How Cry For Justice #2 is possibly the most emblematic comic book of this age:
1.) The narrative presents to the reader two fights.
2.) Of these two fights, the reader enters the first (a traditional hero v. hero misunderstanding fight between Mikaal Tomas and Congorilla) at about the 95 percent finished mark, after the two have been fighting for a while. Two pages after the reader enters upon the action, they stop fighting and decide to team up. You miss out on most of the actual superhero fight.
3.) The second is Green Arrow and Green Lantern versus a whole bunch of second-rate superbaddies. Sounds like a fun fight, right? Which is apparently why, rather than show us the fight, James Robinson cuts away as Hal and Ollie leap into the fray to spend a bunch of pages of Ray Palmer whining to Jay Garrick. Immediately after Ray Palmer is done whining, Robinson cuts back to the Hal/Ollie fight, which is now completely over with all the villains unconscious.
If there was ever a comic that seemed to utterly embody the idea that superheroes being super is boring compared to them whining, Cry For Justice is it.
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Hence, “Cry”. What a useless miniseries.
“If there was ever a comic that seemed to utterly embody the idea that superheroes being super is boring compared to them whining, Cry For Justice is it.”
Fuck you, Brad Meltzer. For this, and many other things.
Even Archie comics have fight scenes.
Something went badly wrong in conceiving this miniseries, compared to most of what James Robinson has been doing elsewhere.
Maybe they didn’t have the budget to show the fight scene.
Coming next month, Warren Ellis’s God Damn It, Stop Fucking Crying! for Justice.
You know, if I were in a sporting mood, I would suggest that Cry For Justice is borrowing from the Astro City mold, Many of the classic fights between supers are glossed over or shown in fragments there, the idea being roughly that the Astro City supers fights are so iconic we’ve already seen them, and the idea is to focus on what we haven’t seen. How the little guys react, for instance.
But the latest issue of Astro City’s Dark Age is full of fight, so, well.
It’s a plot by the artists to do less work. They get a script that says “20 pages of KICKASS FIGHTING,” and draw everything so it happens off panel instead. And then what do you do? They’ve already inked and colored it!
Well, okay, that’s not what happens. But the thought amuses me.
Everytime I mention it as “Gay For Justice” in front of real-life comic fans, they frown, or turn away, sighing and shaking their heads.
Everytime I call it that on the internet, I am welcomed as one of those who understands things and is wise.
Conclusion: in real life, comic fans are homphobic prudes.
Conclusion Conclusion: the internet makes you tolerant to gays.
I’m probably going to get the rest of the issues cheaper at conventions. I hate burning James Robinson, but it’s like he’s trying to get his reputation killed.
As for Hal’s threesome? I’m thinking it was him and two cosplayers. If you want to go deeper, note that Lady Blackhawk wasn’t in present continuity before Zero Hour, and that the real deal probably hasn’t met Hal yet.
But Hal and Ollie CAN’T be gay! Look how they casually demean their female coworkers as disposable conquests! They’re real men, dammit!
Myself, I’ve been calling the series “Bitch for Recognition.” You’ll notice that Hal never pulled any of this “I’m making my own Justice League! With blackjack! And hookers!” idiocy when Bruce Wayne was alive, so my conclusion is that he was too much of a wuss to do it with Batman there. Understandable, but Hal’s become like the idiot big brother of the DC writers: he’s a total prick to everyone, and they’re too young and starstruck to realize it’s a pose. So they copy his attitude and tell his made-up stories about himself to their friends and listen to his music. And one day, when girls start giving them attention and Hal’s working construction and drunk at the town bar every weekend, they’ll realize he was a big douche all along, and the Mars Volta actually really sucks.
So… somebody took the Kevin Smith school of comic book film making and applied it to an actual comic book? No surprise it sucks, needs more Jay and Silent Bob no doubt.
Or more Rufus. Either works.
It’s like the 90’s. Remember Complaint Rock? This is Complaint Comics.
Yes the comic book industry is so far behind the rest of culture, they’re enduring their own version of Billy Corgan. Huzzah.
I dont understand why they bothered to team up Green Lantern with Green Arrow in the first place.
Just because they both have “Green” in their names doesn’t make arrows any less useful of a super power. It would be as if they teamed up Purple Man (Marvel) and Purple Panda (Mr Roger’s Neighborhood).
Zenrage…
Because back in the seventies they realised Hal is, like, so square and such a straight-arrow, so sorta like… the Man, y’know, with all his heavy ex-Air Force and former test pilot calm competence and respect for authority and the Guardians of the Universe after, for sure, thousands of years of doing things needed a, for certain, really consciousness-raising speech, y’know, from Ollie for, for sure, is like the bestest totally awesome dude who really, like, totally respects the street and like totally disrepects the Man and Slum Lords.
So once Hal, has like, been totally told off for saving the Earth once a week and treating everyone, for sure, equally rather than doing anything specific for any particular nation or race on one of the planets in his sector… and been given a total bogus reprimand by the square’o-dude’o Guardians for over-like-stepping his bounds… they, really like, need to go on a road trip so a Guardian who has, for sure, seen entire sentient species evolve from, like, monkeys or something and then create civilisations and reach the, like whoa, stars and stuff, can like totally have his old-guy mind blown by the sheer awesomeness of Ollie and the USA.
Yeah, both Hard-Travelling Heroes trade paperbacks are “must” reads for any comic book fan.
I still don’t get how a guy who’s been a superhero, a millionare and the mayor of a major US city can be still said to “hate authority”.
You can wield power and still hate the abuse of power, SofaKing. The ‘hate authority’ line about Ollie is just an oversimplification of the viewpoint. (Not that he’s always written cleanly along the lines of ‘pro-people’ instead of plain ‘anti-establishment’, which muddies the waters.)
What gets me is that we essentially see a bunch of supervillains who’ve just gotten their asses handed to them. Some are identifiable, some aren’t, but the mere fact that they don’t even warrant time on-screen further devalues them as credible antagonists. How are we supposed to take Javelin or Bolt seriously as potential threats to anyone more powerful than a Boy Scout troop when they’re tossed away as cannon fodder and trashed offscreen?
Unless these are more imposters… I swear, in the DCU supervillain identities get passed along like an STD at spring break.
At least we got to see Supergirl stop an arrow with her boob!
I’m also surprised at how this series was touted as Hal and Ollie being all proactive about getting JUSTICE and taking down villains before they do anything and all they’ve done is react to petty crimes by Promethus’ goons.
It’s also ironic that a guy that killed his fellow green lanterns and tried to wipe out the universe is so gung-ho to take down other people before they do bad things.
the font makes it look like Gay for Justice. I see that may not be an accident.
Ethan S: I see a connection to the Astro City approach too, but ultimately I think the difference is that almost all the superheroes in AC are analogues anyway. When you see Samaritan stopping a natural disaster in one panel, it’s an obvious, intentional callback to every time you’ve ever seen Superman stop a natural disaster, so there’s no need to show the whole thing.
Cry for Justice, however, doesn’t have a Green Lantern analogue, it actually has Green Lantern in it. If enough people start skipping over superhero stuff in actual superhero comics, it’s no longer an alternative perspective or a change of pace: it is the perspective and it is the pace.
I don’t know why comic writers think this is a fantastic approach.
Would you ever read a Sherlock Holmes story where Holmes says in the first sentence that he’s going to solve this murder, then fifteen pages of Watson bitching about how Holmes doesn’t respect him and he can’t get laid because he’s too fat, and then it goes back to Holmes who has already solved the crime and the killer has already been arrested.
No you wouldn’t.
Actually, I think I would. Just to see it.
Probably only the once, though.