The Four Color Media Monitor

I will never understand what's wrong with some people. But that's what appears to be the case with the man who reviewed Flash #213 on Silver Bullet two years ago, and seems to think that nothing's wrong with the way the Turtle was characterized; enough to make a person vomit:

Howard Porter has never been one of my favourite artists, and his work on this series hasn't exactly changed my opinion of his work, as to me it has a rough quality to it, and that there are many times when the art seems more concerned with delivering a powerful image instead of trying to tell the story. Still, I will concede the art does a pretty effective job of delivering the Turtle's new ability, as the slow motion effect is well presented, as are the scenes where the speed is momentarily restored. Now I'm not entirely sold on the Turtle's look as it's rather comical, but the art does manage to inject a nice sense of danger when the character is lingering seemingly lustfully over a young child. Ethan Van Sciver's cover image is also a pretty solid visual, even if it tells one nothing about the story inside.

It's enough to make me gag. Just what the hell did that idiot think he was going to achieve by glossing that over? It doesn't just ruin Porter's credibility, it ruins Geoff Johns' credibility too, regardless of whether the storyline was done away with following the ending of Rogue Wars. And no, I haven't forgotten the editors who apparently allowed that smut to pass the boundary line.

Most irritating about this review is that it represents a problem that characterized quite a few other bland reviews written by knee-jerkers: it totally ignores the questions of whether the nadir of what Johns' himself stooped to in an otherwise decent career was out-of-character for the Turtle. Did he ever act like a child rapist before? He could've been created in 1990 or post-Crisis and it still wouldn't work, because if he hadn't ever acted the way he was depicted in "Slow Motion", then it's totally implausible that he should behave that way now.

Loren at Suspension of Disbelief didn't like it either:

...To stop everything indefinitely, the Turtle must be sucking kinetic energy constantly. And the fact that he can do this without killing everyone he freezes (as would be expected if you stopped a person's breathing or their blood from flowing), suggests that he has an incredible level of control over his powers. Gives you a new respect for the Turtle, doesn't it? (That is, if he weren't a child-molesting pervert. That's just creepy.)

Yes, it is. And whether or not the Turtle is a "lame" villain, what Johns did, ditto the Silver Bullet reviewer who sugarcoated the whole fiasco, is enough to make one lose respect for him altogether, and certainly makes it hard to appreciate the character even in a book/script with a more well-meaning approach.

Labels: dc comics, Flash, moonbat writers, violence