The Red Ten #6

[cyberghostface]

The ship explodes.



He flies to her grave and brings it back. They open it.

Comments

[leahandillyana]

Wondy here is so stupid, she would have gotten so many daughters if she just kept the men alive...

[thanekos]

I'd kvetch about the obviousness of a death with no body shown, after deaths with bodies shown, but there's enough " turns out these people are rotten " that it slips by you.

[mazway_75]

I admit, the core concept is interesting: A horrible Joker-type villain discovers this super-team is packed with people who are actually much worse than he is, tells his arch-enemy knowing she won't believe him at first but that she'll dig at the truth. It's intriguing, just a really flawed execution.

[cricharddavies]

Except that they're not, they're only just as bad, and the author's follow-up, where he glories in Oxymoron's villainy, makes that very clear.

[tripodeca113]

An unfortunate reminder of the New 52 Amazons.

[mazway_75]

As I said, the basic concept is good but it's flawed in how it works. Hadn't heard of the follow-up but can see the idea of Oxymoron all "at least I"m honest on what I am and not acting like a hero with a massive body count."

[cyberghostface]

I wouldn’t say it glorifies him. Without spoiling anything as I’ll post it after this the Oxymoron miniseries (the one that’s one story across four issues; there’s another that’s basically vignettes by different people) is sort of a deconstruction of Joker-type characters. The co-author John Lees (who did the Sink comics I posted last month) said he’s a big fan of the Joker but he’s not crazy about how since The Dark Knight he’s been viewed as a sort of aspirational figure by fans so the comic is kind of a response to that way of thinking.

[donnblake]

I'm not sure I follow the logic- her problem doesn't seem to be a shortage of men to shipwreck, kidnap, and murder. Assuming her goal is to conceive and bear a daughter herself, that the witch's advice that she should wait three months after aborting a child before attempting to conceive another, and that the witch is capable of bringing a shipwrecked male to the island every three months, it's not clear to me that keeping the men alive would improve her chances of succeeding.

So she's murderous and evil, sure, but I don't follow on stupid.

(Unless of course we want to assume that she's been cursed by Juno for murders to only bear male children, which wouldn't be wildly out of character for the Greek Gods- I'm less familiar with their Roman counterparts).

[thediiem]

Having not read the series, even as bad as her teammates are, it doesn't track that Red would be the puppetmaster here with how she jailed the Oxymoron. So my money is on the Jason Todd expy.

[cricharddavies]

the Oxymoron miniseries ... is sort of a deconstruction of Joker-type characters.

No. It is not. Whatever the author might claim, it is an exaltation of that character.

[cyberghostface]

How exactly?

[cricharddavies]

The story ends with Oxymoron at large and triumphant. How can you possibly claim that it's not an exaltation of him?

[cyberghostface]

By that logic Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer is an exaltation of its protagonist.

[cricharddavies]

I'm not familiar with that movie except by reputation, but I believe that people have in fact made that very argument.

[cyberghostface]

Then they’d be wrong as well. A bad character not being punished at the end of a story does not mean they are being celebrated or glorified.

[leahandillyana]

I came up with the same idea when I reached the part of dead Robin. Unfortunatelly, the author is not that clever.

[cricharddavies]

I'd be fascinated to know what you'd consider to be a glorification of murderous villainy, if the conclusion of Oxymoron is not that.

[cyberghostface]

Grand Theft Auto. Hannibal. The Joker film.

Oxymoron was deliberately meant to be disturbing. It was far from a ‘fuck yeah’ ending. There was no ambiguity.

[panthyr]

She's certainly cursed with badly drawn butt-cheeks.