Arrow #9 (Web Comic) - A Review

Subtitled Falling, Arrow #9 gives us an detailed look at just how Helena Bertinelli came to turn against her crime-boss father and the chain of events that led to the death of her fiancee.


The script by Beth Schwarz and Katherine Walczak features a lot of nods to the Modern Age Helena Bertinelli from the original comics.  We learn that while she isn't a teacher herself, her fiancee was a teacher and she does love children.  It's this love that turns her against her father, who shows indifference as she tells him about how one of his underlings is selling drugs to children and one of her fiance's students died as a result.  At first, she's content to try and operate with the law in order to get the life she wants, free of her criminal family.  But when her information-gathering activities lead to her fiancee's death, Helena decides to take more extreme measures to see justice done.


The artwork by Mico Suayan is perfectly appropriate to the story.  The general look is dark but not overly so.  The use of inks to shadow and highlight the original pencils is particularly fine, though the caricatures of the actors from the show is a little off-kilter in some panels.

Overall, this is a fine comic and well worth the one-dollar download fee.  Though it doesn't present any new information, Falling is still an enjoyable read on it's own merits and the artwork is some of the best we've seen on this title.  Highly recommended. 

Off Target: Green Arrow (Vol. 2) #82

As I noted last time, some of the biggest problems with the Cross Roads stories came about because the writers weren't fully familiar with Ollie Queen as a character, the specific details of his most recent stories or how skilled he is as a combatant.   Granting that we want our hero to be challenged, there has to be some fundamental level of competence for the hero to operate at.  Many of the Cross Roads writers - Kevin Dooley in particular - severely undercut Oliver Queen's skill level for the sake of the story they wanted to tell.  And one of the best examples of this is Green Arrow #82. 

Looks like 90's Hawkeye is pissed about all the positive reviews of 'Arrow'!

I'm kidding of course. Purple costume aside, that is not Hawkeye.  The man with the serious anger issues goes by the unlikely name of Rival.  We'll learn more about him and why that name is particularly stupid later on.  For now, I'd just like to point out that Ollie has been wearing a domino mask on all of the Cross Roads covers so far even though he'd stopped wearing a mask in the comics!   

We open on Ollie in San Fransisco, pinning two young boys to a fence with his arrows.  And yes, I do mean boys.  They're clearly boys in the artwork and all of the dark monologues in the world about how bad they are and how Ollie was not prepared for them won't make me think otherwise.  It will turn out this monologue has no purpose other than to fake out the reader and makes no sense for Ollie to be thinking in any other context at all. 

Dammit, Ollie! I hate Menudo too, but this isn't the answer!

One of the unfortunate lads turns his head a little as Ollie tries to put an arrow right next to his head.  The result is a nicked ear for the boy and a punch in the arm for Ollie as the boy's aunt re-enters the scene.  Meet Andrea Zercher - an old friend of Ollie's from junior high.  Andrea takes the idea that Ollie was using her nephews  to play William Tell far better than any reasonable person should and sends the boys to wash up for dinner while she and Ollie discuss old times... apparently not having done so before this moment.

Fun Fact: Ollie's day job after coming back from the dead?  Running a youth center.  Be afraid. 

Now's the time for a quick bit of backstory because I'm going to have to address this eventually amid all these Cross Roads reviews.  I think it's best I do it now before the "action" begins.  The bit about Dinah catching Ollie with a chippie (i.e. loose woman) is rather unfair to everyone involved. 

The short version is that Ollie was briefly on the run from the law and went into hiding among the homeless of Seattle.  He was befriended by a young homeless woman named Marianne.  In return for her help getting him some supplies he needed, Ollie pointed her toward Dinah, suggesting she'd be willing to give any friend of his a job and a decent home.  Marianne moved in with Dinah and started working in Dinah's flower shop.  She developed a monster-size crush on Ollie and began trying to subtly seduce him upon his homecoming.  It didn't work but that didn't stop Marianne from pressing the issue after confessing her love to Ollie at a costume party and kissing him just as Dinah walked into the room.  That, coupled with several other factors, was enough for Dinah to tell Ollie to get out of her life, even though nothing happened beyond that one kiss.

Yes, that was the short version.  I have charts for the long one.

Anyway, before Ollie can launch into a spirited defense of his troubled love-life, Andrea's sister Honore enters in a frantic state.  Her husband Nathan, who we were told earlier had left her, has apparently come back into her life.


