captwinghead's review
2.0
Perhaps I should give credit for the attempt made here?
I just... it's incredibly tone deaf. Like offensively so. To preface, I've never been addicted to drugs but I feel like I can tell when a story about drug addiction is being told through an empathetic lens... and when the story is being told through the lens of a heartless asshole.
Where to start... where to start. I found this labelled Green Lantern/Green Arrow which meant I read through a completely unrelated Green Lantern story to get to this one about Roy. While reading that, I learned two things:
One, Ollie is real messy. Green Lantern sends his ring to Ollie's trying to get help because his life was in danger and Ollie misses it because he's worried about trying to get in Dinah's pants. Have they always been a mess? Because outside of Rebirth, every time I read them together, they're sniping at each other or full on yelling. So, Ollie misses Green Lantern's call for help because he was thinking about his dick. Then these street punks try to attack him and he goes off because his "woman" yelled at him and he's looking for a fight. Then we find out Ollie hasn't seen Speedy in a while because he was, you guessed it, thinking about his dick once again.
Two, Ollie is an asshole. He's so incredibly unsympathetic that even I wanted to punch him. He's mad at the drug pushers but he has no sympathy for the drug addicts whatsoever. Sure, they did attack him on the street but throughout this issue, he's saying he doesn't understand addiction and everyone has hardship, just get over it or whatever. Essentially, Ollie thinks people do drugs to avoid life's problems. Which is partially true but that is such a shallow understanding of addiction. This is semi rectified with a speech in the next issue but, in my opinion, it doesn't show Ollie quite coming around to Roy's points.
That being said, the rest of this issue shows O'Neil had a very ignorant idea of what causes anyone to do drugs. He almost had me when the asian character started talking about his father. I'm not here to speak about the weird choice to make it seem like his dad was trying to hit back at the racists he saw in his store everyday but I thought he would speak about an abusive home coupled with some other issue. But no, it ends with his father suffering from people treating him poorly because they're racist assholes and... that lead to this guy doing drugs? The black guy says "that's nothing" which is a shitty thing to say to an asian person and then proceeds to say he does drugs because he can't handle white people looking at him with hate in their eyes. What? I've never heard of a person of color doing drugs because of racism.
But hey, I was born in the 1990s. Maybe in 1971, racism did cause drug addiction.
Anywho, Speedy says that he thinks "someone" might start doing drugs because they really looked up to a man in their lives and that man abandoned them. So, translation: he really looked up to Ollie and Ollie essentially abandoned him. Here we have a book wherein Ollie has abandoned Green Lantern and his ward to try to get laid so... yeah, I believe Speedy's story and he totally deserved better. Ollie hears Speedy say this totally hypothetical explanation and just shrugs and moves on like he couldn't decipher that Speedy was talking about himself.
We cut away to the drug addicts selling Ollie and Lantern out. Can't say I blame them because Ollie was nothing but a completely douche bag to them the entire time. Then Ollie goes home and finds Roy about to shoot up. He's stunned and asks "you really are a drug addict?" which was just the cherry on top of an issue where Ollie had been a complete douche.
So, should you rate a story lower because one of the characters was an asshole? Not necessarily. But this is getting a lower rating because I really don't care that it was 1971. You're writing about an issue like drug addiction and you attempted to discuss racism. Do better. Be better.
I just... it's incredibly tone deaf. Like offensively so. To preface, I've never been addicted to drugs but I feel like I can tell when a story about drug addiction is being told through an empathetic lens... and when the story is being told through the lens of a heartless asshole.
Where to start... where to start. I found this labelled Green Lantern/Green Arrow which meant I read through a completely unrelated Green Lantern story to get to this one about Roy. While reading that, I learned two things:
One, Ollie is real messy. Green Lantern sends his ring to Ollie's trying to get help because his life was in danger and Ollie misses it because he's worried about trying to get in Dinah's pants. Have they always been a mess? Because outside of Rebirth, every time I read them together, they're sniping at each other or full on yelling. So, Ollie misses Green Lantern's call for help because he was thinking about his dick. Then these street punks try to attack him and he goes off because his "woman" yelled at him and he's looking for a fight. Then we find out Ollie hasn't seen Speedy in a while because he was, you guessed it, thinking about his dick once again.
Two, Ollie is an asshole. He's so incredibly unsympathetic that even I wanted to punch him. He's mad at the drug pushers but he has no sympathy for the drug addicts whatsoever. Sure, they did attack him on the street but throughout this issue, he's saying he doesn't understand addiction and everyone has hardship, just get over it or whatever. Essentially, Ollie thinks people do drugs to avoid life's problems. Which is partially true but that is such a shallow understanding of addiction. This is semi rectified with a speech in the next issue but, in my opinion, it doesn't show Ollie quite coming around to Roy's points.
That being said, the rest of this issue shows O'Neil had a very ignorant idea of what causes anyone to do drugs. He almost had me when the asian character started talking about his father. I'm not here to speak about the weird choice to make it seem like his dad was trying to hit back at the racists he saw in his store everyday but I thought he would speak about an abusive home coupled with some other issue. But no, it ends with his father suffering from people treating him poorly because they're racist assholes and... that lead to this guy doing drugs? The black guy says "that's nothing" which is a shitty thing to say to an asian person and then proceeds to say he does drugs because he can't handle white people looking at him with hate in their eyes. What? I've never heard of a person of color doing drugs because of racism.
But hey, I was born in the 1990s. Maybe in 1971, racism did cause drug addiction.
Anywho, Speedy says that he thinks "someone" might start doing drugs because they really looked up to a man in their lives and that man abandoned them. So, translation: he really looked up to Ollie and Ollie essentially abandoned him. Here we have a book wherein Ollie has abandoned Green Lantern and his ward to try to get laid so... yeah, I believe Speedy's story and he totally deserved better. Ollie hears Speedy say this totally hypothetical explanation and just shrugs and moves on like he couldn't decipher that Speedy was talking about himself.
We cut away to the drug addicts selling Ollie and Lantern out. Can't say I blame them because Ollie was nothing but a completely douche bag to them the entire time. Then Ollie goes home and finds Roy about to shoot up. He's stunned and asks "you really are a drug addict?" which was just the cherry on top of an issue where Ollie had been a complete douche.
So, should you rate a story lower because one of the characters was an asshole? Not necessarily. But this is getting a lower rating because I really don't care that it was 1971. You're writing about an issue like drug addiction and you attempted to discuss racism. Do better. Be better.
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