If you’re not familiar with the CW’s smash hit television show on which this tie-in is based, let’s recap. Oliver Queen is a billionaire playboy; spoiled, free from responsibility and at the time of his assumed demise cheating on his girlfriend with her own sister. Oliver ditches his summer college classes to board an uber-yacht chartered by his father and brings his lover Sara Lance along for the ride, only for the ship to be destroyed following a storm that kills Sara and leaves Ollie and his old man marooned in the Pacific.
Before taking his own life, Ollie’s father confesses to being complicit in a series of criminal undertakings and hands him a dossier that lists the co-conspirators responsible for the corruption that has devastated their home city. Five years later, Oliver is rescued from his (not so) deserted island and returns home. On the surface he resumes his old reckless lifestyle, but at night he adopts a vigilante alter ego intent on bringing justice to those who have failed Starling City, known as ‘The Arrow’.
Ollie’s dossier may have taken a backseat in the more recent seasons, but to begin with it served as the McGuffin for the entire show. Most episodes from the first season were built around the information contained in the dossier as The Arrow set about methodically confronting the villains detailed in its pages. The dossier has only grown as the series has evolved; adding new heroes and villains as documented by Oliver himself.
Nick Aires is no stranger to the Arrowverse, having previously helmed 2015’s ‘Arrow: Heroes and Villains’, as well as authoring the official companion to fellow CW series Supernatural. The book is divided into three sections: Investigations, Equipment and Allies. ‘Investigations’ is the heaviest; listing the intel Oliver has collated against plenty of familiar enemies including Malcolm Merlyn, former flame Helena Bertinelli and more obscure villains like the sinister Dollmaker. The pages themselves are presented in scrapbook format; newspaper cuttings, police reports and Oliver’s personal annotations added in post-it format make a nice touch. The ‘Equipment’ section will be fun for anyone who’s ever wanted to craft their own bow and arrow, and ‘Allies’ serves as a good introduction to who’s who for anyone new to the series.
Oliver Queen’s Dossier is a fun accessory for die-hard fans of the series; lightweight enough to be enjoyed by younger Arrowheads, although older fans may prefer to wait for Season 5 to return in October to get their fix of one of DC’s most compelling and commercially successful heroes.
ARROW: OLIVER QUEEN’S DOSSIER / AUTHOR: NICK AIRES / PUBLISHER: TITAN BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: 14TH OCTOBER
