I Miss Him

I miss him

Snowbirds Don't Fly is Kind of Good, Actually, and You Should Read it and Rethink Your Biases About The Story It's Telling You

By yours truly.

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: now like a lot of people who read older comics, I do have my beefs with dear ol' Denny, but there are a handful of things that your criticism starts to teeter into more than a little bit of a red flag. I'm going to discuss why that is, alongside why I think more people need to learn the core message of this arc.

I HIGHLY encourage people to read Green Lantern/Green Arrow #85-86, which depending on where you read might just be listed as part of the Green Lantern (1960) series because it is in fact technically part of that.

And when you do so I want you to actually read what's being said in the comic, in particular I want you to read Roy's lines. Because it is so, so important to acknowledge that, as a whole, this particular arc SIDES WITH HIM. Which is, honestly incredible.

Like, guys, I'm not going to say you're wrong when you say this is an anti-drugs PSA. I'm saying that if you read this comic and saw it only as an avenue for the "War on Drugs" then I'm not sure you really processed some of the messages in this comic. Because most War on Drugs propaganda is NOT interested in empathizing with the addicts in question, and encourages isolating them ("Just say no, and stop hanging out with people like that" being a familiar refrain from school assemblies over the years.)

Listen, I'm American, I've been having anti-drug PSAs preached at me my whole life. War on Drugs all around me. Grew up in somewhat poorer neighborhoods, literally was told to my face by multiple people that they were surprised how well I turned out because they thought that despite everything I was going to grow up to become a "drug whore." I'm not fucking joking about that one. I had family members say that to me, even.

Anyways, just, keep that in mind. I grew up around dealers and addicts and I have a lot of feelings about their portrayals in media. This whole thing was originally going to be part of a different media but it's probably best to split it up this way anyways.

TW: Slurs, drugs (obviously)

SO, without further ado,

Dennis O'Neil, in addition to comics, has a background in Journalism and some investment in social activism. He actively stated that he thought that he could use this in his comics, especially because, at the time, Green Lantern comics were potentially getting cancelled so he had a bit more freedom to do whatever he wanted. Basically, if it flopped in a probably-cancelled comic anyways, nobody had anything to lose. Think something along the lines of that Flinstones Comic by Mark Russel and Steve Pugh.

Ignore the goddamned cover, it's sensationalist and meant to get your attention, and it does the job. READ the WORDS. The above image is straight off the first page of the book. O'Neil takes off running with the utmost of compassion for the addicts in question, emphasizing their humanity, their mistreatment, and their suffering.

Now, lets be realistic with ourselves: Not every addict is so nobly tragic* as are depicted in Adams & O'Neil's story, but if you've heard people talk about addicts, both then and now, you'd know that it really does mean a lot that they come into this from an empathetic angle. *Yes I'm aware that I called them "nobly tragic" despite actively betraying Ollie & Hal and helping to drug them & leaving them to get caught by the cops while drugged up. Though they do express some hesitation at different parts along the way. The fact of the matter is people often ascribe a certain "nobility" to "victims" that they have enough distance from - whether by them being fictional or by not knowing them personally or changing their narratives after people's deaths to support themselves. in real life it's not uncommon for victims to be unpleasant to be around, they can also be perfectly pleasant people. They're human, and humans cover the whole range of personality and experience. Even if they are not "noble" & even if you do not have that distance, they deserve dignity.

Now, while our first introduction to the addicts (who we don't immediately know are that) they are trying to mug Ollie for money for dope (the dope part is implied). The second time we're introduced to one, however...

We are immediately thrust into the struggle of: quitting. Not using, but how difficult it is to quit. That's the worst part. This won't be the last time we discuss this.

Now, this is an arc where we see Green Arrow, who's typically the more liberal voice voice to Hal's politically neutral straight man, but I have to admit that as a Flawed Ollie enjoyer, I like to see him make a mistake, and he makes a LOT of them here. He is, in particular, harsher with the kids than he should be, and he holds a very very common position of seeing addicts simultaneously as "victims" of their dealers, while also refusing to sympathize with them.

The world is hard for everyone, why can't they Just Say No?

Up to this point, we're looking at pretty standard War on Drugs-style propaganda. But near the end of the story in #85 and for the bulk of #86, this is where I'm going to flat out say that the most important voice in this entire comic, is Roy's.

