In the DC Universe, being an expert archer can lead you to live a life of many adventures. While this is mostly a choice for most of the members of the Green Arrow family, one archer in the DC Universe didn’t choose it but proved to be quite the heroine. We’re talking about the Young Arrowette, alias Cissie-King Jones.
Cissie is famously known today to be part of a strict minority of superheroes who chose to retire and stick with it. But before throwing away her bow and arrow, as she said it herself recently, she was trained by her mother Bonnie King to become one of the best archers and be skilled at hand-to-hand combat. Her mother tried her hands at heroism when she was younger under the name Miss Arrowette but had to stop it and push her daughter into a dangerous situation to live her dreams through her.
Cissie would prove to be more than capable of handling herself in dangerous situations and it’s because of her talent that we today know the name Arrowette! Her story is inherently linked to her mother’s and we today dive into the origins and history of Arrowette, from her introduction during the Silver Age to Cissie’s time in the Young Justice!
Meet The Amazing Miss Arrowette, alias Bonnie King
While Queen Arrow was the first female-inspired archer by Green Arrow (making her appearance in Adventure Comics #241), Miss Arrowette aka Bonnie King was certainly more memorable and had a long-lasting legacy in the pages of DC Comics.
Created by Dave Wood and Lee Elias, Arrowette made her debut in World’s Finest #113 (1960), as a young lady who, after winning an archery contest, wants to assist Green Arrow and Speedy on various adventures.
At the time, Green Arrow’s adventures also quite resembled Batman’s stories, and Miss Arrowette seemed like Green Arrow’s version of the first Batwoman. Like Kathy Kane, Miss Arrowette’s arsenal was full of feminine tricks such as Hairpin Arrow (a twin-pronged arrow), Hair Tint Arrow (contains a load of colored paint), Powder-Puff Arrow (creates a powdery cloud to obscure vision), and more. And like Kathy Kane, she soon has to face sexism from her male counterparts. Far away from the activist he would become, Green Arrow thought the superhero game ‘isn’t a game for girls !’ and by the end of the issue, Miss Arrowette also thought that crime-fighting was not for girls like her!
Despite this declaration, Miss Arrowette would quickly make her return (in World’s Finest #118 and #134) and her alter ego Bonnie King would even go on a date with Oliver Queen in Justice League of America #7 (1961). While this could be seen as totally anecdotal, this would give way to the theory that Arrowette may be Oliver Queen’s illegitimate daughter.
Arrowette’s career didn’t last long and she soon fell into obscurity. Decades later, Miss Arrowette was revamped by writers Tom Peyer and Peter David and introduced us to her more than capable daughter, Cissie King-Jones… aka Arrowette!
Arrowette alias Cissie King-Jones, the legacy heroine
Created by Tom Peyer and Craig Rousseau, the new Arrowette made her first appearance in Impulse #28 (1997). This issue also reintroduces an older Bonnie King, now called Bonnie Jones. Far away from the young Miss Arrowette from the sixties, Bonnie has become an overbearing mother who forced her daughter to follow in her footsteps and become a hero fighting crime. Whether her daughter wanted it or not didn’t matter to her!
The new Arrowette was then introduced as Suzie Jones in both Impulse #28 and #41. Then, she became Cissie King-Jones in Tom Peyer’s Secret Origins 80 Page Giant #1 when the writer retold the origin story of Arrowette (both mother and daughter). This was actually a mistake on Peyer’s part, though Peter David and DC Comics chose then to stick with it in Young Justice, and David later addressed and put to rest the subject in Young Justice #11 with Cissie explaining she called herself many other names because she hated her name.
Despite having her superheroine’s career launched because of her mother, Cissie chose to continue on this path even after Child Protective Services removed her from Bonnie’s custody. She could prove she was a better Arrowette than her mother!
The new Arrowette found her footing and style in Peter David and Todd Nauck’s run on Young Justice. In her debut in issue #4, she appeared in a new costume and without her mother’s arrows. It didn’t take long for Cissie to reveal herself as a gifted archer with exceptional hand-to-hand combat ability. She fought with the team in many missions and became close friends with the second Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) and Secret (Greta Hayes).
All changed when her favorite teacher was murdered. Consumed by rage, she tracked down the murderer and almost killed him, an act that would shake her and motivate her to renounce her costumed identity.
After having retired from the superhero life, she would get on to win a gold medal for America in the Olympics for Archery and had mostly expressed no interest in coming back to the game. However, she went into costume again to help her friend rescue her mother in Wonder Girl #4 (2008) and recently was forced out of retirement by Amanda Waller in Green Arrow (2023) #10-11…