You know I was thinking of doing a piece on writing that has the characters acting the polar opposite and as a result gives some readers bad impressions of them. I could have used Booster Gold, Cassandra Cain, etc. but I remembered this while looking up a different piece. Though I'm sure just about every character has some awful stories about them. Like Dick Graysons' treatment of his long time friend, Roy Harper. Pictured below kicking said friend in the face at a very low point of his life. If I recall right that's not the worse thing Dick did in that story. It's actually not even the only time Dicks' treated Roy bad.
While the Rise of Arsenal is a story best forgotten it has Dick and Dinah Lance abandoning the addicted Roy in a hospital for supervillains. Neither stay behind to help through his grief after the death of his daughter or fight against his addiction. That's pretty bad but here's another moment where Dick loses it with Roy.
Yeah, calling your friend a junkie is a pretty, well, dick move. You can guess how Roy reacts to this. Then there was the time Dick became Renegade. I can't remember if Dick actually needed to knock Roy out but the fact Roy seemed ready to follow his lead makes that seem doubtful.
There were a few other times but these stuck out. I guess nothing says conflict more than friends fighting or making characters more "edgy."
Yeah, it's always so jarring when they have good old friends do things so incredibly douchy. If that's even a word.
ReplyDeleteBut sheesh! Of course everyeone was treating poor Roy badly at that particular point in time.
Well ROA was mainly bad for Roy's out of character behavior but I'm always amazed when Dick goes into his jerky side. Yeah Dick had an ugly temper, he for example made Donna feel like crap when she was already stressed out, but I think writers went overboard with his treatment of Roy. Especially when most of those times have Roy being super loyal to him. Then there's the absolute mess the writers made with the Barbara/Dick/Kori triangle to the point I want neither of them with him.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember correctly, in the second example Dick knocked Roy out in order to give him plausible deniability. In Dick's head, he was trying to protect his friend. Whether or not he was justified in doing so is another matter.
ReplyDeleteYeah that one was always a little vague to me just because of how the Renegade story was handled.
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