Arsenal mini series

I got this after fondly recalling the Batman Plus Arsenal issue Devin Grayson wrote. I know Grayson has some unpopular ideas but I really didn't think they'd apply with Roy. This didn't turn out quite how I imagined it.


First the cover just makes me cringe so bad. The drug imagery could work to illustrate how far Roy has come. When paired with the tag line they give it however? Who thought that was a good idea? Dinah has the standard awkwardly bad sexualized female pose. Her body is showing us her butt and chest while painfully twisting it's shape. It's just terrible. She has her zipper down (showing she doesn't wear a bra) to the point you have to wonder how she doesn't fall out.

I heard that Grayson used to write fanfic and...well you can see the tropes. She's known for saying a lot of controversial and ship related stuff. About whether or not Nightwing was technically sexually assaulted when he was forced to have sex. Her view of Dick being attracted to Bruce (which made print in the form of Hugo Strange stating it) and her novel which hinted male/male pairings. I previously heard Roy hit on Dinah in a scene in this series but that's not what happened. Roy explains how his new uniform, that looks like a red version of Ollie' s costume, came into being. He calls it kinky which Dinah questions. Then he starts to say something and is cut off but he thinks it's "kinky" that his subconscious picked the outfit that mirrors Ollie.

No. Just no.

There's a lot of overly sexual bits with the fetish looking nurses (one who starts mentioning wanting Roy) that Vandal Savage seems to think were skilled and subtle enough to capture the Harpers. The writing really disappointed me since  I recall loving Batman Plus Arsenal. Everyone drops long bits of explaining Roy's history or emotions in the middle of situations that don't feel like the proper time. For example Roy sees Connor right after fighting the nurses then unloading all his issues with Ollie, Dick and being good enough. He continues to do so when their checking out the area too. I'm not saying it couldn't be executed well but it was done in such an unnatural way.

This series also includes some of the things I hated which was mentioning Roy's addiction so much it almost seems like a greeting. Take his talk with Oracle which is mostly a cute interaction. Then she asks if she can call him Speedy and he says as long as she doesn't refer to him as the guy that used to take drugs. Which someone else calls him in the last issue which everyone laughs at like it's a sitcom joke. Reading issue after issue of someone bringing it up is extremely annoying.

There are parts that come off like their trying to be funny that miss the mark by a mile. The scenes with Roy and Dinah each grilling potential babysitters comes to mind. There's also a sense of carelessness with their treatment of Lian which is just baffling. Roy has at least thirty six guns the babysitter finds and is fine with Lian playing with unloaded ones until the end of the series.

Dinah does want him to stop having them around his child. But her random pick for a babysitter (not even bothering to learn her name before hiring her) doesn't make her much better in regards to Lian' s safety. In a flashback we see Roy's dad (a park ranger) leave a two or three hear old Roy alone while he goes to rescue people in a forest fire. Why wasn't Roy left with someone?

Roy doesn't really have any real reaction when he learns he's related to Vandal Savage. He just takes it very matter of factly. There are some nice moments like Roy's bond with Dinah and Lian. But a lot gets lost in the story. I honestly forgot Lian was supposed to be sick for a good portion. Because I never bought the situation being dire because neither Roy nor Dinah ever reach out to their many skilled friends.

The bit where Roy was pressured to kill was great and sounds like it would have been a better story. This is a story with a lot of fat that needed to be trimmed and some that makes no sense.

For some reason Roy implies he'd hit on a woman he knows he's related to if he didn't need her to help Lian. That just there out of no where. It's a mess, I was expecting a lot more and this was just a let down.