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A review by captwinghead
Green Arrow, Vol. 1: Quiver by Kevin Smith
2.0
Look, this dialogue is... bad. I've heard better dialogue in porn.
I get the sense Smith wanted to draw on the classic Green Arrow comics with this one. In a (slightly) clever method, he had Oliver forget the past 10 years and continue talking like he would have decades ago. Unfortunately, that's only part of the problem.
Read this comic and drink every time Ollie says "fat cat". Also, drink every time a woman in unnecessarily sexualized. Bad enough Mia was introduced as a teenage prostitute. There was a period of time I think every single DC book had a prostitute or a teenage runaway being abused by older men. I do not understand why this happened so often??? Anyway, Mia's fifteen and left an abusive father and met a pimp. She was repeatedly sexually abused and yet she's still sexualized in the art. Every person she comes into contact with mentions her beauty, even the gay man. And then we're shown her sleeping in her underwear. Why was any of this necessary?
On top of that, people don't talk like people? Mia gives a tirade that sounds like a middle aged man trying to write empowering dialogue for a teenage girl. The effort was there but I felt like I was reading a well meaning text book. Then Dinah's line "I'm probably just PMS-ing", you know, like we constantly say things like that as women.
The cherry on top was Ollie's line of "In my experience, when a guy punches you in the face and takes your pants off, he's either hazing you or dating you." Why? Why the implication that gay men subdue their partners? And I got the sense Smith thought he was being progressive with the old guy and Ollie jokingly hitting on him but when Ollie has a"no homo" freakout because the other leaguer's hugged him, that's not progressive. Strangely enough, I read a 1989 comic that featured Roy Harper showing 10x more progressive views on gay men. So, this is all just Smith.
I get the complaints that this book was all dialogue. Normally, something like that really wouldn't bother me... if the dialogue was good. Unfortunately, this is one of those books where I got the sense the writer was so focused on proving how funny they are and not all that concerned with the story.
I get the sense Smith wanted to draw on the classic Green Arrow comics with this one. In a (slightly) clever method, he had Oliver forget the past 10 years and continue talking like he would have decades ago. Unfortunately, that's only part of the problem.
Read this comic and drink every time Ollie says "fat cat". Also, drink every time a woman in unnecessarily sexualized. Bad enough Mia was introduced as a teenage prostitute. There was a period of time I think every single DC book had a prostitute or a teenage runaway being abused by older men. I do not understand why this happened so often??? Anyway, Mia's fifteen and left an abusive father and met a pimp. She was repeatedly sexually abused and yet she's still sexualized in the art. Every person she comes into contact with mentions her beauty, even the gay man. And then we're shown her sleeping in her underwear. Why was any of this necessary?
On top of that, people don't talk like people? Mia gives a tirade that sounds like a middle aged man trying to write empowering dialogue for a teenage girl. The effort was there but I felt like I was reading a well meaning text book. Then Dinah's line "I'm probably just PMS-ing", you know, like we constantly say things like that as women.
The cherry on top was Ollie's line of "In my experience, when a guy punches you in the face and takes your pants off, he's either hazing you or dating you." Why? Why the implication that gay men subdue their partners? And I got the sense Smith thought he was being progressive with the old guy and Ollie jokingly hitting on him but when Ollie has a"no homo" freakout because the other leaguer's hugged him, that's not progressive. Strangely enough, I read a 1989 comic that featured Roy Harper showing 10x more progressive views on gay men. So, this is all just Smith.
I get the complaints that this book was all dialogue. Normally, something like that really wouldn't bother me... if the dialogue was good. Unfortunately, this is one of those books where I got the sense the writer was so focused on proving how funny they are and not all that concerned with the story.