It was at that moment Ollie realized he'd wandered into a Lifetime Movie Of The Week.

Rival?  I'm sorry but...seriously?  He's calling himself Rival?  That's the stupidest superhero name since... I don't know what!  To be a rival, you have to be competing against someone!  WHO IS HE COMPETING AGAINST?!  Besides, being a rival is a naturally antagonistic thing.  Not a good name for a hero.  That would be like having a whole group of heroes and calling them The Ravagers.

...

Oh gods...It really is the 1990s all over again at DC Comics now, isn't it?

*sighs* Anyway, Ollie has little use for wife-beaters or dead-beat dads who abandon their families to go into the superhero business.  So he goes chasing after Rival and manages to get a bow-shot lined up.  There's just one problem.  Rival is fast.  Impossibly fast.  Fast enough to dodge arrows at close-range.


Dude must have at least two levels in Monk!
Not only can Rival dodge the arrows but he can catch them as well.  He throws some Zen stuff at Ollie about how you must aim for the heart to truly defeat an opponent and that trying to pin his clothes to the fence just won't cut it.  Ollie has even less use for wife-beaters who monologue at him, so he moves into melee using his bow as a club.  This works about as well as one might expect and Ollie is quickly disarmed.  The only thing that saves him is Rival spouting more nonsense about not killing a man with a bow that is not his and how Ollie lacks the will of the warrior or some such.


I could not kill a man with a bow that is not his.  And I cannot run away with feet that are not mine!

Ollie goes back to the women and children, reluctantly admitting that he got his butt handed to him.  He asks Honore who the heck her husband is that he's got the skills he has.  Honore knows nothing about his past as Nathan refused to talk about it.  Ollie is about to head out in search of answers and a new bow when Andrea says she can help him with at least one of the two, if not both.

Andrea takes Ollie to meet Don "Coach" Arlott.  But don't call him Coach.  Unless he tells you to call him Coach.  His purpose in this story is essentially the same as every other grizzled old man called Coach in every cheesy sports movie ever made - trash talk the hero into learning new tricks.  In this case, he insults Ollie's preference for the longbow and insists that Ollie will need a modern-day compound to take on Rival.

How super-secret can they be when they have a Wikipedia page?
By a happy coincidence, Coach happens to know a lot about the local crime families and somehow knows Rival's entire background once Ollie gives him a real name to work with.  No, really.  He just knows it!  No explanation how.  Let me emphasize that the page scan that follows has not been altered in any way.


Don't question him. I think he's the guy that taught Matt Murdock how to fight ninjas!  

Okay.  TWO big mistakes on this page I have to address.  First, again I have to give you all a quick bit of backstory.  I have to explain this because Kevin Dooley messed it up.  Again.

The woman trained by the Yakuza in archery that Ollie is asking about is Shado.  First appearing in Mike Grell's The Longbow Hunters and then appearing several times more throughout Grell's Green Arrow run, Shado is primarily - and erroneously - remembered today as "that woman Ollie cheated on Dinah with".

Why erroneously?  Because the so-called cheating occurred while Ollie was doped to the gills after Shado shot him in the chest and then started nursing him back to health.  In short, Ollie never cheated on Dinah during the Grell run - he was raped.  Not that anyone at DC Comics acknowledged this at the time.  Dooley was probably the first writer to make this mistake.  He wouldn't be the last.

Another mistake Dooley made here is easily overlooked if you don't know anything about archery.  Namely that there is no such thing as a 200 pound pull on a compound bow.  A crossbow, yes.  An old-time longbow, yes.  The maximum pull (or draw weight) you'll find on any compound bow is 70-80 pounds.  Hell, 200 pounds pull is a bit much even for a longbow and there's very few archers today who could manage that kind of draw.

But this isn't a realistic portrayal of archery.  This story is, at its' heart, a sports movie.  And there's only one thing that will do in a sports movie when you have a hero trying to teach himself the skills he needs to save the day.  We're gonna need a montage!  A sports training montage!


I don't know how long this took, but Coach grew a mustache at one point!      Pretend the music fades as we begin the next scene...




I may not be Of The Bow but you are an S.O.B.  And tomorrow you'll still be an S.O.B. 

The fight goes somewhat better this time.  Ollie manages to wound Rival with the first shot but Rival proves to be just as good at throwing arrows as he is catching them.  It's at this point I wonder if Rival is tapping into The Speed Force because that's just impossible.

