If you’ve been keeping up with Green Arrow, there’s no way you didn’t see this one coming. “Hard Traveling Hero” has driven Ollie Queen out of his comfort zone, forcing him to take a lengthy leave from Seattle (now rebranded as the familiar Star City) for the first time in Rebirth. Now, he's set to get some face time in with some friends. So far, the Emerald Archer has teamed up with Flash, Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman, leaving just one essential component missing from the mix.

RELATED: Green Arrow #25 Teases A Major Character’s Rebirth Debut

That’s right, it’s time for this arc to finally earn its title: It’s time for Ollie Queen to come face to face with Hal Jordan for the first time... again.

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Two Guys and a Truck

The significance of Ollie and Hal’s partnership reaches all the way back to the dawn of the Bronze Age of comics where the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series where had the two heroes famously team up to travel the country in a beat up pick-up truck, solving problems for middle Americans as they ping-ponged from state to state.

The series, written by Denny O'Neill and illustrated by Neal Adams, gained recognition for its direct and decidedly non-allegorical approach to topical social and political issues like drug abuse, racism and classism, as well as its down-to-earth approach for two of DC’s B-list heroes. Both Green Lantern and Green Arrow were struggling to shrug off the camp and confusion brought about by their inconsistent Silver Age stories, making a “soft reboot” the best (and maybe even the last) chance at rescuing them both from relative obscurity.

In what became known as the “Hard Traveling Heroes” arc, Ollie and Hal butted heads thanks to Ollie’s self righteous liberalism and Hal’s staunch by-the-book cop attitude, until they were both able to meet (or...well, occasionally meet) in the middle to do some real good.

Their time together forged a bond that would link the two heroes for decades to come, well after their team-up book officially ended. The friendship wove in and out of shared Justice League plots (usually played for comedy), but also served to bolster some of their heavier narratives. Both Hal and Ollie wound up playing key parts in the other’s resurrection storylines (yes, both of them died, no, not at the same time.) For Ollie, Hal’s memory (and, specifically, the truck they’d traveled in together) was a key part of his post-death memory recovery. For Hal, Ollie played a very hands on role in retrieving Hal’s spirit during Green Lantern: Rebirth.

The important thing to understand here is that “Hard Traveling Heroes” served to not only lay a foundation for our understanding of both Green Lantern and Green Arrow, it was a story that continued to stay relevant well into the modern age. It’s easy to see just how hobbling it was -- especially for Green Arrow, who tended to be the one learning the brunt of the “lessons” and getting the majority of the development in the form of his supporting characters like Roy Harper and Dinah Lance -- for the New 52 to unceremoniously strip that connection and history away.

So you can see just how weighty the green dream team’s Rebirth return actually is.

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Oliver Queen, Meet Hal Jordan, Your Best Friend

One of the unique challenges of Rebirth’s “not a reboot” methodology has been trying to figure out just what is or isn’t canon from the Pre-New 52 days. After over a year of work, the blueprints for the new status quo have started to solidify around the edges, but there are moments where some legwork still needs to be done.

Ollie and Hal coming face to face as partners for the first time in years is one of those moments. Technically, this is Ollie and Hal’s “first” time operating as partners since the New 52 took hold -- barring, of course, their interactions during Ollie’s very limited stint as a Justice League member back in the earliest days of the reboot. Any and all real friendship between the two of them had essentially been deleted post-Flashpoint, similar to how Ollie and Dinah’s romance had also been surgically cut out for the last several years.

Here, just like Ollie and Dinah upon their first meeting back in issue #1, Hal and Ollie literally “introduce” themselves to one another again -- But unlike Ollie and Dinah, they don't do so completely cold. Ollie extends his hand and says “enough time has passed” that he feels they need to become reacquainted, indicating that they're otherwise familiar with one another.

If that wasn’t enough of a nod to original “Hard Traveling Heroes” fans, Hal proceeds to create a construct of their old rust-bucket pick-up truck to serve as their spacecraft for this job -- taking out a Ninth Circle satellite orbiting the Earth.

Obviously, it would be impossible for all of the old Green Lantern/Green Arrow ongoing to have remained completely canon through the reboots and continuity realignments that have rocked the DCU in the past forty some-odd years. But issue #30 is a clear indication that the parts that have stuck around are going to be making a comeback in a big way. And just like in the Bronze Age, this has the potential to mean big things for Ollie specifically moving forward.

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Building/Burning Emerald Bridges

Rebirth’s Green Arrow ongoing has been one of the most consistently high quality offerings of the line, with every creative component behaving like cogs in a well-oiled machine. This, of course, is great news, considering just how much of a deficit the character was working against care of his particular New 52 reinvention.

Losing the goatee was really the very least of Ollie’s recognition problems there for a while.

However, one consistent issue with the book over the last year and a half has been an overall sense of isolation. Thanks to Rebirth, Ollie was no longer a member of the Justice League, and it became relatively debatable as to whether he’d ever been on the team. His only connection to characters from outside of Seattle/Star City came in the form of Dinah Lance, and later Roy Harper, who were both free to come and go from his story as they so chose. Everyone else, save for a handful of C- and D-list villains, were Green Arrow exclusives.

This made Ollie’s world feel small and disconnected from the Rebirth DCU as a whole -- an isolated part of an otherwise rapidly expanding shared universe.

Luckily, “Hard Traveling Hero” has set about systematically combating that isolation by providing Ollie with his very own meet-and-greet tour of the world outside the city limits of his home, laying the groundwork for relationships beyond the immediate “Arrow Family.” The arc has, for all intents and purposes, revived the original spirit of the '70s series in a matter of issues; simultaneously providing a shot of social steroids and a stress test to this new, familiar Ollie’s social network.

There’s still ground yet to be covered, and at least one more issue of Hal and Ollie’s team up left in this current arc, but the most important thing to take away is the sense of renewal that’s sunk into the story. Rebirth may not be putting Ollie back on the Justice League any time soon, but for the first time in a long time? The Emerald Archer feels like he’s got some real friends to lean on.