I have ALWAYS found that bizarre. Ollie of all people should understand not just that, but why that guy in CRECY says, again and again, "I hate fucking crossbows." Ollie would know that he might as well have just had a gun pointed at him.
In retrospect, this Ollie doesn't age well. He's basically an arrogant idiot who never thinks things through. But then the whole point of this particular storyline is that Ollie is irresponsible and not as observant as he thinks he is. And if you lead it into the Zen retreat stuff at the end, really, doesn't that become the arc of the series--the humbling of Ollie? Hal only changes in that his view starts to include the local. If you go back and look, it turns out that HAL is the reasonable one who's willing to listen, and Ollie the one who's set in his ways and kind of selfish. (but consider which of them was rich till recently and a whole new level of Ollie hoves into view)
And frankly, the "orange, blue, brown skins" thing at the start of the series might itself be questionable. "What did I do? I saved EVERYONE'S skins on the PLANET a buncha times, that's all." Why not ask this of Superman?