Monday, September 12, 2016

Green Arrow #6


This looks like a playing card. The Bore of Dragons?

The Facts!
• This issue is an Emiko story. It's called "Sins of the Mother" so I'm expecting it to be super sexy.

• I don't know why the sins of the mother would be any sexier than the sins of the father. My mother and father both have many sins for which they'll eventually pay and neither one's sins are any sexier than the other's.

• Emiko is a teenager so of course she's wise beyond her years and smarter than most of the adults in the comic books. It's an easy way to write to an audience because any teenagers reading will be all, "Yep. I'm super wise." And most adults reading are busy screaming out in pain from their eyes cramping up in mid roll. Emiko's wise words are these: "Sometimes the best way to help someone is to hurt them." Why haven't I heard this advice before? You mean I wasted the first forty years of my life trying not to hurt people which means I haven't been helping them to the best of my ability?! Well, that ends today! I'm going to go shine up my crotch-kicking books immediately!

• I think what Emiko is actually saying is that whole thing you say to the friends and family of addicts. You have to let them bottom out before they can get better. Helping them along every step of the way is just enabling their self-destructive behavior. Emiko might also be talking about how doctors have to re-break bones to set them correctly sometimes, or cut people open to take out whatever is inside them and killing them (like feelings). But I'm not going to rule out that she just generally means kicking people in the crotch is good for their well-being.

• Shado has just kidnapped Emiko so she can point out all the ways in which Emiko doesn't actually know all of the things Emiko thinks she knows. I wonder if parents can hire Shado to straighten out all of their teenagers? I wonder if I could get a job doing that?! Parents can hire me to logically point out how a teenager doesn't actually know what the teenager thinks they know and/or to kick them in the crotch.

• The crotch kicking part of my job would only be necessary if the teenager is a total smart ass. And by that, I mean if the teenager is absolutely wiser and smarter than I am. Because they still need to learn that no matter how wise or smart they are, getting kicked in the crotch still fucking hurts.

• Emiko narrates the story of her previous year living with Ollie. It's a whole bunch of "alas, my life" moments where Ollie teaches her how to be a responsible individual not beholden to a criminal mastermind. So of course Emiko runs right out and gets herself beholden to The Clock King. Not The Clock King in Deathstroke or the one who appeared in Harley Quinn! This is Seattle's Clock King who is totally different somehow. Maybe there's an original Clock King who sells Clock King franchises? Maybe he's a subsidiary of Burger King?

• Meanwhile in the present and also in Tokyo, Emiko shows Shado what she learned from Ollie about not being anybody's stooge and then running off to become somebody's stooge anyway. This time, she refuses to do as Shado says and then runs off to be captured by the leader of the Yakuza, Oyabun. Shado is his stooge so at least Emiko moved up from being the stooge of the main bad guy instead of the stooge of the stooge of the main bad guy!

The Opinions!
This issue didn't need to be a comic book. It was about 75% first person narration. It may as well have been published as a diary. I might have liked it better if it had less of Emiko blah blah blahing up the thing. Or I may have actually not minded it if Emiko's voice were a bit less self-assured. Can't people just be individuals without putting so much effort into being one? It's also probable that I didn't really give this book much of a chance because I've been farting a lot and I can barely breathe in my office now. That might have tainted my attitude toward Emiko. I should probably go reread this in the garden but I'm just not interested in reading a Green Arrow comic book twice.

Ranking: +0! Or -0! Whichever!

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