They just want Heaven On A Stick...

As Connor Hawke said in JLA #9 while considering a case full of Oliver's trick arrows, "My father... was either a genius or a madman."

I want to bring a little bit of that genius and madness back into the Green Arrow mythos, if only to remind people of one simple thing; Oliver Queen is an aerodynamics genius.

Think about it – even if he did wind up borrowing a lot of the tech that wound up going into his arrows - as in the recent revelation that his Cryonic (i.e. ice-making) Arrows were based on Mr. Freeze’s ice gun - Oliver still had to figure out how to get them his trick arrows to fly... literally.

Bad as he was at keeping a secret identity, even Oliver Queen had enough common sense not to go to his scientists as Queen Enterprises and say "So... let’s say I wanted to put a computerized lock-pick on the end of an arrow? Just for the sake of argument, could you build that?" No, I think Ollie had to figure out how to adapt every single idea he had into an arrow himself.

And not every idea required out-sourcing. In fact, most of Green Arrow’s tricks were built in-house, simply because Ollie loved tinkering. He still does, in fact. Yes, some of the gadgets he came up with were impractical ("A Giger counter on a stick?") but that wasn’t the point.

The point was that it was there and like a man who climbs Everest is compelled to try and reach the top, Oliver Queen is compelled to see if he can fold a working parachute inside an arrow shaft strong enough to support a 180 pound man in freefall.

So expect to see a lot more use of the classic trick arrows along with some new ones. Especially since James Jesse is around to add his own sense of creativity and fun, as he and Ollie brainstorm new “trick” ideas.