Warning! Spoilers for Aquaman/Green Arrow – Deep Target #4 ahead!
DC’s greatest archer Green Arrow just eloquently explained why not having superpowers is actually a good thing. Green Arrow has traditionally lacked powers, relying solely on his bow and arrows to fight crime. Recently, however, he has acquired Aquaman’s powers and the Emerald Archer is not happy about it.
The power switch occurs in the pages of Aquaman/Green Arrow – Deep Target, a series written by Brandon Thomas with art by Ronan Cliquet. In the series, Aquaman and Green Arrow exchange lives after fighting with the time traveling organization Scorpio. This causes Aquaman to become Arthur Queen and Green arrow to become Oliver Curry. As part of this swap, Oliver gains Aquaman’s powers and Arthur gains Green Arrow’s proficiency with a bow and arrow. While initially they struggled to get used to the other’s abilities, they have since managed to adapt to their new skill sets fairly well. Despite this, both Oliver and Arthur are unhappy with their current state.
In Aquaman/Green Arrow – Deep Target #4, the two reveal the reasons for their dissatisfaction. Arthur feels like a liability without his powers, which is an understandable sentiment. However it is in stark contrast to Oliver, who is unhappy precisely because of his new powers. He values the lifetime of hard work he had to go through to become the hero that he was before the power swap, and compared to that having superpowers feels too easy for his taste. Also, the training that Green Arrow went through changed him into something better than he was and gave him a deeper knowledge of the reasons he was becoming a hero. Swapping lives with Aquaman has erased all of that experience and he is upset about that.
This reasoning goes beyond just Green Arrow and Aquaman. It can apply to all heroes. While the heroes with superpowers can rely on them as a crutch, heroes without powers have no such support to fall back on. This means that they are generally putting themselves more at risk than the heroes with powers. And yet they continue to do the work anyways. Every time Green Arrow or Batman puts on their costume, they must grapple with their mortality to a greater degree than the likes of Aquaman or Superman. This lets them understand the fragility of the lives they are protecting and strengthens their crime fighting resolve.
All this isn’t to say that superpowered heroes aren’t dedicated to saving lives. Aquaman is still fighting the evil forces of Scorpio alongside Green Arrow, despite not having his powers anymore. And there have been multiple instances of other heroes losing their powers and continuing to fight crime. But non-superpowered heroes like Green Arrow have been doing that from the beginning and have thus reaped the benefits of a lifetime of risk.
