The Four Color Media Monitor

Well, I guess we all saw it coming. The DiDio era has been capped with a trash can lid by slaughtering Lian Harper, and James Robinson has thrown his credibility to the winds:

Justice League: Cry For Justice #7 is certainly destined to go down as the capstone of the Dan DiDio era of DC Comics. While the pendulum has certainly swung in both directions over the past five years, the DiDio regime's penchant for wanton death, destruction, and outright carnage has never been more evident than in this, the final chapter of James Robinson's post-modern Justice League opus. While issue #5 gained instant notoriety for the fate that befell Roy Harper, what happens to his daughter, his foster father, his home city, and the man responsible for the entire affair will certainly propel issue #7 to the forefront of the market.

In the course of 22 pages, James Robinson deconstructs the entire Green Arrow mythos, killing Lian Harper outright, destroying Star City and decimating it's population, and betraying what few values still remained for Ollie Queen by placing an emerald fletched arrow directly between the eyes of Prometheus. Yes, Oliver Queen is a murderer, and the villain that James Robinson touted as the most credible threat in the DCU is his victim.

Not only does it end in the forced, senseless murder of an infant for violence's sake, it even repeats the same monstrosity performed with Coast City, Hal Jordan's own residential metropolis, when DC's staff totaled the town in 1994 during Zero Hour. Now, they're doing the same with Ollie Queen, and probably because he's on a lesser ranking level than Hal Jordan, so they consider it easier to get away with than with Green Lantern.

The results of his experiment are, however, abominable. The marriage of styles is so jarring that it serves only to make the violence that much more shocking. The death of Lian Harper, in particular, feels hollow and spiteful. While it is mentioned again over the course of the issue, the scene in which Oliver Queen holds her lifeless body feels emotionless and condescending, simply begging for our hearts to skip a beat while refusing to let the moment find resonance, instead moving forward at a throwaway pace while Green Arrow musters the strength to concede that there is no choice but to free Prometheus to save those who still live in Star City. In this moment, Green Arrow shows remarkable but reluctant restraint, thinking for once of the big picture and less about himself and his own emotions.

What comes next, however, flies in the face of all that, as James Robinson seems almost driven to relegate Oliver Queen to the same place that his friend Hal Jordan once occupied after the destruction of Coast City.

After this abomination, Robinson should never be given jobs as a writer again if he was willing to avail himself to brewing up a bloodfest as bad as this has turned out to be. He has clearly lost any and all direction since the time he was writing Starman in the 90s.

Whatever comes next for the JLA or Green Arrow and Roy Harper, if it's going to go by what's set up in this miniseries, must be soundly rejected by the public. This includes boycotting the upcoming Fall of Green Arrow and Rise of Arsenal miniseries, and even the JLA title itself.

And for heaven's sake, why won't network or cable TV news do a story about this?

Update: here's an extra topic about this latest abomination from DC on Mighty God King.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, dreadful writers, golden calf of death, Justice League of America, misogyny and racism, violence