I just binge watched Arrow the first season and I was left with this feeling like I'd seen this show before. I'm not a huge DC guy but I read quite a few Green Arrow Green lanterns and I read some stuff from the 70s when Green Arrow got really dark and political.
But I am a huge Marvel guys specifically Marvel Street level heroes and I'm just getting into Marvel Cosmic. and from watching the first season of Arrow I realized there were a lot of storyline that seemed.....like they came from marvel comics. Now I realize that making a show based on the source material for Green Arrow would be difficult. Really difficult. But what I will show you is that not only is this not related to the source material but is actually based on someone elses comic. Please correct me if it was in a green arrow comic and I didn't realize.
5. John Diggle is Rhodey?
John Diggle is a green arrow comic book character that if I remember has a very small role. This might be more of a situation of the comic copying another comic after the fact but When did the Arrow need another sidekick? he's got 3-4 partners in the comics to my knowledge. There was the Green Arrow Green lantern team up. There's 2 speedys and there's the Black Canary? So it just seems to me like they added Diggle for character development more and it makes sense. That said, Big Black Military Guy, who's the straight laced advisor and body guard of the rich charismatic playboy? Too much like Rodey and Tony for me.
4. Merlyn the Magician is Norman Osborne?
In the comics Merlyn the Magician is an archer that is older wiser and possibly better than the Green Arrow who becomes jealous and becomes basically the Doc Ock to His Spiderman. he's basically the same character, same power but evil. But in the Show he's Norman Osborne. More on the Spiderman comparisons later but Merlyn in the comics is more like Bullseye, he's a mercenary, he's older and he's evil. In the show he's a wealthy industrialist that runs this massive corporation oh and he has a personal connection to Arrow being Oliver's best friends' dad? Sounds like Norman Osborne....oh also he killed a former love interest (it's ok I knew she'd come back as the black canary it's obvious)
3. DeathStroke and Oliver = Cap and Winter Soldier?
There are a few others like this as well, Mordo and Strange Wolverine and Sabretooth and Iron Fist and Steel Serpent. The Arch nemises used to be best friends with the hero. This is especially rough when they have the same origin story. As you see this is a really common comic book trope but the most famous is Bucky and Cap. Best friends till the end, save eachothers lives all the time. Help train eachother. Cap thinks Bucky is dead....turns out he's a live, has had experiments done on him, kind of evil, and is coming after cap. Now I havent' seen season 2 but how much of this sounds like Deathstroke vs Arrow. And here's how it's a ripoff....it didn't happen in Arrow comics, Deathstroke is a very very popular teen titans villain that has now been way over used to the point where he was ripped off by Marvel to create another really popular character in Deadpool. Deathstroke isn't a major character in Green Arrow, doesn't have the same origin story. So this is a blatant blatant copy to get fans.
2. Huntress is Elektra?
or Catwoman, she could also be Catwoman which is a very similar story line. The issue is Green Arrow didn't really have Huntress and Huntress was never really a love interest of a major hero. Closest is Batman. But the way she's done in the show they might have well changed her name to Elektra Nachios replaced her father with Her fathers assassin and her love with her father. Helena was Oliver's girl while Huntress was Arrows Girl and her fall was exactly like Elektra. She could never go good and was too obsessed with vegeance and they would always be enemies that were really really into eachother.
1. Tommy likes Laurel Likes Oliver is a lot like Harry likes MJ likes Peter
Which is also exactly like Foggy likes Karen likes Matt from Daredevil. It's a really overly used trope from comics because Stan Lee did it too many times. He admitted that the X-men was the same as Fantastic 4 and that Daredevil was the same as Spiderman because he was writing too many comics and couldn't keep track. That said though this never happened in Green Arrow. So even though it's old it wasn't Green Arrow.
In conclusion I like Arrow because it's not about Green Arrow. It's a show that's more like Spiderman and Daredevil than the Green Arrow and because of that it's much better television.
Let me know if I made any mistakes.