THIS WEEK: Absolute Green Arrow #6wraps up its first arc, feeling very much of this specific comics moment! Plus, End of Life is a violent good time, and more!
Note: the review below may contain spoilers.If you want a quick, spoiler-free buy/pass recommendation on the comics in question, check out the bottom of the article for our final verdict.
Absolute Green Arrow #6
Writer: Pornsak Pichetshote
Artist: Rafael Albuquerque
Colorist: Marcelo Maiolo
Letterer: Jeff Powell
Absolute Green Arrow #6 marks the end of the first arc for this title (of two total arcs, ultimately), and it occurred to me while reading that this might be the most 2026 comic we have. Or, if not the most of 2026, than a clear culmination of many things that have defined direct market comics in recent years.
For starters, it’s the latest entry to DC Comics Absolute Universe, a sales juggernaut that has defied what felt like inescapable and ongoing reader shrinkage for single issue superhero comics (masked by variant sales), not in terms of dollars but in terms of how many people are reading them and what generation they come from. Maybe the biggest comics sales story of the past two years and change has been Absolute Batman pulling Gen Z readers into comics shops. And so for starters, Absolute Green Arrow is part of the Absolute.
Next, this book is a mash-up of the two genres that have arguably shaped the past decade-plus for the direct market: crime procedurals and horror. And, obviously, superhero books have remained the bedrock of the direct market. Absolute Green Arrow sits rather neatly at the intersection of all three. It’s got a superhero character and his mythos as its core (tweaked for the darker sensibilities of the Absolute project), and it’s narrative engine is a criminal procedural, a mystery story that doles out revelations from one issues to the next. Add to that some excellent body horror, and we’re cooking here with all the ingredients of the 2020 direct market comics stew.
Finally, the book shoots right at arguably the most common villain for comics in 2026 — unchecked, elitist billionaires who live in a bubble and have dehumanized the rest of the species.
Essentially, the first arc of Absolute Green Arrow checks most (if not all) of the boxes for what has been popular in comics in 2026 (lacking only a celebrity co-writer, but I digress). You can argue that Absolute Batman does this as well, abut I think Green Arrow pushes it a bit further, going darker and weirder without the burden of being the main load-bearing pillar for the entire line, if not the publisher at this point.
But does Absolute Green Arrow hit its mark? I wrote in this space months ago that the first issue of the series was fantastically compelling, and while I think the rest of the arc suffers a bit in comparison to the opening chapter, it’s still very very good. It’s filled with twists drawn from alternate takes on classic Green Arrow characters. Pichetshote writes every character distinct and well, while the art from Albuquerque with the gritty Maiolo colors makes everything from Connor’s scowl to Grundy’s oozing open wound pop and pop well.
I do not think this title has the broad appeal of the Big 3 Absolutes but it’s also not supposed to. It wants to occupy darker, nastier spaces, and it does so well. I’m a long-time Green Arrow fan and reader, counting the Mike Grell run on the character as one of my all-time favorite long-form superhero runs, and I found this to be a satisfying and even surprising at times take on the character.
Here’s hoping Book Two surprises in ways I can’t anticipate.
The Round-Up
Bad Seeds, the 10-week Bat-Family crossover event, rolled on this week, appearing in a whopping four titles. We’ve all got crossover fatigue, but this one has been fun. And I personally like how it harkens back to Bat-events from my childhood, specifically feeling indebted to No Man’s Land. It’s also kind of remarkable that none of the individual titles have felt like they’re suffering for being part of this, as my fellow DC Round-Up contributor Joe Grunenwald pointed out last month.- Are you all reading End of Life? It’s one of the new Vertigo titles, from the team of writer Kyle Starks, artist Steve Pugh, colorist Chris O’Halloran, and letterer Becca Carey. You really ought to be reading End of Life. It’s a comic that’s equal parts about having a tense relationship with your ailing father and being an animal-themed hitman, and it does both things well, cohering them into a unique comic that is greater than the sum of its thematic parts. I’m a fan.
Miss any of our earlier reviews? Check out our full archive!
And check out all of the Beat’s most recent comics reviews!
