Hopeless-ly bad
Bad writing can be forgiven if there is a genuinely novel story to be told. Too bad there is nothing novel about Avengers Arena. The Hunger Games was a better re-imagining of Koushun Takami's Battle Royale. I won't invoke plagiarism as I don't believe Hopeless attempted to plagiarize. However, wrongfully appropriated seems an appropriate statement. I want to emphasize the use of the word wrongful as there is nothing right about this series, the writing is terrible. There is however MUCH that is WRONG.
We often like to refer to writers Like Dan Brown , Suzanne Collins or J.K. Rowling (the Harry Potter series eerie similarities to Gaiman's Books of Magic) when using the phrase "taking creative liberties." Hopeless manages to "take creative liberties" to a new low. Unlike these other writers, Hopeless not only suffers from a lack of creativity, but a lack of research; Nico has already used the phrase "Freeze" and "Chill Out." Arcade has no Superpowers and to use the literary invention of Miss Coriander to wizard into canonical reality a god-modding Arcade in order to explain away Arcade's sudden arsenal of super powers and to force readers into accepting a completely non-canonical scenario, is simply bad story-telling.
Killing off one of the most loved characters from one of Marvel's more successful series was the nail in the coffin for me. I'm glad they chose Hopeless to write this, his name is an excellent summation of what I think of this series... utterly hopeless. I smell a retcon on the horizon.