Ollie starts to monologue back at Rival, telling him about how he knows about his past with The Yakuza and how he was trained in The Way of the Bow but how he quit because he didn't want to be a gangster.  But you don't really quit The Yakuza but apparently they threatened his wife and kids if he didn't come back to do another job for them.  This is why he became Rival - because he knew the Yakuza, who favor secrecy above everything, would never use a publicly known vigilante in their operations.  Why they wouldn't just kill him for his defiance is never explained.  Nor does this explain why he started beating his wife in the first place.

Quit using violence to solve your problems or I'll cripple you forever! ... wait a sec.   So it seems we have a happy ending.  Well, except that The Yakuza are still going probably going to come after Rival and his family.  And he's still a wife-beating jerkass.  And there's really nothing to stop him from returning to his old ways except Ollie's threat of inflicting more violence on him, thus perpetuating the cycle of violent conflict and abuse.  So really, nothing has been resolved at all.  Thanks Ollie!  You've been a real big help.

That was a woman slapping you, Ollie. I thought you'd be used to it by now.
But the story isn't really over yet.  Andrea asks Ollie if he needs anything and Ollie misinterprets the signal in the worst possible way (What?  This is a sport movie!  I'm supposed to kiss the snarky woman who whipped me into shape!  It's on the tropes list!) because sarcastic brunettes are SO Ollie's type  Suddenly, there's a loud BLAM from the next room.  The two run in to find Honore standing over her husband's body, holding a smoking gun.


Ollie? Just a thought - point the gun AWAY from her head.
She had a gun this whole time.

She had a GUN this whole time?

SHE HAD A GUN THIS WHOLE TIME?! 

*shakes head*   Just... why?  I can get why she didn't kill him until her children were in danger.  There's numerous cases of that sort of thing happening in real life - a mom tolerating abuse so long as it was limited to her.  But... she just HAPPENED to have the gun then?  And she didn't use it before?  She could have shot her husband when he was stalking her.  They didn't need Ollie in here at all!

That is the most vexing thing about this story.  Never mind that Ollie is presented as a rank amateur in need of a training session with a coach and some Zen malarky about "my bow" to be capable of matching the villain.  Forget that the writer clearly couldn't be arsed to learn the story behind Ollie's most recent adventures and didn't know a damn thing about archery.  The worst thing about this issue is that Ollie is an unnecessary guest star in someone's spec script for a new Merideth Baxter docudrama.  This is not Green Arrow.  This is Trash TV in comic book form.  Which made it all the more ironic that Ollie went to L.A. in the next issue. 

Aquaman #14 - A Review

Despite being the first part of a multi-issue crossover with Justice League, Aquaman #14 doesn't feel like the start of a major storyline.  This is actually to the story's benefit, as this issue proves to be a wonderful jump-on point for those Justice League readers who haven't been reading this book.  Geoff Johns does an amazing job of establishing several important facts for new readers as well as establishing some trivia that suggests some major changes for the New 52 Aquaman continuity. 

My favorite sequence takes place in a brief interlude which confirms Black Manta's seriousness as a villain.  For all the grief Aquaman has received over how lame a superhero he is, I think Black Manta has gotten worse ribbing from the fandom at large.  After all, how lame do you have to be to repeatedly get your butt kicked by Aquaman?  In previous issues, Geoff Johns showed how Aquaman's true power has been frequently underestimated.  Now, he does the same for Black Manta, showing the lethal ingenuity of a man who - like Batman - must face all manner of threats with nothing but his fierce intellect, raw cunning and the best toys money can buy.


The main thrust of the issue centers upon Aquaman having a meeting with his brother.  Well, half-brother technically, but they address one another as brother.  One revelation we learn in these sequences is that Aquaman's brother rules Atlantis and Aquaman apparently refused the throne.  Those who have been reading Aquaman can't help but wonder how this jibes with the story in Aquaman #0, where it appeared that a young Arthur Curry was preparing to lead a violent revolt in Atlantis.  Presumably things came to a more agreeable end?


An early scene in this book holds a point of interest for long-time Aquaman fans as well as fans of the classic Teen Titans.  Arthur's brother makes mention of a boy with purple eyes named Garth and a prophecy which says that a boy with purple eyes will bring about the end of Atlantis.  This is clearly a nod to the original Aqualad, whose name was Garth and who did indeed have purple eyes.  Does this mean that Aquaman and Mera will soon be getting a new sidekick?  And if so, will the rest of the original Titans, absent from The New 52 thus far, be appearing soon?

