Green Arrow #51

How much time did John Romita Jr. spend on researching how to draw a bow?

Rating: Has any other comic book been this consistently terrible and still made it past the fiftieth issue? How has this book survived for so long when it's been nearly unreadable since J.T. Krul handed in the script for the first issue (which I'm assuming was mostly scribbles, vomit, and tears)? I don't mind stories with a message. Stories are better with a message. But this comic book is mostly message with little story. The pages might as well be "Racism is bad!" printed over and over again. Green Arrow hasn't even been needed since Percy took over. Instead of using his bow and arrow, he's mostly just been attacking like a wild animal. Which, I suppose, makes sense since he's now Green Werewolf. Emiko is no better. She's just a font of Youthsplaining. If I wanted that, I'd just read my Tumblr dashboard. This comic book sucks.

I was going to post a trailer of The Bad News Bears on my Tumblr this week in celebration of its 40th anniversary but holy shit that trailer is awful. And I'm not even talking about the parts that would offend modern sensibilities like when the narrator says Buttermaker does the unforgivable by putting a girl on the team and then Tanner's reaction to that when he says, "Jews, spics, niggers, and now a girl?!" While the movie is terrific, the trailer is just plain awful. I imagine it's a product of its time but I don't really remember many trailers from the seventies. It's just a narrator giving a synopsis of the film seemingly with his own biases and interpretations of events thrown in. And not a single note from Carmen! I imagine either the music rights weren't secured when the trailer was made, or the music wasn't chosen yet. But it's so synonymous with the film now that the lack of the song is jarring.

Over at MTV's website in 2013, somebody named Amanda Bell wrote a brief "article" that's just a reaction to The Bad News Bears trailer. Actually, it's just a reaction of Tanner's string of racial epithets. Wait. Did I say "wrote"? Actually actually she just embedded a couple of reaction gifs. What she's trying to get across in her article is that a movie in 1976 created a trailer that could be seen in front of family friendly movies that wasn't family friendly at all. Yeah? Welcome to the fucking seventies! There's a reason past decades happen in the past. Or something. Maybe that wasn't as clear as I meant it to be. Maybe I wouldn't care about her "article" so much but she obviously doesn't understand storytelling and characterization. Because she puts the horrible quote on Timothy Lupus! That kid was the kindest, sweetest, greatest portrayal of a booger eating moron I've ever seen! He would never have said anything so uncouth! No, it was Tanner who said that, Amanda. Tanner. Maybe you should at least watch the movie before judging it by one line from one character! Plus, Tanner's degrading line is answered by Amanda with "Grab a bat, Punk!" She then proceeds to strike out the little bastard and prove to him that he's a lousy fucking baseball player and their team needs her. Also, Tanner's little list of racial slurs also tells you something else about the movie: it's got a fucking inclusive cast of heroes! And guess who the bad guys are? The white coach with his all white team of hot shots! This movie has 70s stink all over it. But like the recent Mad Magazine collection of 80s spoofs I picked up at Safeway says, "MAD Magazine reflects the sensibilities and language of the time in which it was first published. This content is reprinted without alteration for historical reference." Seeing how things were and in their proper context is much better than pretending those things never existed.

Currently Green Werewolf has decided to endanger his little sister's life by taking her to Africa to battle Douchéstork. Ollie and Slade are both looking for Doctor Miracle. Ollie wants Doctor Miracle's DNA inside of him to cure his Werewolf AIDS. Douchéstork wants Doctor Miracle because he's been paid to find him. That's the only reason Douchéstork does anything! Well, maybe he sometimes does things to protect his reputation. But he drags his feet and pouts a lot if he's not getting paid as well.

I was going to argue against this because I believe that people who hate based on differences are people mired in the past who can't adapt to a beautiful future of interracial relationships leading to a population of people who would eventually all look alike which would, ironically, really help those people to fit in! But then I remembered how stupid people really fucking hate me and I thought, "Oh yeah! People do hate people different than themselves!"

