Justice And Injustice

WARNING WARNING SPOILERS FOR THE LATEST ISSUE OF JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRY FOR JUSTICE (#7)

Because of spoilers, I'm putting it behind a cut.


Anyone who's bothered to read Justice League: Cry For Justice knows, it's terrible. Melodramatic, beyond the norm for superhero comics; pointless character digressions that cheapen not only the characters themselves but also those referenced, those listening in (and yes, that includes the reader as well); ridiculous grimdark villainy that was overdone in the 90s (the height of needless grimdarkery); and SHOCKING TWISTS that WILL CHANGE THE LANDSCAPE OF THESE CHARACTERS FOREVER (until the next retcon, when no one will bother to remember). One of the leaked "twists" would involve Roy Harper, aka the original Speedy (sidekick of the Green Arrow) who for a time went by the name Arsenal and is now trying to make us believe the name "Red Arrow" is a positive change from either of those, and him losing his arm. Nevermind that such a limbectomy is easily reversible in comic books, and DOUBLY SO for Speedy, who was a member of the Teen Titans with many magical characters and more than one freakin' cyborg!!! But that wasn't enough, apparently it just wasn't enough for Roy Harper to lose his arm. He will also have to lose his child.

Lian Harper was introduced back in the mid-to-late 80s, the daughter of Roy and villainess Cheshire, who had had an on-again/off-again "dating catwoman" scenario with Roy for a little while there. Cheshire got knocked up, had Lian, and gave her to Roy to nurture and grow. But this isn't about Cheshire. In fact, it's not about Roy, but I'll get back to that. Lian Harper grew up with the various incarnations of the Titans, and has been a bundle of optimism, good-will, cuteness and awesome for many years.

So naturally, she had to die.

The real tragedy here isn't that a child died, fictional character or no. The tragedy isn't even that this isn't going to be about Lian's life or her death. This isn't even going to be about Roy's reaction to her death.

THIS IS GOING TO BE ABOUT GREEN ARROW'S REACTION TO HER DEATH

Comics gets a lot of flack for "fridging" female characters: killing off female supporting characters so that the male leads can angst and react and drama.

This is worse than that. This is killing of a female character not so her immediate family can mourn and react and blah blah, this is so someone who is only tangentially related to her can fly off the handle and be justified in murdering someone.

Not just stop the villainous plan. Not prevent the villain from killing others. Just murder him. Yay. Heroic victory!

. . .

(aside: I'm okay with protagonists killing villains. But this was not done as a so-called "heroic" killing. This was so that Green Arrow could get angry and put an arrow through someone's head and be perfectly justified in doing it. There's pretty much no question here, GA murdered the villain. It's possibly justified with extenuating circumstances, but legally, GA murdered someone. Let me put this in perspective: GA has killed villains before, in the heat of a fight, to stop villains from hurting others, etc.; but when he died and was given the opportunity to come back, he specifically chose to be resurrected in a way that prevented him from remembering those killings. But now, he's okay with it. Because the daughter of his ward--not even adopted, just this kid he raised and did a bad job of it, by the way; when GA found out Roy had a heroin addiction, he KICKED ROY OUT ONTO THE STREETS at first. Shut up, Green Arrow)

They couldn't even give it to the guy who is Lian's ACTUAL FATHER. Or even to her mother, a murderous dragon lady villainess. No. They gave it to GA. That would be like if Hamlet wasn't about avenging his dead father, but the pet of a friend he don't know too good. Well, not that bad. But still. It's stupid. It's mean. It's ugly. It's unnecessary. I wish I had a witty way of ending this, but nope. I'm not even angry, either. It's just a depressing trend that comics was supposed to be out of a DECADE ago. It's the new "-tens/teens." It's a new freakin CENTURY, comic books are about a hundred years old, you'd think they'd've learned something by now.

ETA: Why does Liefeld keep getting work?

Why does Jeph Loeb keep getting work?

Why did no editor ANYWHERE think "Hey wait, kill a 10-year-old (or younger) kid? That's not right, fellas. That's not right."?

Cry For Justice was terrible from the first issue, and it never got better. James Robinson is a decent writer, but he's not at the level where he shouldn't have editorial oversight.

Or did editorial push Lian's death? When JMS was given the deplorable duty of erasing the spider-marriage with a deal with the fucking devil, he had the integrity to speak out about it. So which is it? Is Robinson a terrible writer or a coward? With Starman and Golden Age under his belt, it's difficult to argue for terrible writer, but I'd still rather think that of him than that he's a coward.


Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; dang, must have been too long. I really muffed the onion on the format there, man.