You may have noticed at this point that I continue to refer to Arthur's brother as nothing more than Arthur's brother.  There is a reason for that.  He is not named once in the entire issue - not by his true name nor by the villainous nom de plume he went by in the old universe - The Ocean Master.  The artwork also makes a point of shadowing his face or obscuring it, despite his wearing a full helm that almost completely covers his face.  This is especially odd given that appears, unobscured, on the front cover.



The artwork of this issue seems somewhat uneven.  I suspect this is the end result of employing two pencilers and five different inkers.  None of the artwork is bad but the look between pages is inconsistent.  Some pages - such as the above throne room scene - are so heavily inked as to be almost completely black.  Others, such as the splash page below, seem overly stylized to the point of being cartoonish.  I half-expect the fish surrounding Aquaman to begin singing a jolly calypso number about the joys of living below the ocean.


Despite this, I'd still gladly recommend this comic to any curious parties.  If you haven't been reading this book before, now is the perfect time to dive in!

Off Target: Green Arrow (Vol. 2) #81

Let me take you back, dear reader. Back to a darker time. A time of strife and uncertainty.  A time of conflict when friend fought against friend.  A time of big guns, small ankles and many, many pouches.

I speak, of course, of The Dark Age of Comics.

The year is 1993 and Mike Grell, who had written Green Arrow for 80 straight issues, has stepped down.  During his time on the title, Mike Grell revitalized the Emerald Archer, keeping his adventures completely separate from the DC Universe at-large while telling more realistic down-to-earth stories.  And lo did The Powers That Be at DC Comics decide that it was time for this state of affairs to end.  Yea, it was time for Green Arrow to come back into the fold and begin fighting alongside his fellow superheroes once again!

To accomplish this task and maintain the high standards of quality forged by Mike Grell and editor Mike Gold would require an equally skilled creative team.  A writer who appreciated the nuance of the character of Oliver Queen and what made him conflicted yet also likeable.  An editor who knew all there was to know about the character, his morals, his mannerisms and everything that made him more than "Batman with a bow".  Sadly, that wasn't what we got and the next year's worth of Green Arrow suffered for it as an inexperienced editor balanced a team of one inexperienced writer and whatever Batman writers weren't too busy that month to create a mini-series largely forgotten today, save by those who like to tear apart terrible comics. 

Welcome to Cross Roads.

Not a bad cover, really but the person shooting at Ollie can't aim worth crap.
With all due respect to those involved, Green Arrow's new writer/editor team was - pardon the pun - green.  The editor, Scott Peterson, was head Batman editor Dennis O'Neil's assistant and had only been with the company for two years. The writer, Kevin Dooley, was an assistant editor under Andy Helfer but had little writing experience at that time.  Indeed, Dooley's Wikipedia page says that he "dabbled" in writing and his scripts for Green Arrow certainly come across as the work of an inexperienced writer.   

Ironically both would later go on to better things, but in the opposite roles.  Not one year later, Dooley took over the editing duties on Green Lantern as Emerald Twilight was beginning and Aquaman just as Peter David began his acclaimed run.  Peterson would later become renowned as the co-writer of the Cassandra Cain Batgirl comic and the Batman: Gotham Adventures comics based on Batman: The Animated Series.  But that was later.  Now, we are in for a world of pain...

There's a "heavy metal vs. grunge" joke in here somewhere, but I can't be arsed to make it.
We open on a picture of this ugly fellow.  He is Shrapnel.  He's a super-villain.  He is, if the narrative can be believed, the first super-villain who has ever shown up in Seattle.  As the name suggests, he is a living pile of scrap metal that can blow himself up and then reconstitute.  If you'd like to know more about the character, I'm sorry but that's all the background anyone has given him.  Really!  I checked three different websites and they all say his background is largely unknown.

