Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal #3

By Hervé St-Louis
June 1, 2010 - 19:45

Cheshire, the mother of Arsenal’s deceased daughter pays a visit to the fallen hero and wants to kill him for not having taken care of his child. But their mutual feelings get in the way and they try to celebrate life the best way they can. Will that be enough to keep Arsenal out of his friends’ clutch and detox?

This was painful to read. Every time I think this series has hit rock bottom, it opens a hidden trap door and it falls further. Problem is there’s nowhere else to fall and yet it’s keeps on degenerating. This will be my last issue. Sure, I have a perverse attraction to the bad writing in this series. I secretly want to see how low it can go, yet my good senses tell me that any comic book that manages to include angry sex, comments about which girl friends performs best in bed, sexual impotence, detox centers, and dead kids walking like zombies calling out “daddy” should be avoided. I’ve got nothing against guys commenting on which of their girlfriends perform better in bed, but it’s totally unexpected in this comic book. Seeing Roy Harper trying to perform in bed, only to be consoled by Cheshire made me turn into convulsions. It’s not that the topic should never be addressed in comic books. It’s just that it seemed so fake and over the top. After the performing in bed bit, I just could not take this comic book seriously. The level of melodrama is such that instead of being interesting, it’s worse than a 2PM soap opera on NBC. It feels cheesy, mediocre, cliché, ridiculous and obnoxious all at once. But that wasn’t all.

Again Dick Grayson, the old buddy, the buddy that’s better than Roy Harper in every way comes to save the day and show why he’s the smart one and acting as Batman these days and why Roy is nothing more than a red hair clone of Green Arrow who uses drugs. I don’t mind that the character has to fall before getting up again, but does the writer have to put him through so much stupid misery until the reader can’t take anymore and just wants to never see the character ever again? I’m not one of those fans who argues that writers destroy characters all the time. But in this case, there’s nothing left. Roy Harper reminds me of a tramp who’s had too many overdoses getting pushed all over the place by her pimp while walking on stilettos with a big white fur coat on. Did I mention how he was clutching a dead cat he found in some garbage dump with flies hovering over the carcass, because Harper had gone into a hallucination and thought he was talking and protecting his daughter? A dead cat with hovering flies. A dead cat with hovering flies? Is this a Looney Tunes cartoon? The artists did not contain themselves on the flies. The art by the way is decent, but the poor artists are working on less than decent material. The editor at DC Comics who allowed this comic book to see print should seriously spend 30 minutes in the office with his editor in chief and publisher. This is not a Vertigo comic book or even a joke. This is a straight on serious comic book.

Rating: 2 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12