Hello and welcome back to OH GOD IT BURNS!!! Your buyer’s guide to bad comics.
As you all now know, Dan DiDio was recently let go from his position as publisher of DC comics, and while he left a lot of genuinely good comics behind him, there were many missteps along the way, especially those that followed what I like to call DiDio’s Decree, his admitted editorial philosophy that heroes shouldn’t be happy. Last week we covered one such gem from this era – the fantastically miserable Justice League Cry for Justice – and this week we’re going to take it one step further by covering its follow-up series, which has somehow been able to reach almost mythic levels of notoriety among us connoisseurs of graphic garbage. I, of course, am talking about the impressively disastrous Rise of Arsenal mini-series by incoming Green Arrow writer JT Krul.
Clocking in at only 4 issues, this series makes itself essential to any collector’s longbox of cursed and forbidden comics, including some very memorable scenes that show the erectile consequences of superhero child loss, the first appearance of the beloved crack ghost of jazz past (do I smell key issue?), and a scene where a smacked-out Arsenal tries to resuscitate a dead cat that he had mistaken for his dead daughter. And if that wasn’t enough to convince you to give this a buy, then what if I told you that this title holds the unofficial record for most nonviolent clenched fists ever jammed into a single issue?
This is one for the ages, ladies and gentlemen, so snuggle up with your copy of 2010’s Justice League – The Rise of Arsenal on the only podcast dedicated to celebrating the worst comics ever published…