David Robbins© 2014
So there I was, having great fun watching the excellent Special Features to the most excellent Season One of the beyond excellent ARROWTV series, and I got to the 2013 Paleyfest. A gentleman on the panel mentioned that part of the inspiration for the show was GREEN ARROW: YEAR ONE, written by Andy Diggle, with art by the team known as Jock.
(In it, Oliver Queen finds himself on what he thinks is a deserted island and ends up pitted against a drug ring that has enslaved the island’s inhabitants.)
[GREEN ARROW: YEAR ONE was a limited series that has been collected into a trade paperback. Great read.]
The gentleman then went on to remark that earlier GA stories never delved into Oliver’s experiences on the island. Except for a couple of panels here and there, it was pretty much ignored.
Not so. There was a legendary comic artist, who, in the early years he spent at DC comics, was given the Green Arrow strip, and along with writer Ed Herron, devoted an entire story, not just a couple of panels, to Oliver Queen’s time on the island. You might have heard of him. His name was Jack Kirby.
THE GREEN ARROW’S FIRST CASE appeared in Adventure Comics#256, way back in 1959. Now remember. This was the Silver Age of comics. Story elements that readers thought were cool back then might be viewed as a bit ridiculous by today’s fandom. So feel free to grin and chuckle.
[ADVENTURE COMICS #256. Green Arrow was a backup feature for about two years, then went on to be a backup in WORLD'S FINEST.]
In the story, wealthy playboy Oliver Queen is on a ship in the South Seas. Unlike the TV series, the ship doesn't go down in a raging storm. Oliver simply falls overboard. It’s not made clear whether he was so drunk he couldn’t walk straight, or he was just a klutz. He drifts with the current until he spots an island in the shape of a starfish. In contrast to ARROW the series, and YEAR ONE, it’s actually deserted.
To survive, Oliver fashions a crude bow and an arrow with a stone arrowhead. He paints a giant target on a nearby hill (no word on where the paint came from), but he not only misses the target, he almost misses the hill. After many days of practice he is able to hit a fish, which promptly swims off with his arrow stuck in it.
That’s when Oliver has an epiphany. He needs more than a mere bow and arrow. He needs a bow with ‘trick’ arrows.
Olivier makes another arrow, but this time, he attaches a 30-foot vine rope so when he hits the fish, he can haul the fish in. This, we are proudly told, is the forerunner of the famous Rope Arrow.
One fish isn’t enough. Oliver needs his three squares. So he takes a lot of small vines, weaves them together and rolls them up, and inserts them into the hollow shaft of yet another arrow. When shot from his bow, the arrow opens, the net deploys, and bingo, Oliver hauls in the largest catch of fish this side of a fishing fleet. (Well, okay, he catches seven fish.) This becomes the forerunner to GA’s famous Net Arrow.
Since no meal is complete without something to wash it down, Oliver sets his sights---pardon the pun---on a coconut. He figures he can shoot one out of a tree. But that leaves the problem of how to open the rock-hard shell to get at the juicy bits. The answer? A Drill Arrow. He strips the elastic bands from his socks, wraps the bands around a special arrowhead with hooks, and then winds the arrowhead around and around, sort of like you would the propeller on one of those toy planes. Faster than you can say ‘That’s not even remotely possible!’, Oliver has his coconut and is sucking down the coconut water.
He starts wearing green so he can get close to game, which inadvertently becomes the forerunner to his GA costume.
Since he’s living in a cave, and with nothing else to do, he spends his evenings chiseling his diary on the rock walls. You’d think no harm there, right? Wrong. 
[Oliver chiseling. You have to be careful what you chisel. It can come back to bite you.]

Eventually, Oliver spots a ship anchored near the island. He swims out and discovers some of the crew have mutinied and taken over. To thwart them, he springs into action. First, to counter the glare of the deck lights, he smears grease from the anchor chain around his eyes. (Yep, you guessed it. The forerunner of GA’s mask.) He leaps onto the deck and the mutineers attack. Quickly, Oliver fires his Drill Arrow into a handy metal drum of oil, which spews oil and causes the mutineers to slip and fall. Before it can occur to any of them to stand back up, Oliver lets fly with his Net Arrow. Only this time, the net is somehow large enough to ensnare half a dozen full-grown men.
Thus is born Green Arrow.
Remember Oliver’s chiseling? Years later he’s watching TV with Speedy and learns that an expedition is bound for Starfish Island.  Oliver is worried the explorers will find the cave and his secret identity will be revealed. So he and Speedy wing there in the Arrow Plane.
They arrive in the nick of time. The explorers are about to enter the cave. But Oliver has a brainstorm. There's a chance the island might recently have been ‘sprayed’ with nuclear fallout. Which is why the explorers just happen to be carrying a Geiger counter. So, thinking quick, Oliver fires his Fake-Uranium Arrow.
Wait.His what?
The explorers start into the cave, their Geiger counter goes off like crazy, and they turn tail and not only leave the cave, they abandon the entire island.
All’s well that ends well.
It's sort of sad the makers of the ARROW series decided to use YEAR ONE as their inspiration instead of GREEN ARROW’S FIRST CASE. We never got to see a Fake-Uranium Arrow. Maybe if they do a Green Arrow movie……….
In the meantime, if you love a great series, treat yourself to ARROW.