10 Incredible Comic Book Panels That Changed Everything
5. "My Ward is A Junkie!"
DC Comics
There's so much more to Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams' Green Lantern/Green Arrow series than just this scene, but hey, it's a panel that fits the bill, so it's here.
Taken from the Snowbirds Don't Fly arc from the same series, Neal Adams' depiction of Oliver Queen's loyal sidekick, Roy Harper, shooting up, proved to be a watershed moment in an industry still heavily censored by the now-defunct Comics Code Authority. Marvel had just produced a similar storyline in Spider-Man, but the O'Neil/Adams arc came from a place of experience, with both creators having dealt with loved ones struggling with substance abuse - particularly heroin - at the height of the seventies' drugs scare.
The language might be dated, but O'Neil and Adams' arc came from a place of good intent. That, and well, the panel of Speedy shooting up was a first in the medium, so it was visually and thematically significant for the industry at the time.
The entire series is certainly worth a read, and continues to be DC's finest - and indeed most revolutionary - work from that decade.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
