Arrowette

Arrowette is the name of two fictional superheroes in the DC Comics universe. The first character is the mother of the second.

Miss Arrowette

Miss Arrowette
Bonnie King debuts as Miss Arrowette in World's Finest Comics #113.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	World's Finest Comics #113 (November 1960)
Created by	Lee Elias (art)
In-story information
Alter ego	Bonnie King

The first Arrowette (properly known as Miss Arrowette) is Bonnie King, a would-be sidekick and general nuisance to Green Arrow. She first appears in World's Finest Comics #113 (November 1960).

When Bonnie was a child, her mother Millie put her to archery training, controlling her progress all the time. She turns out to be very good and even goes to the Olympic Games, where she wins a Bronze Medal. Millie, though, had expected a Gold, argued with her daughter over her alleged failure. After that, Bonnie abandoned both home and archery. She never talked to her mother again.

Alone in Star City, she eventually becomes inspired by Green Arrow and Speedy and decides to use her skills in a way that counted. She makes a costume for herself and officially becomes Miss Arrowette. She carries trick arrows such as the Powder Puff Arrow. After that, she helps both archers a few times, even when they did not want her to. Bonnie turns out to be too clumsy to become a hero and too vain to wear a mask. Bonnie briefly dates Green Arrow in his civilian identity of Oliver Queen, as shown in Justice League of America #7 (October-November 1961).

The adult Bonnie King appears in Young Justice.

At some point, she meets journalist Bernell "Bowstring" Jones, who remembers her from the Olympic Games and is probably the only human being to consider her a star. She nicknames him Bowstring because he is as thin as one and takes him briefly as her sidekick so he will give her publicity in his journal. Finally, Green Arrow asks her not to help them anymore.

She has to permanently leave archery because of carpal tunnel syndrome in her wrists, and also due to her job as a secretary. She talks Bowstring into marrying her and, one year later, she has a daughter named Cissie King-Jones. When Bowstring dies five years later from fish poisoning, Hal Jordan (working as an agent for the company that holds Bowstring's life insurance policy) gives Bonnie and Cissie the policy's beneficiary check; the money enables Bonnie to turn Cissie into a superhero. Cissie hardly has time to breathe between lessons of archery, judo, kick-boxing, gymnastics, ballet, and many other fields, and comes to resent her mother deeply.

Bonnie's name is a parody or play on Green Arrow's civilian name, Oliver Queen. Ironically so that Oliver, a man, has a last name of Queen, and Bonnie, a girl, has the last name of King.

Arrowette

Arrowette
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Impulse #28 (August 1997)
Created by	Tom Peyer Craig Rousseau
In-story information
Alter ego	Suzanne "Cissie" King-Jones
Team affiliations	Young Justice
Abilities	Arrowette is an Olympic-level archer.

Forced by her mother to adopt a version of her old costume, Cissie King-Jones becomes the second Arrowette. Arrowette first appears in the pages of Impulse wearing a frilly costume and a bejeweled mask that apes her mother's old costume. Despite Arrowette's success as a heroine, Impulse's mentor, Max Mercury, is concerned by what he sees as Bonnie's exploitation of her daughter. Child Welfare Services gets involved, and Bonnie loses custody of her daughter, who is sent to the Elias School for Girls, a boarding school.

Arrowette next appears in Young Justice #4 wearing a more practical costume. Acting alone, she battles the villainous Harm and is injured by him with one of her own arrows. However, she manages to escape and contact Young Justice, later joining the team, along with the second Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) and Secret (Greta). The three quickly become close friends.

Cissie King-Jones appears in her original Arrowette costume.

After her school therapist - one of the few adults whom Cissie trusted - is brutally murdered, Cissie tracks down the killers in a violent rage. She nearly kills one of them herself, but is stopped by Superboy. Cissie is so shaken by the incident that she vows never to be Arrowette again.

