Art By: RB Silva, Wayne Faucher, Richard & Tanya Horie
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: December 17, 2014
The Oliver Queen Says..........."Butt Hurt"
When we last stepped into the world of Red Hood and The Outlaws, we saw that Roy had been accidentally set on fire by a drugged up Starfire and as we saw her go off and get herself all alien junked up and kidnapped by some intergalactic opium den driving trucker, Roy was fighting for his life inside of a hospital with Jason Todd and Oliver Queen by his side. It's a good thing that Essence showed up out of nowhere for no reason and cured Roy of his burns and when Jason saw no more reason to stay by Roy's side, he space shipped up and went out to find Crux, the lizard man-bat looking scientist that knows more about Starfire than anyone...........I just wonder if Crux will help look for Kori or if Jason will have to convince him to lend his services. Let's see where we are this month with Red Hood and The Outlaws.
Explain It!:
In this issue we see some of Roy's past with Oliver as he looks back on what ruined the two's relationship. Right from the get go before Roy ever met Oliver, he was enamored with him for his "fuck off" attitude he presented to the world and for some reason this eventually led to Oliver finding out about Roy and his talents and bailing him out of jail one day and offering him a job at Queen Industries as a inventor. I would of really liked to see how Roy got on Oliver's radar but all we see here is that he simply bailed him out and Roy just started working on projects.
After months of Roy living the best life he's ever known, things begin to go a little sour and by sour I mean Roy becomes a Negative Nancy and loses everything that Oliver has given him for no real reason whatsoever. See one night when Oliver invited Roy to a party at Queen Industries, Roy got drunk and was making an ass out of himself, when somebody began shooting up the party. Obviously Oliver found a place to go change into Green Arrow but when Roy followed to see if he was alright and found out the truth about his employer, well he bitched out a bit.
Really it was like Oliver and Roy were dating and Roy had seen him kiss someone else. They didn't talk for a few days and when they did Roy got all high and mighty about Oliver not telling him the truth. This is the part where Roy bailed on working for Oliver and somehow became a hero all his own and Jason Todd and him somehow became friends. Now this is really interesting to me because I would of sworn up and down that Roy and Oliver did superhero stuff together, but apparently he just built things that Oliver would then turn into trick arrows and after leaving Queen Industries, Roy would become a alcoholic archer all his own. I mean where did the archery even come from if he wasn't a archer before and he hated Oliver and Green Arrow when he became Arsenal? It just feels like there's a lot of story being left out here and it doesn't really make sense to me the way it's presented.
In the end, we find out that Roy realizes that he was the asshole in the flashback and he apologizes to Oliver for the way things went down between them and he goes off to catch up with Jason so the two can go find Starfire and make their family whole.
What You Talking Bout DC?
While I was really hoping that this would be the definitive Arsenal origin of the New 52, it really didn't make any sense to me on how Roy and Oliver became such good friends since Roy didn't know he was Green Arrow until right before the two went their separate ways and how Roy even got into superheroing in the first place. Oliver definitely didn't teach him to shoot a bow here and I'm left wondering about all this time we don't know about between when Roy quit Queen Industries and when he teamed up with Red Hood. That's the story I really wanted to see here but instead Roy seemed whiny and maybe that was the point to show how he always saw himself as a victim but it just doesn't add up to him becoming an Outlaw to me.
This background into Arsenal seemed incomplete and didn't convey that Oliver and him were really good friends at all. Yeah, Roy unknowingly made some toys for Oliver and yeah, Oliver took him out on a boat every now and again, but that doesn't really equal friends to me. More they were just work associates and Oliver wanted to use him. So this chapter into Starfire's drug problem didn't really seem to fit. Also some of the dialog didn't jive for me either, like when Oliver said "butt hurt" to Roy at one point, but maybe that's just me thinking of how Oliver Queen acts in the television show and I'm just overreaching for a problem here. RB Silva's art, while I normally enjoy it didn't have the same quality it usually does and the book came off looking odd at parts between the childlike faces of the characters to the bulbous bodies they'd have in some sections. Just a underwhelming issue that I hope can be rectified in next month's issue.
Bits and Pieces:
Not exactly what I was hoping for going into this issue and while I'd love to see more of the backgrounds to all of the Outlaws in future installments, this look into Arsenal felt wrong and didn't really make me believe that he would become the hero we know him to be from it. The book still had some fun moments but all in all it wasn't the strong issue that I thought it would be.
6/10
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