I Need a Hug
**Kind of but not really SPOILERS for CRY FOR JUSTICE and RISE OF ARSENAL, but really, they're so bad, you shouldn't care.**
*sigh* I never thought I'd type this sentence, but yesterday, I received my copies of Justice League: Cry for Justice (grrr) and Rise of Arsenal (ARRRGH). I read it all at once to get it over with, and while I know I'm way too late to jump on the bandwagon of criticizing this trash, I just wanted to mention some things that I haven't really seen discussed on the internet (and believe me, I've looked).
Cry for Justice
1) I have never nor will I ever ship Hal/Ollie, but if they are not married in this series, they do a very good job of pretending to be. Which would explain Dinah's PO'd expression when Ollie calls Hal "baby." Not kidding.
2) Jay, STOP COMPLAINING THAT YOU ARE OLD. From what I can tell, you have gotten progressively younger since your re-introduction in the Silver Age, and it is explicitly stated that you can still run around the United States. Twice. In one day. And then go out and fight some more. So stop whining.
3) Prometheus totally stole the origin story of the Wrath. Practically note for note. As if I didn't hate the jerk enough, now he's swiping origin stories.
4) Superhero/villain blood is sauce-covered spaghetti, apparently.
Rise of Arsenal
...You know, I was going to joke about how the art always seemed to go from bad to hysterically funny at the most "tragic" points of the story, but honestly, I just, I can't. It wasn't so-bad-it's-good for me like it was for many others, but for a while it was tolerably terrible. Then I got to the end of #3 and... it just stopped being funny. I mean, I'd seen parts of this on scans_daily, but that really does not at all prepare you for reading the entire comic. The entire time I was reading this, I was shocked, horrified, offended, and above all, utterly disgusted--not things I should be feeling while reading a miniseries about one of my all-time favorite characters.
I really thought I'd be crying into my pillow over this (still almost feel like crying right now just talking about it), but thankfully, I found an antidote. My copy of Green Lantern/Green Arrow Vol. 2 arrived on the same day as the stuff above, and THANK THE NEW GODS IT DID, because I needed it. I read through about the first four or five stories, including the now-famous Green Lantern/Green Arrow #85-86, a.k.a. "Snowbirds Don't Fly" a.k.a. the one where Speedy uses heroin. Was it dated and cheesy? Of course it was. But you could tell that Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams weren't just trying to shock the hell out of you. They were trying to write a good story and teach the audience something at the same time. And it works, because they actually took two seconds to think about their audience and the quality of the storytelling, which is more than I can say for whoever thought Rise of Arsenal was a good idea instead of a repulsive piece of crap.
The verdict?
Cry for Justice: Filth that would line my bird's cage if I had a bird
Rise of Arsenal: Filth that is not fit to line my bird's cage and should be burned by Linkara at the earliest opportunity
Green Lantern/Green Arrow Vol. 2: A classic that should be on the shelf of every comics fan