Robyn Hood: I Love NY #1

[history79]

Written by Joe Brusha and Lou Iovino, Art by David Lorenzo Riveiro

8 pages of 26

Comments

[richardak]

I guess this is taking place in some alternate reality where New York isn't the safest large city in the United States and one of the safest large cities in the world? Why don't more superheroes go where the crime is? Like, oh, I don't know, Detroit, or New Orleans, or, for that matter, Paris, all of which have more crime than New York. And the drone men run Gramercy and part of Murray Hill? Murray Hill, as in, the neighborhood between the Empire State Building and the UN? One of the nicest neighborhoods in New York (despite the presence of the UN)? Likewise with Gramercy Park, also one of the nicest neighborhoods? Seriously, I sometimes wonder what color the sky is on comic-book-writer world.

[mizerous]

New York is like one of the most well known places in the United States. It even got a song made for it!

[richardak]

A song? Many songs. But little crime. And it's not as though there are no other well-known cities in America. There are songs about New Orleans too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_about_New_Orleans. There are even a whole bunch of songs about Detroit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_about_Detroit.

[alicemacher]

Since when are superhero comics obligated to have a one-to-one correspondence with the real world? There are comics which portray real life documentary style, but the superhero genre is hardly conducive to that. Because, you know, people in costumes fighting crime and not ending up injured, dead, arrested or committed.

[halloweenjack]

There doesn't have to be "a one-to-one correspondence with the real world" to know, or find out, that NYC is no longer the blighted urban hellscape of Taxi Driver, or that Murray Hill or Gramercy Park were never like that (at least in living memory). That just comes across as being sloppy or lazy.

[richardak]

I agree with Halloweenjack, but let me add something else. Isn't it time for a change of pace? Aren't there enough superhero comics set in New York? One of the things I like about smaller publishers is that they offer some variety. Wouldn't it be nice to have a superhero operating in a different city?

[alicemacher]

That's a good point. I just now looked up Zenescope and found their headquarters are in Horsham, PA, as opposed to New York (Marvel) or the Greater L.A. area (DC). So they don't have the excuse of being in an urban centre so big it can seem like the entire world. :-)

By all means, there should be American superheroes whose operating base is somewhere other than the usual go-to places for writers and artists.

[stolisomancer]

The writer who's responsible for a lot of the current Zenescope, Pat Shand, lives in New York City and seems to like to set his stories there. Robyn is in New York specifically because of his run.

He just successfully funded an indie comic called Destiny, NY that's also set in (a magical) New York.

[stolisomancer]

In the Zenescope universe, specifically the previous volume of this book (which is surprisingly decent urban-fantasy stuff, although it pretty much never had the art it deserved), New York is recovering from being the home turf of a supernaturally-empowered conspiracy that was barely prevented from infecting the entire planet with a mystical plague.

There's a significant power vacuum in effect, which is compounded by the recent emergence of various kinds of monsters, since Zenescope Earth is one of those All Myths Are (Vaguely) True kinds of places.

[philippos42]

I've never been to NYC, and I caught that. I figure that had to be intentional. A signal that this is not the NYC we, new readers of the series, know.

Remember, when a writer "makes an unbelievably obvious mistake," it may actually be a joke, not a mistake.

[stolisomancer]

I'd actually recommend the previous volume of this book to anyone who likes urban fantasy. I can't blame anyone for being iffy on Zenescope due to the pornography-lite covers it likes to slap on its books, but the Robyn Hood ongoing was fun stuff: roller derby witches, a zombie punk, steampunk vampire hunter, underground supernatural-on-supernatural cage matches, etc.

[bradygirl_12]

Roller derby witches? I'm in! :)

[stolisomancer]

http://www.popcults.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Robyn-Hood-2-Whip-It.png

[bradygirl_12]

Ha, thank you! :)

[icon_uk]

And for some reason my aged, media-saturated brain kicked in and I am reminded of The Broomer Girls, one of the teams from the roller derby themed cartooon, Bailey's Comets" circa 1973.

[jkcarrier]

Holy cow, I had complete forgotten about that show. But the first notes of the theme song brought it all rushing back. You have to wonder how some of these things got on the air.
"Ok, so it's like 'Wacky Races', only instead of cars, they're on roller skates."
"Brilliant! Can you work some hillbillies in there? Kids love hillbillies."
"Done!"
"Another sure-fire hit! Pass the cocaine..."

[q99]

Huh, I had written off Zenescope. Sounds like we could use some more posts on it.

[stolisomancer]

You generally aren't wrong. Zenescope in general is just kind of there, like some historical artifact of the late '90s "bad girl" trend. Robyn Hood is a noteworthy exception, and even it's pretty rough at points.

[q99]

And I can name some other artifacts of the 'bad girl' trend that I like (Witchblade, most notable), so that's not necessarily too big of a minus.