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Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The Happiness Never Ends For Green Arrow Family


Anyway.

So we've got another death (or whatever passes for it) on the horizon for the Green Arrow Family:


Time to play "oh who can it be?"

I think Mia is the most refrigable. She's a) redundant. b) a female (always a liability). c) is HIV positive. and d) Winick has already admitted an interest in killing off a Black Canary.

That said, killing off Mia would be awful writing because it would be soooooooo predictable.

"Oh, her HIV turned into full-blown AIDS and she died! Look, my book is soooo relevant!"

It would be far more interesting to have Dinah die and have Mia, who is living with HIV, be the new Black Canary.

I mean, if Magic Johnson can live this long w/a drug regimen, certainly Mia can, at least for a while, continue to fight crime as B.C.

Now, I've heard it said that the dead person on the cover cannot be female because the breasts are not prominent.

However, the artist, Cliff Chiang, is not known for drawing tits like missiles. He is far more subtle. So that could be a male or female.

Now, either Connor, Roy, or both are in the crowd watching Ollie.

See, here is why I think the dead person is Roy Harper:

1) It would give a reason for the JLA to be there. Because he's on the current roster.
2) If Didio thinks Nightwing is redundant, what in the world does he think of "Red Arrow"? I mean c'mon really?
3) DC needs every ethnically diverse character they can get. So in my opinion, Connor stays. Connor is also a far more visually and thematically unique character than Roy.
4) This cover reminds me of that old Green Arrow/Green Lantern issue where Roy is on the smack. G.A. has that same sort of tenderness towards the figure on the cover, like he knows the person very well.
5) Roy Harper has plenty of enemies.
6) The best use of Roy Harper I've ever seen are the hundreds of slash Arsenal/Nightwing fan-fics:

"I get gutsy when I'm drunk." I said, and then drained the last of the Guinness. " And I'll need a lot of courage to...." I paused and took a deep breath to gather my nerve.

"To?" Dick prompted, leaning forward ever so slightly. Into my personal space.

"C'mon." I grabbed Dick’s arm and dragged him across the room and out the door. I pulled him into a nearby alley. I glanced around, making sure we were alone. I swallowed nervously and looked at Dick.

Dick looked back at me, obviously unwilling to make the first move. "I got it this far, Roy. Make a move."

I chuckled nervously. "You're a broken record Robbie."

Dick smirked and replied, "It's a training technique. Drill it into your head and you might obey. Make a move Roy."

My stomach was all butterflies, my nerves jumping. I reached my hand out tentatively and slid it gently up Dick’s neck, my fingers tingling. My hands tangled in his thick black hair and I pulled him closer to me. I closed my eyes and kissed him softly on the lips. My heart jumped, my stomach danced. My head went light and I knew that this was it. This was what I wanted.

Dick responded in kind. I pulled my lips slightly away from his. "Make a move Dick," I said huskily.

Outside of fic, I find Roy a little boring. Yes, he fell in love with a villainess. He was on the smack. He gets shot and beaten up a lot. But Connor is still, in my estimation, far more intriguing. And, unlike the real Roy, Connor has some "bi" subtext going on (DC officially denies this, but even a lot of us at the company way back when assumed he was) and that just textures his character even more.

So my money is on Red Arrow biting the dust.

That said, if it turns out to be Mia either dying of AIDS or some supervillain slapping the shit out of her, I'm going to roll my eyes.

And you don't want to see me roll my eyes.

20 comments:

  1. Winick's Batman is still my least favorite comic that I bought a run of. I don't know why they keep putting him on books. Does anyone like his writing? Its soooo bad.

    Also: Stop f-ing killing characters!!! It's so very short sighted. At least kill a bad guy or something if you have to kill somebody. I might suggest the super-rapist Dr. Light or any of the Bart Allen Flash killers.

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  2. I don't get why everybody jumps on Winick even before his comics come out. Puzzling.

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  3. I think I spy an Adam's Apple, so Mia might be safe for now.

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  4. No, I LOVE Roy. He's my favorite character on JLA, so fuck that!

    Connor, to me, is the lame and boring one.

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  5. I don't think it will be Red Arrow. I do agree, he's a somewhat redundant character. You've got Ollie, Red Arrow, Connor, and Mia. How many archers do we need?

    I think Red Arrow will leave the JLA for some reason and move over to the Titans title featuring the original Titans (Nightwing, Starfire, Donna Troy, etc.).

