Green Arrow is a communist. At least that’s what I was led to believe. Sure, there was that stuff on Smallville about him being a young and troubled capitalist. But I watched the show enough to hear people talk about how much the character had been rejigged for television.

The REAL Green Arrow — he was a communist.

That had to be worth a story, right? An American trying to be a communist? A bloke with a Robin Hood fetish that thought he was a proletariat comrade? That had all sorts of interesting plot potential. ‘Sign me up,’ I said, and then marched off to get my comic books.

No communists here. Not even the American kind. In fact after three issues of this confusing story I don’t even know what I should be expecting from this book. Its storytelling problems are legion. And I think they all reach back to the same (Q)core problem…

Nothing in this book gets explained properly.

For starters, let’s start with the main protagonist. What is Ollie’s motivation? We know he doesn’t like criminals. But why? Plenty of people don’t like criminals. But they don’t dress like Robin Hood, become vigilantes and start their own street-level crime-fighting hobby. This Ollie bloke did. Why?

And what about the theme of the book in general? What is this book actually about? What makes a Green Arrow story different to any other DC book?

It had reality TV in it. Is that the theme of Green Arrow? Pop culture? Might explain the whole Q-Core/Apple Inc thing. To dicuss issues that the young people will be ‘hip’ to. To make Green Arrow a champion of the i-Pod generation.

But the next story arch apparently moves on to a completely new bad guy. One who doesn’t appear to have anything to do with pop culture.

So what is a Green Arrow story supposed to be about?

And how about those rogues? Did you count them? 12. That’s how many – 12. It’s no wonder all of them are so boring! Twelve! It would take three issues just to set up decent back stories for all of them. And that doesn’t even take into account their super-generic superpowers. Why 12? And why is it Green Arrow hunting them down as opposed to someone with superpowers? And why weren’t these 12 given more recognisable outfits so that we could tell their mundaneness apart?

And why did we start in Paris?

And why is the strongest B-plot a ‘disappointed father figure’ story?

And if that guy doesn’t want to make weapons why doesn’t he just… stop making them?

And why wasn’t Black Canary in issue 3 like they promised?

Etc etc etc…

The concept is messy, the writing is messy and the art is messy and that’s why a crazy idea with a heap of potential has been one of my biggest disappointments of the new 52.

I wanted fun. I wanted adventure. I wanted Errol Flynn the superhero who mocks Batman by being down-right Lefty and happy and fun and all those other things that the cowled crusader has moved on from in these much more serious comic book times.

But there are no more communists in Seattle. And certainly no one resembling Errol FLynn. Just a badly explained capitalist with a thing for the colour green.

And the DC universe, and my reading experience, is poorer for it.