Friday, April 8, 2016

Green Arrow #51 Review and *SPOILERS*



White People Are The Worst


Written By: Ben Percy
Art By: Szymon Kudranski, Gabe Eltaeb, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: April 6, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

From everything that we've got from Green Arrow lately, all I can suss out about this story arc is that werewolves are misunderstood people, who I guess represent all minorities in this case......... and let's not forget that white people are the worst.  Yeah, that's pretty much it and it's lasted too damn long in my mind and it's starting to get to me.  Now I'm not about to refute the fact that racism is a terrible thing or that white people have been some pieces of shit in the past, but do we really need it jammed down our throat every month from Green Arrow?  I know that comics are a medium that can express more than "BLAM" and "POW", but where's the fun at?  So yeah, Oliver's still a werewolf, the people of Seattle are becoming Wargs themselves after the Warg biker gang spiked a shit ton of blood bags with their own tainted blood and now that the city council has decided that concentration camps are the best possible way to deal with these people, Green Arrow has traveled to Africa to find a miracle healer, named....... Dr. Miracle, who can cure anything by injecting his blood into you......  Yeah, that's gross as hell, but hopefully Oliver can get to him before Deathstroke, who is in pursuit of the good doctor as well.  Let's jump into this issue and see if it can muster up any fun this month.  Let's check it out.



Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Green Arrow, Emiko and George being captured by an African militia, who believe it or not are going around in half white face to embody the white man because of how awful they are, but how they also tend to get what they want....... I'm starting to think that Ben Percy is the biggest self loathing white man out there at this point, but we'll go on.  So yeah, the Whites want to ransom our heroes and it turns out that they also have Doctor Miracle, which is very convenient and we find out....... now pay attention here because this will be very important by the end, we find out that the Whites found him in a trench dug for the dead because he was trying to revive some of them that weren't quite dead yet........ All Monty Python like in my mind because I need some fun somewhere.  So it isn't just sickness and disease that Doctor Miracle can cure, it's pretty much anything and that point is made perfectly clear after Oliver tries to wolf out to escape and breaks a woman's arm and after they're subdued again, the main White named Oga brings in Doctor Miracle and he and the woman have themselves a bloody kiss that sets her arm back in its place.  So yeah, that was gross.


Oliver isn't the only one looking for Doctor Miracle if you remember and that leads us to Deathsroke just murdering his way through the militia's camp so that he can procure his target.......... which is probably the best case of murder that I've ever seen because Oga stated that with Doctor Miracle in their possession, there's nothing to stop them from taking over all of Africa.  So yeah, murder them up Deathstroke............. and that's just what he does......... Even sends a sword flying right through Oga's fat ass.  That's all this issue is really, just Deathstroke murdering people in a big ass fight scene and us being reminded that white people are terrible......... pretty par for the course for this series.


In the end, with all the Whites killed, it's up to Oliver to take out Deathstroke so that he can use Doctor Miracle to cure the people of Seattle, but even with Oliver's new Warg-ness, he still isn't a match for The Terminator and we close this issue with Slade driving his Crocodile Dundee knife right in Oliver's chest......... but since it's not a silver knife........ and since we just learned that Doctor Miracle can pretty much cure anything, this ending doesn't really have the impact I think it was going for.


That's it for this issue of Green Arrow and just like the rest of this arc, it was pretty underwhelming.  If all you want from a book is it constantly telling you that racism is bad, then maybe you could get behind this, but after months and months of it, it's just wearing a little thin because we get it already and no one is going to say otherwise.  Also, this issue just comes off as very convenient in that Doctor Miracle is in Africa........... which is a big ass continent and our heroes just happen to be shot down and captured by a bunch of people, who continue to tell us that white people are terrible and just so happen to have Doctor Miracle as well........... not to forget that we also had to find out how the good doctor can cure terrible wounds too right before our hero suffers one.  While I've grown accustomed to this art and think that it really fits the kind of stories that Ben Percy is telling, it's just really not a style that I find myself enjoying and it's hard to say that it is the main draw to this book.  I just find myself constantly disappointed with this title and I would like to see maybe a story arc or even an issue at this point that comes off a little more lighthearted or something because racism, murder and genocide isn't something that I read comics for......... especially when that's all you get............ well, you get werewolf like creatures too but that's just nonsense at this point.

Bits and Pieces:

Green Arrow continues to disappoint in this issue because at this point it's just a one trick pony that can do little else than tell you that racism is bad, while making sure that there's plenty of murder and mayhem involved.  While I do think that the art fits this type of story, it's just not something that I really enjoy and I just find myself wondering when Green Arrow will lighten up a bit because I don't need a writer's entire run of a book to tell me that racism is a terrible thing.  This issue also suffers in that everything is way to convenient when we're not focused on white people being terrible and Deathstroke just killing everyone.

4.5/10

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