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DC put out several truly diabolical comics in 2010, and respected Starman scribe James Robinson was inexplicably responsible for a lot of them. But a special mention has to go to Justice League (vol. 2) #40. Blackest Night was already a lurid, exploitative piece of melodramatic schlock from word one. It was somewhat indicative of the trend in DC comics toward faux-mature themes of nihilistic violence, death, Pyrrhic victories, and the futility of the hero. Pretty much every dead character in DC history was resurrected as a psychopathic and near-invulnerable zombie bent on driving their victims to extremes of anger or fear so that their hearts could be harvested to un-resurrect a cosmic death entity. A few of the books, particularly Tomasi and Gleason's Green Lantern Corps, ran with the enormous silliness of the concept and put out an insane grindhouse space opera in which hideous undead monstrosities were repeatedly gibbed by lasers and the power of love and magic multicoloured wishing rings. Sadly, the vast majority of tie-ins were mediocre or downright lovely, and followed the same predictable formula:
 ), and Red Tornado (gently caress  ). I get that Robinson was going for a more ethnically diverse line-up, and I love it when lesser-known characters get some time in the spotlight, but sadly none of Robinson's characters have a voice. It's a by-the-numbers, phoned-in, boring book.Finally, there's a memorable sequence, (for all the wrong reasons). Since the Blackest Night zombies were an excuse for the writers to be as cruel as possible, and really put their protagonists through the emotional mangle, it was with a sense of depressing inevitability that noted rapist Dr. Arthur Light showed up to torment his successor. Here's DC Wikia's description of Dr. Light's death scene, since it really does set the tone: DC Wikia posted:The Spectre judges Dr. Light (who is in the middle of a mock superhero rape orgy with various women dressed as Teen Titans), and burns him to death by turning him into a candle and using his head for the wick.  Soooooo basically, this happens:    There is so much going on here that shouldn't be anywhere loving near a superhero fight comic. It's just so... cavalier in its approach to sexual violence. Panel 1 of page 2 leaves the reader under no illusions whatsover that if Kimiyo's laser powers give out, she's going to be raped by an animated corpse. On that final page, said corpse advances on a tearful, half-naked, and apparently defenceless woman from behind, insinuating that she is a prostitute. And I don't think I'm remiss in inferring from the penultimate panel that he intends to rape and kill both Kimiyo and her children. Whole loving thing makes my skin crawl.
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Jul 30, 2013 22:40
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 20:18 |
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