Justice League: Rise of Arsenal #3 - Swinging A Dead Cat

[perletwo]

Because a few people in the Rise of Arsenal Wins Award thread said they hadn't read any/much of RoA, and because the link in the earlier post has lots of macro-manips talking about dead cats, I thought I should link to the scene being referenced. Coulda sworn it was posted here, but if so I couldn't find it through the tags. (If someone can find it, I'll gladly take this post down.)

So, here are 2 pages from Rise of Arsenal #3. Behold the gritty realism of its depiction of drug abuse!



Here Roy has bought and sniffed some heroin. The freak-out begins with a happy reunion with an intact, alive Lian, then goes to the first page of this spread, in which Roy sees himself facing an army of Prometheuses (Prometheii?) bent on killing Lian again.



Standing in for the Electrocutioner in this freak-out is of course Bat!Dick, who is standing at the mouth of the alley in the missing page of this spread:



Roy is convinced Bat!Dick is there to take Lian!Kitty away from him, and Bat!Dick has to make with the Tough Love. Really Tough Love - like, get me to the emergency room type Tough Love.


The issue ends with Roy strapped to a table to detox cold turkey, talking with Zombie!Lian, and slowly going totally bugfuck insane in the membrane.

Comments

[feyandstrange]

Dude, whatever he just snorted is so not heroin. Unless that weird new arm of his has done something to his metabolism. Heroin doesn't generally cause hallucinations on this scale, and users don't tend to be violent while they're high (jonesing, sure).

[shadowpsykie]

i was going to insert a "How would you know what a person on heroine sees" line here... but i am having spaghetti for dinner :D

[perletwo]

You DARE to question an AWARD WINNING depiction of substance abuse?!? ;D

Srsly though. A quick page-check gives us this dialogue.

"Need the heavy stuff. Got any China Cat?"

"China what?"

"The real deal. HEROIN."

"Yeah. Yeah, man. This here is called the A-TRAIN. It'll take you wherever you need to get to. No lie." *holds out, ummmm, test tubes? metal ampoules? hard to tell*

"I'll take it. I'll take it all."

I assumed it was heroin in there. But really, who knows? Also, the art clearly shows Roy snorting, but I coulda sworn he was on to the injection phase in 'Snowbirds Can't Fly.'

[feyandstrange]

Apparently I remember enough of eighth grade health class and DARE propaganda. Or else I checked Wikipedia.

I can see snorting if he's in a damn hurry and/or doesn't have a rig, but I have no idea WTF he snorted. Maybe it's something Jokerized.

And wow. I can see they researched that dialogue from something about as dated as those eighth grade Health class videos.

Is the dead cat some sort of reference to "China Cat"? Whatever that is? Maybe it's a Far Eastern manufacture of some sort of Joker-derived hallucinogen?

[icon_uk]

Well, you never know, maybe whatever China Cat is (Is that really a name for heroin? Google doesn't seem to list it.) actually IS made from cats... from China.

[screamsheet.wordpress.com]

Through a Google search, I did find that "China Cat" is a name for high-potency heroin. I couldn't find any "A-Train" nickname, although maybe the writer meant "A-Bomb," which is apparently heroin and marijuana smoked in a cigarette. But I'm pretty sure that combination still wouldn't cause high-grade hallucinations like we see here.

[karunya]

The urge to do a "Chinese restaurant menu" joke is almost overwhelming here.

[icon_uk]

Indeed, though I am reminded of the comment I overheard when hearing a similar "Chinese restaurant joke" years back, "Don't be ridiculous, there's not enough meat on a cat to make it worth the effort of trying to catch them. AND it would be all stringy and gamey".

[darkblade]

You just don't know the right sort of cats.

[icon_uk]

Well, you could go for the battery farm approach I suppose

[ebailey140]

Yep, heroin should have made him just sit down, somewhere.

There's even a drug in the DCU that does make it's users violent and have hallucinations; Thrill, developed by the Scarecrow in the early issues of the current Batgirl series. They should have just used that instead of having a real world drug do something it doesn't do.

[mrstatham]

Yeah, but that requires, y'know, actual thought, and maybe a telephone call to the editor to ask about current continuity rather than that which happened twenty freaking years ago.