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Arrow: Oliver Queen's Dossier
Arrow - Oliver Queen's Dossier collates the intelligence Oliver Queen has uncovered on nefarious business dealings and criminal activity in Starling City, with "top secret" records on his alter-ego Arrow since his return from Lian Yu. Includes hard copy duplicates of confidential government and business documents acquired by Oliver and Felicity Smoak, top secret schematics for Arrow's weaponry, and Queen family records.
Arrow is based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow. The series follows billionaire playboy Oliver Queen, portrayed by Stephen Amell (Private Practice, Heartland), who, after five years of being stranded on a hostile island, returns home to fight crime and corruption as a secret vigilante whose weapon of choice is a bow and arrow.
(s14)ARROW and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © DC Comics.
Arrow is based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow. The series follows billionaire playboy Oliver Queen, portrayed by Stephen Amell (Private Practice, Heartland), who, after five years of being stranded on a hostile island, returns home to fight crime and corruption as a secret vigilante whose weapon of choice is a bow and arrow.
(s14)ARROW and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © DC Comics.
160 pages, Paperback
First published October 18, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 29, 2021
Oliver Queen's Dossier is an engaging in-universe companion to the show, but it's marred by a few unfortunate and avoidable flaws that make me hesitant to recommend it for all but the most avid fans of the show.
First, the good: It's an impressive physical product, with a textured cover that's not too rigid and not too bendy -- I imagine it's trying to approximate a leather-bound journal or something like that, and it's not something I usually see in books like this. The collection of information in the dossier is also widely varied and runs the gamut from twitter threads to newspaper articles to pictures to sticky notes from Oliver Queen and more. There are tons of references to things from the series, quotes, characters, events, etc. All of these materials are printed on the page rather than the occasional interactive objects that some other in-universe companions have.
Unfortunately, there's more bad than good here: Most distractingly, the dossier is absolutely riddled with typos -- just really embarrassing things like "Queen Consolidates" instead of "Queen Consolidated", saying "Walter Steele" and "Walter Steel" multiple times each on the same page, etc. There are also plenty of factual errors, which are listed on the Arrowverse wiki by smarter minds than mine if anyone's interested. I can't believe there was any serious proofreading involved in the creation of this book. It's also hard to read some of the materials, since many of them have dark text on dark backgrounds. Combined with the numerous errors, it almost seems like this was a piece the creators thought would be seen and maybe quickly flipped through, but not actually read. And even if you can look past these issues, the actual content you're reading isn't especially insightful. Oliver's thoughts aren't very interesting and they seem to come at different times in the show, so it's confusing exactly when in the timeline his thoughts are coming from at any given moment.
It's a shame because there was real potential with this dossier and some of the books and comics that tie into the show are actually pretty good. But honestly I'd skip this one unless you want it as a physical object and to glance at a few photos.
First, the good: It's an impressive physical product, with a textured cover that's not too rigid and not too bendy -- I imagine it's trying to approximate a leather-bound journal or something like that, and it's not something I usually see in books like this. The collection of information in the dossier is also widely varied and runs the gamut from twitter threads to newspaper articles to pictures to sticky notes from Oliver Queen and more. There are tons of references to things from the series, quotes, characters, events, etc. All of these materials are printed on the page rather than the occasional interactive objects that some other in-universe companions have.
Unfortunately, there's more bad than good here: Most distractingly, the dossier is absolutely riddled with typos -- just really embarrassing things like "Queen Consolidates" instead of "Queen Consolidated", saying "Walter Steele" and "Walter Steel" multiple times each on the same page, etc. There are also plenty of factual errors, which are listed on the Arrowverse wiki by smarter minds than mine if anyone's interested. I can't believe there was any serious proofreading involved in the creation of this book. It's also hard to read some of the materials, since many of them have dark text on dark backgrounds. Combined with the numerous errors, it almost seems like this was a piece the creators thought would be seen and maybe quickly flipped through, but not actually read. And even if you can look past these issues, the actual content you're reading isn't especially insightful. Oliver's thoughts aren't very interesting and they seem to come at different times in the show, so it's confusing exactly when in the timeline his thoughts are coming from at any given moment.
It's a shame because there was real potential with this dossier and some of the books and comics that tie into the show are actually pretty good. But honestly I'd skip this one unless you want it as a physical object and to glance at a few photos.
June 26, 2022
This should and could have been awesome.
But it isn’t.
But it isn’t.
July 1, 2022
El formato hace que sea imposible de leer
February 23, 2023
It has some spelling errors so it feels a bit rushed. Some interesting parts but it got confusing as the information is scattered across the first 3 seasons.
