Arsenal #1-#2

 

Some characters are heroes.  Others are villains.  Still others are anti-heroes.  And some are life’s punching bags, eternally taking punishment enough to make anyone either go bananas or feel like they’re about to.  And yet, somehow—whether it be through their own determination or a well-timed reboot or both—they always manage to land on their feet and live to kick butt another day.

One such character is Roy William Harper Jr., a.k.a. Speedy, a.k.a. Arsenal, a.k.a. Red Arrow, a.k.a. Arsenal again.  He’s been one of my favorites for ages, but the fans and the comics (especially those bleeping comics) always seem to give him the short end of the stick (or the arrow).  So to give Roy a little positive press—and to give myself a chance to alternately gush and rampage about his various portrayals in various media—I hereby declare November ROY HARPER APPRECIATION MONTH.

For the inaugural celebration of this surely-destined-to-be-prestigious holiday, I decided to review my favorite (official) depiction of the former Boy Bowman, a four-issue miniseries released in 1998-99.  See, the ‘90s DID consist of more than giant guns, shoulder pads and mullets!

The first issue begins with a rather inept cover filled with randomly placed images from Roy’s past and Dinah Lance demonstrating her newly-implanted jelly spine to show off her chest.  Which, spoilers, she never comes even remotely close to doing in the actual comic.  And frankly, I think it’s kind of creepy, since it makes her look like Roy’s love interest when she’s really more of an older sister/mother figure.  Ew.

The first actual scene features Roy interrogating some punk at gunpoint. 

 

It quickly becomes apparent that the punk isn’t a crook but a potential babysitter, who Roy wants to make doesn’t have a criminal atom in his body before letting him anywhere NEAR his daughter.  The interviewee then does what any normal person would do and gets the eff out of there.

We then cut to an evil lab full of babies in jars.  The place is run by Vandal Savage, an immortal supervillain.  He is forcing an extremely short-skirted doctor whom he claims is his daughter to create body parts for him (being immortal really takes a toll after the first two hundred years or so), and if she doesn’t, he’ll just steal some of hers.  I’m pretty sure he’s bluffing though.  Can you imagine him with a woman’s leg?  I’d PAY to read that. (Yes, I know he probably meant internal organs, but it’s his own fault for not being specific.)

Dang these scenes are short.  Thankfully, the next one decides to stick around for more than two pages.  Roy and his daughter Lian are playing around in the living room.  With guns.

 

Take a good look, folks, for this is the moment that finally made me cave in and admit that I liked Lian.  See, because I am a mean old #&@* who, with few exceptions, hates the way kids are portrayed in the media, I used to avoid her at every turn.  Ironically, it was the utterly worthless trash heap Cry for Justice that first opened the door to the possibility of my liking the kid because hey, just because I didn’t like her didn’t mean I wanted her dead.  And then I read this thing and decided you know what?  She’s kinda awesome.  I think I can tolerate her.  Of course, this also made me want to stomp on Cry for Justice more than I already did, which in turn made me like Lian some more, which made my hate for Cry for Justice increase exponentially.  It’s a vicious cycle.

So then Dinah Lance/Black Canary shows up for a visit.  After rightfully scolding Roy for letting his three-year-old play with (unloaded) guns, she talks with him about how much Ollie meant to them both.  (You should probably know that this comic was written during that brief span of time in which both Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan were quite dead, and the Arrow Family has all but abandoned the secret identities schtick.  Which, if the next scene is any indication, was a very bad idea.)

While the two are chatting, Lian decides she doesn’t like her playpen anymore, tries to climb out of it and falls, hurting her arm in the process.  Before Roy can take her to a doctor, his apartment is raided by a horde of hot henchwomen in tiny nurse outfits.  Looks like Halloween came early this year.  Or maybe Christmas, if you’re into that sort of thing.  Roy, however, just wants to get Lian out of there and jumps out a window, leaving Dinah to deal with the crazies, which she does, because Dinah is a badass who can handle herself and doesn’t need anybody to come save her butt thank you very much and no, I’m not bitter about her portrayal on Arrow at all in any capacity whatsoever so stop asking!  Can’t you see how totally unbitter I am?!

 

…*weeps in a corner*

After wiping the floor with the nurses, Dinah manages to get a mysterious list of names from one of them before the woman flees.

 

The first time I saw that panel, I didn’t realize she’d gotten the list from her cleavage and thought she had just stored a flashbang there or something.  ANYWAY.  Dinah takes the list to the hospital, where she meets up with Roy.  Lian is already being attended to by a doctor, so our heroes take the time to reminisce about the time Dinah helped Roy recover from the now-infamous heroin addiction via a sepia-toned flashback to Green Lantern #86.  In said flashback, Roy has just been kicked out by Ollie and is taken to stay at Dinah’s for a while.  Unlike the original, however, Arsenal #1 takes the scene a little farther, exploring what happened with Roy and Dinah after Roy was left with her.  The writer takes one panel and then writes their own version of what happened afterward.  So basically it’s like a lot of the fanfiction that I’ve written—READ.  That I’ve read. 

