How did this project come to be? I know it’s spinning under the events of “Dark Crisis.” And what made Sean the perfect artist for this?
Joshua Williamson: When I was working on “Dark Crisis,” we knew Green Arrow played a major part of it. You can see the way he was in “Death of the Justice League,” in “Justice League” 75. I had this plan for the Green Arrow family to have a reunion during “Dark Crisis.” As I was working on it, the more and more I realized I was running out of room. The first few issues of “Dark Crisis” breathe a certain way, and I know there’s some room to it. But I started realizing after I got to around 4 or 5, “Oh, man, this is a 12-issue story that I’m shoving into seven issues. Some things have to move.”
One of them was Green Arrow. I was like, “I can resolve all this Green Arrow stuff and have him come back in two panels and then everybody’s hugging.” It’s one panel of him back and one panel of them hugging, and that would’ve been it. But as I talked to editorial about it, it was clear that was not going to work. Clearly, that was a bad move. I started talking to editorial about some different options of, “Well, do we do a one-shot? [Do] we do backups? What do we do?”
I’m very passionate about Green Arrow. He’s one of my favorite characters. I had been wanting to write Green Arrow for a long time. I had tried pitching Green Arrow books for the last 20 years and it would never work out. [With] this one, I wasn’t even pitching a Green Arrow series — I was just like, “We have to do something.”
One day I was talking with [DC Editor] Ben Abernathy and he was like, “What if we did it as a new series? We do a mini-series and you write it.” It was shocking in that moment because I wasn’t expecting it. I was already doing a lot of stuff for DC, but there was no way I could say no because I love the characters so much …
Sean had just done “Thunderbolts” and you could tell he knew … Obviously, Sean’s a very good artist. Also because Hawkeye’s in there, we were like, “Hey, that guy can draw a bow and arrow.” It sounds silly, but I’ve talked to a lot of artists, and they hate drawing bows and arrows. I’m like, “This guy knows how to do it.” Ben right there emailed Sean.
Sean, how exciting was it to get “Green Arrow”?
Sean Izaakse: The email that Ben sent was, because of the time difference … You guys in the States are probably eight or nine hours behind us, so I don’t know what time it was there for you guys. It was between one and three [for me]. I was up finishing … a “Thunderbolts” page that day and winding down, sitting there on my PlayStation. Usually before bed, I always go to check my emails in case there’s something urgent. I checked it and it was two emails or something — Ben’s like, “Hello, there’s something I have to have for you. I don’t know if you’d be interested.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m interested. What is it?” He’s like, “What do you think about Green Arrow?” I’m like, “I love Green Arrow. Are you kidding me?”
I don’t think I even slept properly that night. I was so excited because my brain was going a mile a minute there, getting to draw Green Arrow. As Josh says, I’m a big fan of the character. I do archery. I haven’t been to archery for a while — my poor bow and arrow has dust on it because I haven’t had time to have much of a social life, but I love archery in general. One of my favorite movies of all time is “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.”