December 20, 2016
(This review may contain spoilers).
Being interested in Arrow, I was immediately intrigued by the idea of a dossier created by the main character about his allies, enemies, etc. in the show. I thought it was a really good idea.
I especially liked the way the dossier was laid out. While I missed some of the information, due to the 'files' overlapping, I did think it read very well. However, some of the files were especially hard to read, such as those with the black background and only slightly lighter writing. And I noticed at least two areas when articles in newspapers were repeated, which distracted me and caused me to lose my suspension of disbelief.
I was particularly engaged by the Post-It notes with Oliver's little asides written on. While some of those were serious in nature, a few did make me smile. However, it wasn't very clear how the dossier was organised, as there were questions raised that Oliver would have already known the answer to; such as querying if Slade Wilson survived in Deathstroke's section.
I did like that there was a wide variety of documents, but I felt some of the writing could have been a bigger font. It did contain a lot of information I hadn't caught up with, as I'm still a bit behind in the series, and it was something of a surprise to learn Detective Lance had changed his views on the vigilante so drastically again.
I really liked the more artistic rendering of the characters. While it was good to see so many pictures from the show, I did question how those would have been taken. And it was especially interesting to learn about the different types of arrows Oliver used; even though I felt some of them might not have been that practical in everyday use.
While I did enjoy reading the dossier and felt it would be a good fit for anyone interested in the show, there were parts of it physically hard to read and some errors I was surprised weren't caught before publication.
Being interested in Arrow, I was immediately intrigued by the idea of a dossier created by the main character about his allies, enemies, etc. in the show. I thought it was a really good idea.
I especially liked the way the dossier was laid out. While I missed some of the information, due to the 'files' overlapping, I did think it read very well. However, some of the files were especially hard to read, such as those with the black background and only slightly lighter writing. And I noticed at least two areas when articles in newspapers were repeated, which distracted me and caused me to lose my suspension of disbelief.
I was particularly engaged by the Post-It notes with Oliver's little asides written on. While some of those were serious in nature, a few did make me smile. However, it wasn't very clear how the dossier was organised, as there were questions raised that Oliver would have already known the answer to; such as querying if Slade Wilson survived in Deathstroke's section.
I did like that there was a wide variety of documents, but I felt some of the writing could have been a bigger font. It did contain a lot of information I hadn't caught up with, as I'm still a bit behind in the series, and it was something of a surprise to learn Detective Lance had changed his views on the vigilante so drastically again.
I really liked the more artistic rendering of the characters. While it was good to see so many pictures from the show, I did question how those would have been taken. And it was especially interesting to learn about the different types of arrows Oliver used; even though I felt some of them might not have been that practical in everyday use.
While I did enjoy reading the dossier and felt it would be a good fit for anyone interested in the show, there were parts of it physically hard to read and some errors I was surprised weren't caught before publication.
September 1, 2017
I've spent more time than I should deciding exactly which rating I was going to give this. I couldn't put a 3.5 so I had to go with a 3. Here are the reasons.
Pros:
Has a great new book cover, it's not paper and definitely not leather, but a faux leather typed cover. It gives you an idea that something good should be inside.
A lot of thought was given to the things that would be included in the book itself.
Cons:
Once you take off the dust cover (if you could call it that) you can't tell what it is. I'm sure that there's a reason they did it, maybe to hold the air of mystery.
(same as above) There's a lot of thought given to the things that would be included in the book. Even though they thought through the things in the book you can't read them, you can't get an exacting feel for the things that are in there. So there are newspaper articles and photos and sticky notes. When they are all laid on top of each other in layers, 2D, you can't get a real feel for what is there. It would have been nice to have a little bit of information written up on each of the characters/events/topics that were in the book.
With those being said, I had to give this a 3-star rating and I hate it because I went into it with such high hopes.
Pros:
Has a great new book cover, it's not paper and definitely not leather, but a faux leather typed cover. It gives you an idea that something good should be inside.
A lot of thought was given to the things that would be included in the book itself.
Cons:
Once you take off the dust cover (if you could call it that) you can't tell what it is. I'm sure that there's a reason they did it, maybe to hold the air of mystery.
(same as above) There's a lot of thought given to the things that would be included in the book. Even though they thought through the things in the book you can't read them, you can't get an exacting feel for the things that are in there. So there are newspaper articles and photos and sticky notes. When they are all laid on top of each other in layers, 2D, you can't get a real feel for what is there. It would have been nice to have a little bit of information written up on each of the characters/events/topics that were in the book.
With those being said, I had to give this a 3-star rating and I hate it because I went into it with such high hopes.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews