When I first read the headline, Comic to Feature HIV-Positive Sidekick, I thought, Wow, that’s some dark humor! Then I realized they were referring to a comic book:
Along with fighting alien menaces and criminal masterminds, the “Green Arrow” comic book will now feature a sidekick engaged in a more personal struggle — this one against HIV.It’s the first major comic book to deal with the illness, and a dose of hard-edged reality to the usually fanciful world of costumed crime fighters.
In the latest issue of “Green Arrow” set for publication Wednesday, a teenage runaway named Mia — who has been in the care of the title hero for two years — discovers that her time spent as a street-dweller and prostitute has resulted in her picking up the virus.
Writer Judd Winick, who oversees the “Green Arrow” story line, said this is a way to explore socially conscious themes while also giving the Mia character extra motivation to make a difference in the world.
“We’ve been hinting all along the way that she’s interested in taking up the mantle, being a sidekick, getting out there in the streets and helping out,” Winick told The Associated Press. “Green Arrow won’t hear of it.”
The news that she has HIV leads her to push Green Arrow even more. Fighting crime, Winick said, is what she wants to do with her life. “So he allows her to slap on a costume and become his sidekick, which has the silly name of Speedy,” Winick said. “It’s not as a death wish, but she can’t fool around anymore. This isn’t about an abbreviated life span. It is about life having focus,” he added.
Speedy was originally a boy sidekick, but the character is now grown up and goes by the more mature name of Arsenal.
They left out a very important detail: the original Speedy became a drug addict in one of the first “socially conscious” comic book stories, back in the 1960s. (Around that same time, Oliver Queen, Green Arrow’s millionaire alter ego, lost his vast wealth and became explicitly left wing.)
I didn’t immediately recognize Judd Winick’s name:
Winick may be known to some from his stint on MTV’s roommate reality-show, “The Real World” 1993, on which he appeared with Pedro Zamora, who died the next year after a public battle with AIDS.