WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Green Arrow #43 by Julie Benson, Shawna Benson, Javier Fernandez, John Kalisz and Deron Bennett, in stores now.
While most superheroes tend to apocalyptic drama and villains who threaten the very fabric of the universe, some of them keep crime-fighting grounded and skewed towards issues which impact the common folk. Oliver Queen (aka Green Arrow) is one such vigilante.
Sure, he gets his fill of over-the-top adventures with the Justice League, but he's all about cleaning up the streets of Star City, as well as the institutions he believes society needs to progress. He tackled prison reform recently, and now he's trying to find a way to deal with gentrification.
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However, as he tries to bring real estate tycoons to justice, citizens are shockingly taking matters into their own hands. This leaves the Emerald Archer facing an unlikely villain that's popped up to throw him off course: social media.
In Green Arrow #43, Star City has been rocked by businessmen such as Jubal Slade, who've been mowing down slums and displacing poor people. Ollie and Roy Harper are monitoring the situation, although they know the level of bribery, corruption and politics runs very deep and in the favor of such sly individuals.
However, while Roy's telling Ollie of his enrollment in Sanctuary in a heart-to-heart meeting, a villain known as the Citizen pops up on live television. He's hijacked the feed, warning everyone that the 1% who exploit the downtrodden will be made to pay.
Team Arrow doesn't seem to take his words seriously, until later that night when Citizen reveals he's taken Jubal hostage and is allowing Star City's citizens to use social media to vote on whether he lives or dies. This chaos is similar to what Batman's rogue, Anarky, cooks up, but with a dash of Two Face thrown in because Jubal is given a chance to live. It depends on if the people, or as Citizen calls them, "the 99%," vote against killing the shady kingpin.
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Arrow and Black Canary discern his location and rush to rescue Jubal, but when they arrive he's already faced judge, jury and executioner. They meet the slumlord beheaded via guillotine, with the social media poll dictating his fate.
Ollie is heartbroken as he tries to defend his people and make excuses, but Canary makes it clear they're not social justice warriors, they're accomplices to murder. The livestream proves to Green Arrow that the public he's fighting for may not be as clean-cut as he believes, and sadly, without conscience.
This creates a new dilemma for him, because Citizen is going after three more affluent persons. He wants to make examples out of them and it appears the vindictive folks of Star City are ready to pay the price needed to bring the wealthy in their ivory towers down to their knees, begging for mercy. Sadly, it's a currency written in blood, and Ollie's left trying to figure out how can he convince everyone to stop voting for the death penalty via these livestreams and social media platforms.
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Seeing as he's now one of Citizen's targets, Ollie needs a solution sooner rather than later. As it stands, Green Arrow's faith is waning and as innocent as he is, he could soon find himself executed if people think he hasn't been kind to the city. The thought of this scares the daylights out of him, because this time it's not the Green Arrow who has failed the city, it's the people.