Link Ink: Deadshot's 'Arrow' Look, Digital Success And Coulson's Captain America Trading Cards

Wouldn't you rather have more Symbionic Titan? At least that show was good.

You get two complete sets, one with blood stains and one without. No joke.

I disagree slightly, I was really impressed. I have a few observations:

Green arrow as Iraq war vet. I get the feeling that a guy who goes off for five years, goes through a bunch of intense crap, and comes back to find he doesn’t fit into his life is a metaphor for our boys returning from the wars. The scene where he accidentally almost chokes out his mom was a dead giveaway, that kind of stuff happens with returning vets all the time.

The part where he straight up murders a guy was such a jarring scene that they are obviously trying to tell us something. I think they might be doing that Watchman thing, where there’s a fine line between hero vigilant and serial killer. I think they are going to keep us wondering if he’s really a hero or more like Sal Amander from Taxi Driver, like they do in Breaking Bad.

I’m not gay or nothin, but I like an athletic action hero, like they had in the nineties. I hate it when they have some pretty boy actor and then when the action starts they replace him with a stuntman. That dude’s a beast, it was obviously him doing all that Parkour and MMA. He looks like he can handle a bow, too. The stunt work is Buffy level.

The reason they didn’t explain the black book is that they are doing a Lost thing with the island flashbacks. I expect there to be two different stories running simultaneously, where we see his Star(ling) City life but also his island life through flashbacks. If anybody remembers Kung Fu where they would flashback to his training to explain what he’s thinking in the modern storyline.

Dina Lance looks like a cross between Maggie Gyllenhaal and Katie Holmes. The Russian maid is Queen’s Alfred. The family dynamic is straight out of Hamlet. “Speedy” is going to have the equivalent of a shooting up scene. Detective Lance is a cop ‘House’.

I’m down, dude. I’m in for the long haul. I think this is going to be really good.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Green Arrow has a good origin story -- "arrogant ass sees the error of his ways" is a great hook (see also: Dr. Strange, Iron Man); a hero with something to atone for is someone who's easy to root for.

They managed to keep that core of the character while managing to build a decent world and supporting cast around him. We definitely need more, and so far Evil Bald Businessman is an awfully derivative and two-dimensional villain, but you know, you can't have everything in a single forty-four-minute episode.

I'm sure we ARE going to see more of the list, and of what his father told him before he died. But I hope it builds toward a resolution rather than stringing us along -- as fans of Lost and X-Files are sure to tell you, there's nothing so vexing as a show that originally appears to have some big central plan but turns out just to be making crap up as it goes along.