GREEN ARROW #44

New Blood Part Five:  Positive

January 2005

Written by Judd Winick

Pencils by Phil Hester

Inks by Ande Parks

Cover by Marcos Martin

Synopsis

Mia Deardon has just learned she has tested positive for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), most likely a cause from he days living on the streets when she was a prostitute and taking drugs.  Although she tells both Ollie and Conner that she can deal with everything that goes with it (the drugs, the sickness), Conner senses something is not quite right.  Conner confronts her and Mia finally admits that she is worried no one will love her, not only because of her past, but also because she is infected with HIV.  Conner kiss her to let her know that someone will love her.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

I liked this issue.  I liked the way Ollie and MIa danced around each other, providing encouragement and support, but not really dealing with the really issues involved with situation.  I also liked how Conner saw through all of it and tried to get to the core of Mia’s concerns, which on one level is that of a teenage girl (will I find love) just magnified because of she was and who she is.  Special kuods go to Hester and Parks, whose normally terrific art just soars above and beyond here to show the pain in Mia and Ollie’s faces. 

It is obvious from reading this issue that Winick has a passing familiarity with the disease, from the way he describes the treatments and what Mia will have to face each day of her life.  I think it really helps to show how devastating HIV can be.  We know it leads to AIDS and most likely death, but it is that interim period, the time when pills and regiment overtake your life, that we know very little about and Winick shows this well.  At times Winick comes across as a textbook than a comic book, but I think it was somewhat necessary to get the point across to the average reader. 

It is always tricky to insert real life, real world situations into a universe that deals with the super, hyper un-reality.  The DCU (and the Marvel Universe as well) have characters who have gained strength though medicine and characters who have been cloned and characters who’s fundamental DNA has changed through scientific accidents.  With all of the supposed advances that the DCU has made in so many areas, it stretches plausibility that a cure for HIV or AIDS could not have been found.  But I also think, to give Mia a fake disease would undermine the severity of the situation because we know its fake and therefore a creation of the writer who could just as easily cure it as he did to create it.  But we even as we struggle with Mia’s condition, we also begs the question:  how could the DCU not cure it, given all that we know about it. 

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