Green Arrow #41

This is issue #41 of DC's Green Arrow (Volume 5, the New 52 run that began in 2011) and the fresh starting point for the series under the DC You initiative. Novelist Benjamin Percy takes over as writer for the first time, with Patrick Zircher on art, and the story is titled "The Night Birds, Part 1." The story returns to Seattle: Oliver Queen juggles dull business meetings as CEO of Queen Industries with caring for his half-sister Emiko, who was trained as an assassin and whom he is trying to give an ordinary high-school life; his tech partner Henry Fyff pulls surveillance footage for him. On the Ferris wheel at Pier 57 in Seattle, a young couple vanishes mysteriously as their car reaches the top, and their mutilated bodies are later found. Similar incidents follow, most of the victims Black men, and the mainstream media barely notices. Green Arrow follows the trail into the forgotten poor neighborhood known as the Pennytown, where an old woman on the street warns him to "beware the Night Birds." Meanwhile, the police and inventor Zim unveil a floating surveillance drone called the Panopticon, claiming it can predict criminal intent, which sparks debate about racial profiling. With its slow-building suspense and horror atmosphere, this issue re-establishes the emotional bond between Oliver and the city of Seattle, and plants two threads—a conspiracy inside Queen Industries and a mysterious white-faced killer—that open the "Night Birds" arc to come.