In this series we spotlight comic book stories that I wish we could just forget. Here is an archive of past installments.

Today we look at the time that Green Arrow cheated on Black Canary and then blamed it on the woman he slept with...

Judd Winick took over as the regular writer on Green Arrow with #26, with the original art team of Phil Hester and Ande Parks, who had been with the book from its launch under writer Kevin Smith and then Brad Meltzer's arc.

The concept for the story-arc "Straight Shooters" is that Black Lightning comes to his old friend Green Arrow for help financing his niece, a lawyer representing a class action lawsuit against a big company.





As they work together in Green Arrow #27, Green Arrow and Joanna draw closer to each other, even as Oliver's teen ward, Mia Deardon, clearly does not approve, since Oliver is, you know, in a relationship with Dinah "Black Canary" Lance...





Things come to a head in Green Arrow #28, when Ollie goes to visit Joanna to talk about the case...







What sucks is that the evil corporation has hired a killer to get Green Arrow off of their backs, and Constantine Drakon doesn't mess around...



The next issue, Ollie tells Dinah not to come to Star City (because he's, you know, feeling super guilty)...



Joanna then comes to visit Ollie to see how he's doing and Ollie is just BIZARRELY douchey here...









What the what? Talk about bringing a character down. Oliver never acted like this before Winick and now he's just a slimy dude.

But that's not the kicker. Oh no, you'll have to go to the next page to get the REAL kicker...

Yep, they KILLED HER! Drakon needs to stop the lawsuit, so he fakes the suicide of the lawsuit's lawyer, Joanna...





Daaaaang.

Eventually, Green Arrow stops Drakon and the bad guys. In Green Arrow #40, however, his guilt is too much for him and he breaks up with Black Canary. Check out the awesome Marcos Martin cover!



He just GHOSTS her, by the way, until she breaks up with him!







I don't mind having characters have mistakes, but I don't like the way that this is treated as par for the course for Ollie. That's an odd thing to basically retcon into his background.

And then, of course, after all the drama, she is killed off like a walking plot device. Ugh.

Oh? And Black Lightning? Flat out kills the head of the evil corporation...



Which was way out of character for him, as well.

Just not a great opening arc for Winick.

If you have a suggestion for another comic book plot that is probably best forgotten, drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com or at my new CBR e-mail, brianc@cbr.com