Rise of Arsenal #1-2 - Atop the Fourth Wall

Welcome to Atop the Fourth Wall, where bad comics burn. In this episode, Linkara looks at the first two issues of the follow-up to Cry for Justice - Rise of Arsenal.

http://atopthefourthwall.com

Originally uploaded July 11th, 2011.

ORIGINAL INFO: More melodrama than you can swing a dead cat at!

RUMINATIONS: Rise of Arsenal would be really dramatic and depressing if it wasn’t so HILARIOUS. A lot of people were curious how I was going to handle the review, since I’m a fan of Roy Harper and the mini was so notorious for how it treated Roy’s depression in the wake of Lian’s death. Now of course some people DO react like Roy does when it comes to losing someone like he did, but this is a fictional story, where the writer can pick and choose how the character will proceed, what they will say, and how the character will develop. And the decision there was to make him an unlikeable, unapologetic prick who dreams of zombie ghosts and decides to shoot up with “china cat.” And no, I don’t care if that’s a real term, it’s still stupid.

And thus we have the beginning of this episode, where my tears of sadness transform into cries of laughter at how botched this is, how much it feels like a parody of this sort of story. The real tragedy is that this and Cry for Justice dictated the direction of Roy Harper’s character to today. He may not be a villain anymore, but he’s definitely more on the anti-hero side considering he’s palling around with Jason Todd. And he’s in that stupid hat, but that’s a discussion for another day.