Roy doesn't at any point hesitate to stand up for himself (verbally) and call his generally well-meaning guardian out for his bling hypocrisy and ignorance. We see that neglect and loneliness led him here, but lets go back a bit and look at the reasons from a few of the other addicts:

Discrimination, cruelty, a need for an "escape." Any even mildly sympathetic media will have addicts explain that's their motivation, and I worry sometimes that people hear this and don't process it, because it's only one part of the circumstances that lead them there. the War On Drugs not only took the people who needed the "escape" the most and shoved at them a bad "solution" then imprisoned and profited off them.

From here we go back into Green Arrow's flawed logic:

He's a good, flawed man. He's like many parents who bring up their kids a certain way, a way they think is right perhaps because it's not unlike how THEY were brought up and absolutely missing the ways that they're harming them. Ollie will eventually see the error of his ways and regret these mistakes, but they're very common and very mundane flaws for him to have.

Alright, I'll admit I included this page mostly because that composition makes me giddy. Like, holy SHIT that's gorgeous. And now we are once again introduced to the idea of the struggle we were shown at the beginning: Quitting Cold Turkey.

It's extremely painful. It's dangerous. It could potentially even kill you as sure as the dope does. This is not something for everyone, and definitely not something to handle alone, which Hal himself expresses some uncertainties over, before inquiring what led Roy to this.

Is he wrong? Are the things he's saying any less true now than they were back then?

Even now there is plenty of pro-war propaganda (Just the other day I overheard someone talking about how their grandfather was in a war "Not World War 2, but one of the other Good Ones."). Even know there's lots of explicit and implicit racism that is treated as if it's justified and really MEANS anything about our humanity (Immigration/border control/ect). Even now we have people who believe that wealth is a measure of a man's worth to society or that it makes them inherently better (... I mean, I don't think I have to explain this one).

Hell, this doesn't even touch on gender (Whether discussing strictly feminism or if it's a trans issue) or sexuality or ableism (Whether physical or mental). Do you know how many people I've heard tell me they won't go to a therapist because they don't want to be reliant on a drug that might get prescribed to them? (ignoring the distinction between different branches of the psych field here, they never know the difference)

These are all things that get parroted to kids. We've seen the rising resurgence of gender essentialism, we've SEEN the rise of neo-nazi-ism, and TERFdom, and all these extremist views and movements and they ALL originate in the exact same place.

"What does that have to do with drugs?"

It's the same story. They're dismissed, they're disdained, they're not treated as equal living and learnign human beings. They are TOLD but they are not EDUCATED and they aren't treated with the kind of respect that leads them to think that they can even believe adults when they ARE being taught.

That neglect will be filled, whether by ideological groups preying on the vulnerable or by drugs or something else.

And here we meet our villain. We see society tossing the children away... and a man profiting off their despair. A CEO of a pharmaceutical company, even. Though, that's not really revealed until a few pages later.

... I'm so obsessed with this page you guys have no idea.

Our villain could have been a foreigner, a slumlord, a stereotypical drug kingpin, but it's not. It's a man with an abundance of wealth and a pristine reputation. A man so well known that he's on TV.

Denny O'Niel may or may not have known about the deliberate efforts to put drugs into black communities and prosecute them for them, but he clearly did see that the root of the issue was NOT someone among them, but something that someone else who could exploit them was bringing down to them.

Bringing this back to the dismissal of the youth and Roy's voice being the single-most important one in the story. Roy explicitly states that he only made it because he had support. Kicking a habit when you're on your own isn't impossible, but it's sure as hell not that far off. And, as I've mentioned, going "cold turkey" can also be deadly.

Now, yes, we have managed to create pharmaceuticals that can be useful for getting people off the harder drugs, and sometimes you can even find it for fairly "cheap"... but in our current day and age I don't think I should have to explain how predatory "Big Pharma" (and the health insurance industry) tends to be for those who have a need.

Like many things these days, even something like a rehab center is an industry - largely for profit, and the ones that aren't are often religiously and ideologically motivated. Even THOSE have issues that many result in incredibly dehumanizing conditions. (I was trying to find an article I read a while back including a few interviews from people discussing the conditions and treatment they faced while in rehab to link here, but I can't seem to find it. Must've gotten lost in all my other links and bookmarks.)

Despite there being places online you can look for how to spot a bad rehab center, the fact that these places will continue to exist with bad treatment methods and a complete lack of regulation and many people fall prey to them especially because they don't know to look for this stuff remains. Even still, and this particular one might be a bit outdated, It's not fully understood how best to treat addiction, especially since the one thing we do know of for absolute certain is that it has to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Though there have been good outcomes recently using MORE.