 

Gotta admit, I kinda like the look on Roy’s face in the redrawn version better.  It’s more sarcastic, like he’s trying to put on a brave face before this almost total stranger, and I think that suits Roy’s personality a lot better than the kind of nervous look he has in the Neal Adams version, even though Adams is a better artist overall.  At least he was until Batman: Odyssey, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.  We’ll talk about the art later.  For Arsenal, not Odyssey.

The flashback serves to cement in the reader’s mind how and why Dinah and Roy are so close despite not having any blood ties.  In that, it does it’s just relatively admirably, though I have to admit that the facial expressions occasionally leave a little something to be desired.  Like, I don’t know, gravitas?

I hate to compare this to the far inferior, near hemorrhage-inducing horror that is Rise of Arsenal, but for Hera’s sake, how hard is it for artists drawing Roy Harper-centric comics to draw faces?  In both miniseries, the artist’s skills pick the worst possible moments to deteriorate into a mass of inappropriately arranged silly putty.  Which works fine if you’re drawing Ralph Dibny, but otherwise, you just make me laugh when I’m supposed to be sad.  (The writing is a little overdone too but, like with the art, we’ll be having that discussion a little later.)

The flashback ends just as the doctor returns.  He tells them that Lian’s arm is fine, but they’ve discovered that she has some kind of blood condition that will require medication and/or a kidney transplant.  Wow.  They’re efficient.  What the heck kind of tests were they running?  How did they get the results in so fast?  Were Roy and Dinah just sitting their reminiscing for days and days?

Anyway, Dinah connects the list of names with another case she’s been working on involving Vandal Savage.  As we already know, the guy needs replacement parts from time to time, but he can only accept them if they come from relatives, which Roy and Lian both are, hence the kidnap attempt.  Roy asks (tells) Dinah to babysit Lian while he’s gone and takes off in search of leads, at which point Dinah says… well, this.

 

Considering they just had a whole conversation about what a horrible parent Ollie was and how that directly resulted in some of the worst suffering Roy has ever experienced, this comment comes off as really insensitive, especially since Roy is leaving Lian in the capable hands of her pseudo-grandmother while trying to save his daughter’s life and not just leaving her alone for the heck of it the way Ollie did to him. 

Issue Two begins in exactly the same way as Issue One, except with ladies instead of dudes, and Dinah ends up hiring the interviewee despite a parking ticket (how irresponsible can you get?!) so she can go grocery shopping.  I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, given there’s a known supervillain after the kid.  You’re just gonna leave her with an untrained babysitter instead of calling a friend to do the shopping for you?  Really?  Dinah may be a badass, but it looks like she’s also kind of a jerk.

Back at the evil villain lair, Vandal Savage is laying into his henchwomen for failing to kidnap Lian.  Implied rape threat, yada yada yada, cut to Roy at the headquarters of the CBI, the Central Bureau of Investigations and Roy’s former employer.  He was hoping that they would have some info on Savage, but all he gets is a flashback to his days as a CBI agent when he had to kill a guy.  It doesn’t seem to serve much purpose here, but it will come Issue Three, so just hold on.

After the CBI proves unhelpful, Roy calls on Oracle instead.  And even though Oracle only gets two pages of panel time in this series, she. is. awesome.

 

She also tells Roy that there’s a conveniently abandoned health clinic in the area that Savage, given his current medical needs, has probably been using.  Turns out she’s right, as the place is swarming with the same nurse-henchwomen who raided the Harper apartment.  Of course, as we’ve already established, these ladies have all the medical expertise and combat skills of a waitress at the Heart Attack Grill, and Roy proceeds to beat them up with ease.  Afterward, who should show up but the second Green Arrow, a.k.a. Roy’s pseudo-brother Connor Hawke (long story, don’t ask), who has what is quite possibly the oddest complexion I have ever seen on him and that is saying something.

 

I’ve heard of people with olive skin tones, but this is ridiculous.  I’m not sure why it’s so hard for colorists to get this right—Connor is half white, a quarter black, and a quarter Korean.  What’s so complicated about that?!  It does get better as the issue progresses, but come on.

Anyway, Roy throws a mini-tantrum about how he forgot to leave someone conscious long enough to ask her about Savage’s whereabouts, which I attribute more to his frustration over Lian’s illness than actual self-loathing.  I mean sure, if you learn nothing else from this, you learn that Roy has a massive inferiority complex, but I hardly think he’d allow himself to indulge in self-pity just for the heck of it when his daughter is in potentially mortal danger.  He just needed to blow off steam, and his perceived incompetence as a crime-fighter was the subject that traveled from his brain to his mouth the fastest.

…Not sure why I just spent a paragraph on that, but anyway, Green Arrow distracts him by leading Roy to the brainless baby factory in another room (I’m assuming this is the same building—there’s no dialogue boxes that say otherwise).  The issue ends with Green Arrow calling out to Arsenal and Roy turning around to look at something.

What was it that caught GA’s attention?  Will whatever it is prevent our heroes from escaping?  Will Lian live?  Will Dinah find everything she needs at the supermarket?  Will she finally remove her shirt?  Will Savage’s brainless baby army gain sentience and rise up against their oppressor?  The answer to all of these questions and more will be yours in just two short weeks.

Next Time: Arsenal changes his mind like a Roy changes clothes, and our hero rises in a more appropriate manner this time around.

Images from Arsenal #1, Arsenal #2 and Green Lantern #86