Heroes In Crisis #1: Interview with Roy Harper

[lordultimus]

Comments

[icon_uk]

Have they ever been clear on whether Roy started using because he got hooked on pain medication (as sort of implied here) or causal drug use because he was bored, because it seems to shift every time I see it referenced.

[lordultimus]

When they first had it back in the seventies, it was supposed to be because Roy was feeling neglected by Oliver Queen after he lost his company.

[icon_uk]

Oh agreed, that's what I always took to be the case, and that was one of the more interesting parts of it, the sheer mundanity of his motivation, that Ollie was an oblivious asshole to his emotionally vulnerable ward.

But here he's suggesting it was because he got beaten up as Speedy... a lot... and was in pain meds... a lot. Which also suggests that Green Arrow was an oblivious asshole to his emotionally vulnerable sidekick, albeit in a different way.

[filthysize]

Yeah, I think this retcon doesn't necessarily contradict the original story. It's still the same cause, just the more elaborate route to get there. I would point out that in the original "Snowbirds Don't Fly" story, it's really not portrayed like Roy mundanely started doing heroin because he was lonely and bored. He plainly says that it's because Ollie went cross-country adventuring with Hal and completely ghosted him, leaving him to fend for himself. Titans was disbanded at the time and Ollie had lost his fortune. So Roy was basically homeless and Ollie just... left him. By the time Ollie found Roy as a junkie, they hadn't seen each other for weeks and Ollie had no idea where Roy was. He was like, "Maybe he got kidnapped, I dunno." So it could still fit in that narrative that Roy started abusing pain meds and switched to cheaper alternatives to support his habits.

Though on a more meta level, I think the reason for the change is obvious. The original motivation was based on Neal Adams' stint working in a rehab center and O'Neill's familiarity with street kids, while pain med abuse is a common issue with veterans, which King is more familiar with.

[lordultimus]

It's worth noting that in the Green Arrow issue covering Roy's funeral, his heroin addiction is brought up but nothing is mentioned about painkillers.

[starwolf_oakley]

So, when did they change Roy from an alcoholic back to a drug addict? And he isn't mentioning heroin this time.

[kurenai_tenka]

It seems to vary a lot, since RHATO was still saying he was an alcoholic a month prior to this, and before that it was drugs again in Titans.

[donnblake]

I mean, he doesn't say "Heroin," but he's talking about an injected drug that he turned to as an alternative to prescription painkillers. Heroin (and maybe fentanyl, just because it's been in the news recently) is where I went immediately.

[obsidianwolf]

On one hand this does give Roy a very realistic reason to have ended up an addict. ON the other it brings up an elephant in the room that maybe shouldn't be brought up. Namely that every non powered hero is probably a functional addict at best.

I mean before you could kind of ignore how often these folks get injured in the its fiction they aren't suffering the side effects real people face from this but now you have to assume Batman and the rest of the non powered heroes are functional addicts at best given how often we see them beaten up and bruised.

[stolisomancer]

I really don't know why DCU non-powered heroes don't go in for a good hard session with the purple ray once a week.

[obsidianwolf]

Exactly they should either address it and hand wave it with comic book hijinks or ignore it and let us pretend this is just a world where being battered and bruised constantly doesn't have the risks it does in the real world.

Addressing it for some characters for drama and ignoring it in others just makes it stand out more.