Not that this currently matters to Oliver Queen, who is currently Sir Not Appearing In This Fight Scene.  At that moment, while the SPD is trying (and failing) to keep Shrapnel under control, Ollie is giving a young hoodlum a stern talking to about his use of CFCs - i.e. spray-painting his and his special lady's initials on to the side of a dark alley.  The hoodlum's response - despite recognizing Ollie as Green Arrow - is to defend his actions of those of a man in love and to insult Ollie as an outsider after Ollie does the "Not in my town" routine.The words do strike a chord with Ollie and after sending the hoodlum running off with a warning and a face-full of paint, Ollie does what so many goatee-sporting men in Seattle back in 1993 did - angst!

Mercifully, he does not pull out a guitar and start to sing about it.  Instead, we're treated to a 2/3 page recap of the high-points of the Mike Grell run.  I've decided not to include the scan here because it spoils a lot of good comics I'd like to encourage everyone to track down and read.  All you really need to know for our purposes is that things got complicated between Ollie and his long-time girlfriend Dinah Lance (a.k.a. Black Canary) and that he's been kicked out of their house and left wondering if he should continue as a crime fighter in Seattle or go someplace else.

Meanwhile, in the more action-packed subplot...


If you didn't know this comic was from 1993 before...
The gent with the pink mohawk/ponytail and matching pants is Albert Rothstein a.k.a. Nuklon - grandson of the Golden Age villain Cyclotron, godson of the Golden Age hero The Atom, founding member of Infinity Inc. and Worst Dressed Sentient Being for three years running at the time of this issue's publication. He later went on to much better things - a better costume, size-control powers and membership in the JSA - but at the time of this comic he was just super-strong, super-durable and apparently color blind.

"God, this sucks."  Ollie's actual internal monologue - not my critique of this issue.
Eventually, all of the ruckus makes enough noise to get Ollie's attention from the alleyway he's moping in. Arriving on the scene, he starts trying to piece together who the heck these two yahoos are and what they're doing in his town.  And in case you're wondering if we ever get an explanation for what either of these two was doing in Seattle, don't worry - we don't.

That lady on the front row looks a LITTLE too into this...

I have to take the art-team to task a little bit for this sequence of pages.  Generally, this fight is paced well, but there are several odd bits in the art besides the oddly smiling on-lookers.  For one thing, the sign Nuklon is using to hit Shrapnel changes in how it is bent between panels.  Nuklon himself is inconsistently drawn, with his mohawk becoming oddly wide in some panels and a yellow triangle patch with a black G or C (it's hard to say what letter it is, but it's definitely not an 'N'!) disappearing from the back of his jacket and reappearing throughout.  Even the coloring is weird, with Nuklon starting out in pink but shifting to dark red at various points through the comic.  If they're trying to shade his outfit, it isn't very effective.

Again - the actual internal monologue from the comic. NOT my commentary!

For his part, Ollie isn't very effective in dealing with this situation and he knows it.  His arrows can't hurt either super-human so his actions are limited to keeping the fight away from the crowd and breaking the fight up verbally.  And yet, despite all the destruction, Ollie still can't stop thinking about Dinah as everything tonight keeps reminding him of her  Because of ANGST!

The guy with the spray-paint was committing vandalism over a woman in the first alley he and Dinah beat up criminals in together when they first came to Seattle.  The fight between Nuklon and Shrapnel is over a woman.  And then the espresso cart Ollie and Dinah used to go to all the time gets trashed!  Thankfully, Ollie does have one thing on his side - the love of the people of Seattle!


"Well, gee thanks.... say, shouldn't you people be fleeing in terror or at least taking cover?"
It's at this point that Ollie gets an idea, though he reflects that if he does it, he'll probably have to leave Seattle forever.  What happens next doesn't make a lick of sense to me.  I suspect Ollie's internal monologue here is really Kevin Dooley's excuse for forcing the goal of The Powers That Be (i.e. bring Ollie back into the main DCU) and trying to give Ollie one more reason for hitting the road other than "Get away from my ex and everything that reminds me of her."

The conflict, I think, is that Ollie can't operate in a city where he's caused massive property damage and Seattle won't want him around because they're so peaceful and unused to this sort of thing.  The problem is that - the DCU being what it is - it's patently unrealistic for a major city to not have some kind of accommodation for supervillains and the collateral damage that they cause.  They'd have to have a higher-than-average Act Of God insurance policy, at the very least! 

Adam Savage be damned! I reject your reality and substitute my own!