If you've ever questioned somebody's common sense, or proclaimed that you have common sense, just stop. Because what you're actually doing is telling people you're a moron. "That uppity jerk may have read half of The Grapes of Wrath but does he have common sense? Probably not!" Also you might want to stop bragging about being intuitive. The more you think you're intuitive, the more you project your beliefs on situations which causes you to read the situation wrong. But since you believe you have a great intuition, you'll never be convinced that the situation isn't the way you believed it was. People with "great intuition" tend to have more fallings out with friends and family than people who actually trust and respect the statements of their friends and family. When it is confirmed that your intuition was correct in any given situation, realize that it wasn't your gut speaking to you and mystically revealing the way things were. How you figured it out is even better than intuition and should be embraced for what it was! You took various clues pertaining to the situation and logically worked them out in your brain to come up with a plausible scenario which wound up being accurate. Why would people rather be "intuitive" than fucking "observant"?!

Green Werewolf has come to the conclusion that you can't cure hate. Nonsense! Isn't knowledge and travel supposed to cure hate? Or is that ignorance? I suppose they're basically the same thing.

I think this guy stumbled upon an Insane Clown Posse gig and culturally appropriated that.

Great. Previously Percy has lectured the readers on racism, corrupt cops, racism, and racism. Now he's going to lecture us on cultural appropriation! It might be an interesting story if it were a subtle, fictionalized reversal of typical American cultural appropriation. But I'm already bored when he begins by saying, "This is a story about cultural appropriation. See how the bad guy appears and spells it out for everybody? I suppose I could have masked the bad guy's cultural appropriation in the same way I masked racism in my Werewolf AIDS story where the minorities are 'monsters' and the racists are 'rich white American presidents'. But this is too important a message to make it subtle and interesting! I want Tumblr to know that I get what they're saying no matter how shrill and incoherent they generally are! I'm with them! I'm a white guy from Eugene, Oregon, man! I get it! I get it!"

"On the one hand, I hear you! We've all known for quite a long time that white dreads were terrible. But now we have an accepted reason for bullying anybody sporting them! On the other hand, you're crazy! Because being mean to individuals without knowing the history and context of the individual's life is simply a means of creating a new kind of power with which to abuse others."

Green Werewolf wants to sympathize with Mister White because cultural appropriation is the worst thing in the world ever (apparently). But since Mister White is using the playbook of white imperialists, Green Arrow can't sympathize with him at all! Plus Mister White wants to sell Ollie and Emiko and George into slavery so he's going to have to fight against that even if he winds up seeming racist doing so. I don't believe that he would but I'm sure somebody could make an argument for it somehow. Like how a black man is actually succeeding and a rich white man just can't have it. It sure would be easier if Douchéstork would just show up to beat up the black guys. It's okay if he appears racist.

The best part of this issue so far is the map of Africa that looks like a skull and Doctor Miracle's shirt of Africa that looks like a hand giving a peace sign. Unless it's flipping the British bird? Maybe it's a foot with two horribly deformed toes? Whatever the case, it's Doctor Miracle's shirt. Which means Ollie has found Doctor Miracle! Which means Douchéstork will be rescuing everybody shortly!

Doctor Miracle's tongue is cut and he makes out with a woman whose arm Ollie broke. Her arm heals, she claims it's a miracle, and in the next panel, some guard outside the tent is saying, "I could shoot the tail off a giraffe at fifty yards." First off, that was a shitty scene change. Second, shouldn't he be using meters instead of yards? Of course, this means that Douchéstork is about to arrive and culturally appropriate these sons of bitches!

He just killed the guys he's asking that question.

Douchéstork increases his kill count by about 19 people bringing it up to 962, give or take a dozen. One of those people is Mister White. Douchéstork does not kill him while saying, "Culturally appropriate this!" Another one of his kills is Green Werewolf. But I have a feeling that kill won't take so I'm not adding it to Slade's kill count.