Social stigma and discrimination Including in media and news journalism plays a huge role in perpetuating these systems. And most people have this mentality of thinking it can be "cured", rather than being a chronic disorder with a management system. Here's another page discussing addiction treatments. Have I made my point yet?

My point is that this comic only reads as war on drugs propaganda if you're only listening to Ollie, who is FREQUENTLY being challenged on this throughout the entire arc by every person around him. Ollie in this is someone who has heard and fully bought into the propaganda, despite being a good person who typically tries to help those in need, He Is Not Immune To Propaganda.

There is a reason that this comic starts with a statement emphasizing that the story is about humans being mistreated, and ends with Roy calling Ollie out.

Ollie comes away from this with a changed perspective. It's not outright stated at this point but it's strongly implied because of how proud he is at the end there, and the ways he tries to repair his relationship with Roy down the line without (mostly) being too overbearing.

I would definitely say the worst part of this comic is that the solution our "hero" (Roy) uses is going cold turkey, which is a miserable, godawful, and dangerous experience. I will allow some forgiveness because it's likely that better addiction treatments weren't well understood back then.

So, in conclusion, Denny O'Neil is not without faults, but if you're issue with his works are "He wrote one of the most human-focused anti-drug propaganda pieces of his time, if not also compared to a lot of our time as well" or "He incorporated a lot of social justice topics into his comics" then I genuinely think you need to reevaluate yourself. Maybe he's a little heavy-handed with it, but have you SEEN people's reading comprehension even TODAY?

Sometimes a heavy hand reminding you that other people are human too, and you need to face the "ugliness" of our society and how it treats them and how YOU treat and think about them is the kind of kick in the ass people need.

I'm not even mad that they used Roy, because nobody is above addiction - not even a hero. It doesn't ruin him, because addicts aren't ruined. It's interesting and dynamic. If later writers take this history and write dehumanizing storyline that frame Roy as the villain of his own addiction, that's their biases, not the original story.

Anyways, ending this on my favorite moment that's not fully relevant but not irrelevant, from Justice League of America (2006) #7:

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ace-connorhawke

6 years ago

Hey OP? Meet me at the ball pit, I just wanna talk I promise,,,,

SHARE YOUR HEADCANON! BURN US TO ASHES!!

I want you to remember that you asked for this.

I was thinking about Jason’s resurrection and how it was never really explained. I still don’t have an explanation, but I started wondering if he was the only one this had happened to. So the symptoms that I know are that he was like a zombie—confused, disoriented, easily frightened, pale, disheveled. Right? And supposedly the Lazarus Pit is what brought out his unhinged rage.

I don’t think that’s the case because Damian didn’t have those symptoms, at least not that I’ve seen. (And apparently Cass used the Pit as well? And I’ve never seen her shown as displaying a Jason-level rage.) You have to remember that my comics background is very light, but also the comics are a mess, I stick to the narrow band of consistent characteristics, fight me.

So, returning to Jason’s so-called Pit madness, what if the Pit wasn’t the cause of the rage?

What if the ABSOLUTELY UNMANAGEABLE LEVELS OF STRESS caused by being violently murdered, stitched back together, and then having to DIG YOURSELF OUT OF YOUR OWN COFFIN ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT YOUR FAMILY REPLACED YOU were the true origin of his issues?

And all the Pit was responsible for was making him lucid enough to express that fairly quickly and also erasing his physical injuries?

If you accept this premise, then you get something very interesting. What if ~someone~ died in a similarly awful fashion and was raised by this unknown power, but did NOT have the baptism by Pit? What would you have then?

You would have a confused, disoriented person still bearing the scars of their death and whatever psychological trauma that was a part of them when they died compounded by likely also digging themselves out of their own grave. Their trauma would likely be amplified by the time it would take to piece back together what little was left of their mind after being resurrected.

Now assume this person had no Talia to direct their rage. Oh and the pale-as-death skin. Don’t forget that. You could even, feasibly, add in a small backstory about this person being taught as a child to laugh at their fears.

So you have a psychologically unhinged, physically damaged person with death-madness, no fixed point for their rage, unerased scars from whatever killed them, unnaturally pale skin, and terror out the wazoo because haiiiii murdered and resurrected six feet underground, and then they remember to laugh at their fears.