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  6. Well, firstly, I don't think it's Mia. It just doesn't feel like it's going to go down that way. I could be wrong, of course. The lure of the refrigerator is hard to resist.

    Neither do I think it's Red (ick what a name) Arrow. They've spent some time building him up in JLA, and I don't see that going up in a cheap stunt.

    You're right that Connor is, thematically and otherwise, a more interesting character. And that, my friends, is why my bet's are being placed on the multiracial kid. Because they've done bupkis with him and don't strike me as knowing what to do with him at all.

    I, too, am prepared to roll my eyes. But if they come up sevens, that really hurts.

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  7. Sorry, I have a legitimate confusion: how can Ollie be holding the body of the deceased? Didn't he just die, again, too?

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  8. While they whited out the body, they couldn't white out the fact that Ollie and body are in classic "pieta" pose.

    The allusion is clearly to parent holding the body of dead child. Therefore -- Ollie holding Connor.

    But, I think Connor is immortal know (or something) after Dragon's Blood, so it probably won't take.

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  9. Bah. More death. Next please.

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  10. No, Ollie didn't die; people were just eager to seize on a fairly obvious red herring ("Wait, didn't 'Ollie' have weird zombie clone eyes? NO NEVERMIND HE REALLY DIED!") at the end of the Wedding Special.

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  11. Anything Winick does is automatically about the most "statement" he can make with any given story.

    He can probably make more "statement" with Mia alive than dead, I'd think.

    Connor seems to be the one who's redundant for the purposes of the role as Ollie's "son" though.

    For the purposes of the JLA book and the backstory of the Titans and all that, Roy "needs" to be Ollie's true heir...

    Even though Connor's a potentially more interesting character, yeah.

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  12. Connor is more interesting by far, agreed. Sadly, storytelling potential isn't a factor in today's comic market. Nostalgia is. And 60s nostalgia heavier than 90s nostalgia.
    And Winick has plenty more "relevant" stories to write about Mia, so Connor is toast.

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  13. This post made me want Red Arrow to die. KILL HIM!!! KILL HIM!!!!!

    Yes, Connor rules. Roy drools.

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  14. I think it'sConnor unless the silhouette is fake. He's got an Adam's apple and that little tuft of hair in the front. It's Roy in the back.

    Plus they are solicitng the Connor Hawke TPB that same month.

    And that sucks.

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  15. First, in Winick's defense, he was approached with it being Black Canary who was sorta killed in the Wedding Special and talked TPTB out of that. If anything, his interviews on the subject declare a distinct lack of interest in killing off the character.

    Second, it's Green Arrow JR. Gotta be. He's been brought to the forefront lately and SPeedy II hasn't. I would prefer it be Red Arrow but if I got what I want, that GA death would not have been a fake out in the first place.

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  16. This month from DC, we're offering:

    Green Arrow, death, Black Canary, death, death and death,

    Superman/death/Batman/death/death/death,

    The Brave, death, death and the Bold,

    and Showcase Presents death, death, death, death, death, death, bacon, sausage and death.

    Death, death, death, death, glorious death, wonderful death...

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  17. "I don't know why they keep putting him on books. Does anyone like his writing? Its soooo bad."

    I fondly remember Winick's work on Barry Ween. THAT was some funny stuff.

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  18. Who gives a shit! Where do i find the rest of that fan fic?!

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  19. "It would be far more interesting to have Dinah die and have Mia, who is living with HIV, be the new Black Canary."

    Spoken as only one who didn't follow BoP could. Where's your girl power solidarity, sister? It isn't more interesting to kill off any more heroines, especially one of the first and best.

    Connor and Roy are both better characters than Ollie, who really didn't need to come back from the dead.

    People jump on Winnick out of the gate for the same reason as Rob Liefeld-- he's fucking awful to a terrific degree, and yet somehow more predictable than even that low depth. Judd Winnick makes Chuck Austin look good. I'm working under the assumption that Judd is working under the desks of his editors to keep the jobs coming. He's got a pretty mouth that yields in a way they only wished Devin Grayson's would have.

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  20. Old news, but, this is TOTALLY the ending to the current GA/BC arc:

    http://kscakes.com.nyud.net:8080/LolCats/Uploads/Saved/bathe-oliver-queen-and-bring-him-to-me.jpg

    You heard it here first. Oh, yes.

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