Despite leaving the team Cissie remains close friends with her teammates, and eventually reconciles with her mother, who convinces her daughter to try out for the "Summer Games" in Sydney (a thinly veiled reference to the 2000 Summer Olympics, due to DC not being an "official partner" of the Games). With her battle-honed abilities, Cissie ends up taking home the gold, and becomes something of a celebrity, guest-starring on Superboy's favorite TV show, "Wendy the Werewolf Stalker" (a parody of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). She helps the Red Tornado's daughter, Traya, adjust to life at Elias and later, when Secret was returned to humanity, Cissie helps to organize a placement for her at the same school.

Now retired from superheroics, Cissie never expresses any desire to return to her life as a superhero, despite the best efforts of several of her former teammates. They even involve her in a baseball game on an alien planet, with the fate of many innocents riding on the outcome. Cissie is enraged because they chose her instead of many other superhumans, but she participates as best as she can. Her team barely wins. Cissie still remains committed to justice and compassion. During the Imperiex war, she served as medical aid volunteer, again working with Young Justice.

Cissie made a brief appearance in Teen Titans (v3) #7 when Helen Sandsmark attempts to enroll Wonder Girl into the Elias School (which seems to have expanded its student body to boys as well as girls). With Greta Hayes (formerly Secret), the girls threaten to leave the school and take Cissie's celebrity status as a gold winning archer with her, if Wonder Girl is not allowed to enroll. The school gives in to her demands. Cissie makes a second appearance in Teen Titans and Outsiders Secret Files 2005, joining Wonder Girl on a trip to San Francisco, California. Cissie wishes to give her best friend moral support as Cassie battles with the decision to tell her friends that her father was the Greek God, Zeus. This has been her last appearance since, although at the funeral for her former YJ teammate, Bart Allen, she is mentioned in passing during a video made by Bart prior to his death. Cissie also makes a flashback cameo in Teen Titans #50. Cissie was last seen hanging out with Cassie and Anita in Wonder Gil #2, now sporting short hair.

Parentage

File:Arrowette3.jpg

Arrowette in her final costume on the cover of Young Justice #15. Art by Todd Nauck and Lary Stucker.

The theory has been put forth by a number of comics fans that Arrowette's real father may in fact be Green Arrow himself, considering that her mother's husband conveniently died when she was so young. He may have been invented, or more likely, Bonnie King discovered she was pregnant and quickly dropped out of crime fighting, and hurried to find a husband so that the child would be considered his.

Legends of the DC Universe #7 - 9 (Aug 98) features a storyline involving Green Arrow and Green Lantern's first meeting, where they helped stop a civil war in a remote African country. Early in the story, an unnamed, attractive blonde woman (presumably a girlfriend) attempts to inform Oliver Queen that she is pregnant with his child, but, due to Ollie talking about his joint career as Green Arrow and Oliver Queen, she fails to get the message across. Although the writers of the comic have stated that they didn't mean to imply that the unknown woman was Bonnie King, many have speculated that this unnamed girlfriend could have been her.

The theory is somewhat consistent with Oliver Queen's past behavior - she would be his second illegitimate child (not including the son by Shado, who became pregnant after raping a delirious Green Arrow) the other being Connor Hawke. Fans also point to Cissie's natural excellence with a bow, her propensity for challenging authority, and her difficulty in fitting in with others. The incident that prompted her to drop from superheroing vaguely parallels a time in Green Arrow's own life, where he became enraged enough to kill. Even Cissie's costume during this incident is similar to Oliver's during that time. In the three-issue "Wendy the Werewolf Stalker" Young Justice story, the star of the show asks Bonnie jokingly, "Who's her dad, the Green Arrow?" Bonnie answers "Yes," but Cissie's embarrassed reaction makes it unclear whether we're meant to take her seriously. Also, the secret agent who comes to tell Anita her father is missing in Young Justice #47 addresses her as Cissie Queen, though she corrects him. Currently, the theory remains one of fan-speculation only.

Powers and abilities

Cissie is a normal human with above average strength, stamina and agility for a girl of her age. She has exceptional hand to hand combatant ability with skills as an Olympic gold-medalist longbow marksman and possesses above average intelligence.

References

• Miss Arrowette at the Unofficial Guide to the DC Universe
• Arrowette at the Unofficial Guide to the DC Universe
• Spider-Bob Profile