ComicsOnline was recently invited up to the offices of DC Comics up in LA to sit down and discuss The CW’s new show Arrow (based upon the comic stories of Green Arrow) with several of the show’s creative team and its lead cast member Stephen Amell, who plays the dashing rouge Oliver Queen. Check out some of the highlights below:

• Showrunner Andrew Kreisberg discussed how they plan to keep this show very much grounded in plausable reality, in the same way Christopher Nolan approached his Dark Knight Trilogy.  As a result of Nolan’s success they don’t expect people with super powers to be popping out of the woodwork.

• Geoff Johns (best known for his work over the years on Green Lantern and all the more recent Aquaman reboot) is quick to mention this doesn’t rule out DC characters that normally have super powers showing up. We are told we can expect to see Deadshot and The Royal Flush gang within the first few episodes (with John’s mentioning that this is one of his favorite takes on the Royal Flush gang).

• The creators go on to talk about “The Huntress trilogy” of episodes that will happen right before the first break will really get Ollie questioning what he does, as the two characters meet and reveal they are not too dissimilar from one another.

• Stephen Amell talked about what life is like up on set in Vancouver and told us a perticularly amusing story of people being scared to approach him about being on set on time as he insists he would rather them “bust his balls” for it since he can “take it”.

• It also turns out that even with all his training for the show, Stephen very rarely ever gets to fire actual arrows from his signature bow as much of the time they are CGI’d in. Although there are apparently a few shots later on in the season where he shows just how “skilled” he is at archery (spoiler: not very). Apparently though there was a lot of training involved to get him to look like he was shooting the bow like an expert.

• On working with John Barrowman, several members of the team are huge Doctor Who fans so when the chance came to work with Barrowman on the show, they jumped on it. Doctor Who fans will be surprised to see that he plays a very much different kind of character then he did on Doctor Who, although he is still amazing at it.

• The team goes on to talk about how much more “down to earth” this series is compared to the recently ended Smallville with its unique take on the DC universe and go on to mention that very early on, who Oliver is will be revealed to another character and they will question him and his methods for doing so.

• When asked about Ollie’s sister going by the nickname “Speedy” in the pilot and if that is a hint or a sign of things to come from those who know the comics Geoff Johns fires back with that they enjoy adding in fan nods like that and other things, but don’t always expect them to mean anything more.

Watch Arrow wednsday nights on The CW at 8 pm ET/PT and stay tuned to ComicsOnline for more news about Arrow, DC Comics and EVERYTHING geek pop culture.