greenygal

Okay, Raab's GL is dreadful. Not news. And his total ignorance that one of the characters he's inherited is a teenage boy, with a teenage boyfriend, and that they should not be freaking moving in together, well, that's pretty high up on the list of reasons why. But move past that for a moment, pretend Terry and David always were the adults the story thinks they are: this issue still commits a mistake so big it might as well be a neon sign saying "I am phoning this in."

Early in the issue, they have a conversation about how, apparently, David has been asked to take a job with the Human Tolerance League in L.A. It reads really oddly on several points, most notably David saying that it's "a chance to prevent what happened to me from happening to others." Since Terry is the one who was put in critical condition by gay-bashers, it seemed a bizarre thing to say. (Not that I think that was a pleasant experience for David, but I can't imagine anyone phrasing it that way.)

Later in the issue, though, they discuss it again, and it suddenly becomes clear what the problem was: David wasn't offered the job. Terry was offered the job. In spite of the fact that in the first conversation, not only are the art and dialogue balloons unambiguous about who's on which side of the discussion, but both characters use each other's names. So, not only is Ben Raab writing really atrocious stories, not only is he demonstrating a lamentable ignorance of his characters, but can't even be bothered to remember who those characters are. And apparently nobody's bothering to edit this book for even basic consistency, either. Christ.

I don't hate the actual story--I liked Winick's Jen and Kyle, honest, but I never entirely got past my annoyance that they got back together in the first place and so I can cope with their breakup. But I can barely bring myself to be interested in the relationship side of the book, and I'm having to actively force myself to read the plot parts. And now screwups I wouldn't expect from a fourteen-year-old fanwriter. This just isn't any fun anymore.

*sighs and goes to reread JLA/AVENGERS to get into a better mood*