The Four Color Media Monitor

The dreadful CBR site (via ComicBook) is telling everybody about the latest hint of who the needless Heroes in Crisis could be killing off, which they now suggest could be Roy Harper, alias Speedy/Arsenal:

One of the possible casualties doesn’t currently appear in a monthly ongoing comic, but has started showing his face across a few series these last few months. Arsenal was a member of the Titans, and before that one of the three Outlaws in Red Hood and the Outlaws. When his stint in Titans came to an end, Roy Harper was battling his inner demons of addiction, but that didn’t stop Arsenal from helping his former mentor and best friend when called upon.

It was Arsenal’s appearance in Green Arrow #43 that dropped the first connection between Roy and Sanctuary, with Red Hood and the Outlaws Annual #2 continuing the thread. However, unfortunately for Arsenal, it’s looking like he may be one of the two heroes to perish in Heroes in Crisis. [...]

Of course, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a superhero has fears of his or her own death. As brave as they are, superheroes are human beings with regular fears and emotions like the rest of us. There is also the matter of superheroes dying semi-regularly, even though a resurrection is always just around the corner.

However, the situation with Arsenal may be different when you consider the Heroes in Crisis characters teased to possibly die in the series. Among the heroes and villains listed, Arsenal is the most expendable since he isn’t currently starring in a comic and is a supporting character at the moment. Also, with DC reminding us of the close associations he has with Green Arrow and Red Hood, if Arsenal were to die, Green Arrow and Red Hood and the Outlaws can take time out to mourn his passing.

It's not difficult to guess CBR's got no opposition to this insulting direction, which compounds why they've become a superhero fan's worst nightmare, much like Heroes in Crisis itself looks to be. Again, it makes no difference whether it's a Flash, or a Green Lantern, a man or a woman, a superhero or a civilian co-star, who ends up biting the bullet or even gets turned into a crazed villain. It all stinks like the rawest of sewage, right down to their implying Roy's still boomeranged back on drug addiction. The writer doesn't even consider that human or not, superheroes are fictional characters and fears/emotions don't apply the same way they do to real life humans. The comments looked quite negative for this subject, including the following:

If any Titans die, I'm done with DC. Especially if its Wally, Roy or Vic.

And:

Yeah I'm so pissed off about this concept. It's just like Identity Crisis and the death of hope in the DCU. It was kind of "we'll show them gritty" and they did. I'm not looking forward to this title.

Heroes in Crisis should be exactly the reason why, from an artistic perspective, if anything, all concerned should boycott DC and show Dan DiDio and company we're truly fed up with these sick stunts. Newsarama's take was just as sugary, and says at the end:

As stated above, King has used the word “dozen” to indicate the number of people killed during the mass shooting. But some of those people might be characters most people have never heard of.

But at least two major characters will die, according to DC advertisements for the events, and one of them will be from the following list: Arsenal, Booster Gold, Cyborg, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, Harley Quinn and Red Robin. (See our analysis of the list for the most likely casualty.)

A version of Tattooed Man is also probably going to die, because Doomsday Clock #6, which takes place in the future of the DCU, mentioned that something bad happened to Tattooed Man in Sanctuary.

There’s also something significant happening with Wally West, who’s a patient at Sanctuary when Heroes in Crisis takes place. In fact, it’s possible he will be one of the casualties, since King dropped the hint in July that “you can’t have a Crisis without killing a Flash.”

It will be just as sickening if Jay Garrick, Jesse Quick and Max Mercury wind up as casualties in a stupid "murder mystery", and that goes without saying. As I've stated before, I also will not approve of turning Kyle Rayner into a sacrificial lamb just because he was the product of a poor direction in Green Lantern back in 1994. A few comments on this article were negative too, such as:

Dear DC: ITS TIME TO STOP. Don't publish. There is still time to come to your sense. This is garbage turning fans away. We don't want characters to die for dumb reasons. This another shock value to boost. Nothing more. Nothing of true value or character development will be gained from this story. We want read stories with these characters. Not them die.

Exactly. Once again, Mark Gruenwald's words of wisdom ("every character is somebody's favorite. You shouldn't just kill them off lightly, or worse, ruin their appearances in retrospect") are being ignored for the sake of trolling fans whom they don't respect. And if this is what crossovers have amounted to after so many years, it's no wonder it was a bad idea to begin with. I'll say in fairness that, if there's one thing some of the early Marvel crossovers had to their advantage, they weren't all built on mass murders and deaths just for the sake of it (although 1986's Mutant Massacre from X-Men certainly stands out as one early example to the contrary), but in DC's case, they seemed to have quite a few that were either intended for killing off any character they considered expendable (as at least a few of the original Omega Men were during Invasion), or for turning heroes into villains (as happened to Hank Hall during Armageddon), and only a handful seemed to avoid this serious pitfall. And in many cases, the crossovers appeared to be their idea of how to justify turning to retcons, as though they couldn't go the route Marvel originally went, adding retcons to individual characters on a case-by-case, title-by-title basis. All this incompetence and lack of faith in the product only served to make everything worse, yet they stick with the whole crossover/event approach like glue.

And that's why it's high time everyone avoided an "event" of this sort, to show we don't approve of trashing characters who don't have to be killed off, regardless of whether they can be placed in workable stories or not. The time's come to stay away from these company wide crossovers for good.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, dc comics, dreadful writers, Flash, golden calf of death, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, Titans, violence