) there's Shade the Changing Man, who was created by Steve Ditko in the Mid-Seventies. His real name is Rac Shade and he's from another planet in another dimension, and gets powers from a vest that projects illusions, forcefields, or (in his Vertigo incarnation, which seems to be the one DC using now) came warp reality.

Then you get to Nightshade, who unlike the Changing Man actually has shadow-based powers.

[glprime]

"[...]Prometheus' illogical plan of evil, which presumably came about following brain damage caused by a combination of accidentally giving himself motor neuron disease and J'onn J'onnz mindwiping him[...]"

Good call.

[k_red]

Is that Jim Gordon at the funeral? Weird.

[shadowpsykie]

say what you want about Cry for Justice (and really there is A LOT to say) I think Ollie Killing Prometheus, (and Shade agreeing but warning Ollie against it) are the best parts of that series. Maybe it was because at that point i wantes SOME ONE to pay for that series....