So what is Ollie's plan?  In defiance of common sense, the laws of physics and Myth Busters, Ollie is able to use the spark from an arrow hitting blacktop to ignite a trail of gasoline.  This instantly causes the nearby gas station to explode, knocking down Shrapnel and Nuklon without causing any other property damage whatsoever or injuring any of the civilians!  Enter a grateful Barbie look-alike, who it turns out was the target of Shrapnel's misplaced affections.  Yes, she's been standing there watching these two yahoos fight over her all this time and it seems she's eager to reward the hero of the hour.  Unfortunately for her, Ollie has another woman on his mind.  And unfortunately for Ollie, that woman was in the crowd... watching Barbie trying to kiss him.


And in front of Dinah, Kevin McAllister's grandfather expresses his shock.
So here's a question - why the hell wasn't Dinah doing something in all of this?  She's just as much a superhero as Ollie and it wouldn't be the first time she's fought someone outside her weight-class.  Did she just now get there?  If so, why is she walking away from what could still be a volatile situation where lives are in danger?  Because I think that saving lives is more important than your avoiding the drama caused by running into your ex in public.  Just saying...

Naturally, the impossible explosion barely slowed Nuklon and Shrapnel down.  Faced with the love of his life turning her back on him again and his last bit of patience for what had already been a terrible, awful, no-good, very bad day exhausted, Ollie loses it.  He then proceeds to tell everyone in the immediate area why they suck in no uncertain terms.  This goes about as well as everything else Ollie has tried to do today.


Shrapnel, seems to fly away through a controlled explosion.  Nuklon peacefully lets the cops arrest him, knowing that the Justice League will probably have him sprung in 24 hours.  And Barbie stomps off after telling Ollie he isn't really that attractive and she is SO worth having men fight over.

Enter Lt. James Cameron - the closest thing Ollie has to a Commissioner Gordon in the Seattle Police Department.  The two are far from friends but over the years they've built up something of a partnership of convenience.  In brief, Ollie was allowed the freedom to operate provided he kept the police informed of his activities and in return they would bring him in as a consultant to deal with certain cases.  This makes it completely out of character when Cameron decides to dust off the '"vigilantes cause trouble" speech he gave Ollie when they first met back in The Longbow Hunters.


I'm going to angst in an alleyway!  Or maybe on a rooftop!  I haven't decided.  ANNNNNNNGST!

By this point, Ollie has had more than enough.  So he steals Lt. Cameron's thunder, basically saying that they can't kick him out because he's leaving.  This announcement stuns Lt. Cameron so greatly that he drops his coffee... wait a second.  Where did he get that coffee from?!  I know this is Seattle and there's a coffee shop on every corner but... did he just come from the coffee shop?  Did the cops just give up on trying to contain the fight and decide to take a break?  I'm not sure if that's the smartest thing they could have done or the most neglectful!  

*sighs* Anyway, the issue ends with Ollie saying goodbye to Seattle, goodbye to Dinah and deciding he's going to San Francisco.  No word on if he'll be wearing flowers in his hair.

This comic isn't quite as bad as I remembered it but it's still pretty bad.   The fight scenes hold up pretty well if you ignore the blatant violations of the laws of physics and Ollie's written like the smartass we all know and love.  But the continual angsting in the middle of the action gets really old, really quick.  And Ollie comes off as an incredibly ineffective hero, with none of his actions doing anything positive and the central conflict of the issue resolving itself after everyone involved collectively says "Screw you guys.  I'm going home."

This issue set the trend for the biggest problems with Cross Roads as a whole.  First, since the entire goal of this storyline was to bring Ollie into stories involving other DC Comics characters, every single one of these stories feels like an issue of someone else's comic where Ollie is a guest star rather than the focus of the action.  Next, because Ollie is so frequently out of his element, he doesn't come across as the competent, experienced hero that he is.  Finally, because the creators involved are unfamiliar with Ollie as a character and his level of experience, there's a lot of moments where Ollie is horribly out of character in terms of what he will do and what he's capable of.

This issue was not too bad in that regard.  Next time will be much, MUCH worse.

Slade Wilson cast for 'Arrow'

SOURCE: Who Is Under Deathstroke’s Mask? Arrow Casts Slade Wilson


 

Manu Bennett (Spartacus) has been cast as Slade Wilson.  He will apparently be appearing in multiple episodes of the show.  No word on if it will be in flashbacks or the modern day segments.

Damn.  Slap an eye-patch on that sucker and he's perfect, looks-wise.  I haven't seen the Starz Spartacus series - anyone know how his acting chops are?