Day Seventy-Five: Aiming High
Sidekicks are one of the more ridiculous staples of the superhero genre. Why anyone who's supposed to be a hero would take a gaudily-dressed child with them into a dangerous situation is beyond me, unless they were intending to use them as some kind of diversion to draw bullets away from themselves. Interestingly, it's not really been a phenomenon which has been a big part of Marvel comics since the Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s, when Captain America had Bucky, Human Torch had Toro and Namor had a major attitude problem.
At DC, though, they have much more of an emphasis on what they call "legacy" characters, being young heroes who grow up to take on the mantles and identities of the older heroes, often through having been their sidekicks for a while. The most famous example of this, of course, is the Flash, where four generations of heroes have worn the red pyjamas, but it's by no means limited to the speedsters. There have been three different Robins, one of whom now goes by the name of Nightwing, one of whom is now evil, and one of whom is clearly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Aquaman had Aqualad, Wonder Woman had Wonder Girl, and best of all, Green Arrow had...erm... Speedy.
Don't write Speedy off, though. He may have been a kid who dressed like Robin Hood but with a more red-themed motif, but he's far and away the most interesting sidekick who ever graced a Marvel or DC comic.
Roy Harper aka Speedy aka Arsenal has had a bit of a rough time of it, all told. Raised by a Navajo hunter after his father was killed in a forest fire, Roy was obviously a bit put out when his adoptive parent also copped it, although not before passing on his skill with the ol' bow and arrow. Roy ended up being adopted by Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow, and becoming his sidekick. At about the same time, he joined the original line-up of the Teen Titans, and for a while everything was just peachy-keen.
Unfortunately, it wasn't always going to be so great for Roy. When the Titans broke up, Roy started a band called Great Frog (this was the 1970s, so you can imagine how bad they were). This was when he entered the time of his life for which the character would become best-known in years to follow: his heroin-addled period. Roy's life went to pieces while Green Arrow was off on a cross-country jaunt in a beat-up truck with Green Lantern and Black Canary, and he ended up hooked on smack. When Green Arrow found out about this on his return from his odyssey across the US, he beat Roy up and threw him out of the house. Nice! It was only due to the help of Green Lantern and Black Canary that Roy managed to kick the habit, and it led to a pretty severe falling-out between the two of them.
Universe 2, Roy Harper 0, or so it seemed. Roy dropped "Speedy" as a name (just as well, given his junkie past), adopted the identity of Arsenal and started working for super-spy outfit Checkmate. As part of one operation he had to go undercover and gain the trust of the female assassin known as Cheshire. He ended up going undercover with her in more ways than one, and before you know it he's got an illegitimate child whose mother is a psychotic murderer. Since then, he's ended up leading his own version of the Teen Titans which ended up a total disaster, with the young hero Damage, whom he had taken under his wing, now a grim and growly man in the Justice Society of America. He also founded a new version of the Outsiders, during which time he was shot in the chest and his daughter was kidnapped by a child slavery ring. Just another day for Roy Harper.
Things just never go according to plan for Roy, but that's part of the appeal of the character. He's the one who has had every terrible thing happen to him that could possibly happen, but he never hangs up the bow and arrow and jacks it all in. When others of his peer group, notably Aqualad (now known as the mildly less ridiculous Tempest) and Nightwing, show unwilling to get their sleeves rolled up and take part in a bit of classic supervillain-battering, it's Roy who's first out of the gate showing them how it should be done. He's been rewarded for this sort of spirit with a spot on the new line-up of the Justice League, although given that the book's being written by Brad Meltzer, a man whose previous major contribution to DC was the abominable Identity Crisis, it remains to be seen whether this will be a good thing for the character in the long term. For the moment, though, Roy is the poster boy for sidekicks - if you can put up with a self-righteous bore like Oliver Queen while living the kind of life usually reserved for Mick Jagger and suffering the kinds of consequences usually endured by the Baudelaire orphans, then there must be something to the idea after all.
