I feel like some people are misinterpreting Absolute Dinah. I don't really see her as a bland neutral party or reader stand-in at all, and I feel like you have to ignore the majority of her dialogue to interpret her as such?
Dinah spends much of #1 referencing studies showing how much rich people suck. She hates billionaires with a burning passion. She's upset and hates herself so much for resorting to protecting them because she needs to pay for her dad's medication. She doesn't think that the lower classes can do anything about it. She's also against murder. She's also scared that she's happy to see billionaires suffer.
These things can and do coexist. There are so many people who are just like this. You probably know someone like this! Maybe you're like this! So many people are fully aware of how shitty the world is, who hate the assholes with all the power, but don't think we can do anything about it. And yes, are still against murder even if it's the worst people on the planet. She can be against murder and anti-capitalist.
Being against murder doesn't erase everything else she's thought in the last 3 issues. It sure as hell doesn't make her liberal as I've somehow seen people complain. Come on, liberals are NOT that aware. Maybe she was a liberal cop once upon a time, but you think she's one NOW??? Now, she's the pinnacle of disillusionment and working class fatigue!
Maybe by the end of this comic, she will have come around and agreed that murdering billionaires and rapists is good. Maybe she'll remain too afraid of her own bloodlust towards them to go through with it, or stick to her guns in seeing murder as purely bad no matter who does it. Neither makes her political opinions 'lesser' than the (likely male) Green Arrow.
Dinah is an ex-cop who was likely radicalized by something her cop mom did that shook her and her dad. She's a lower class woman who had to quit a job she loved and suck up to rich people to pay for her dad's meds. She dated what seemed to be a fellow socialist who wanted to make the world a better place and they broke up because he cheated on her, and then he became rich. She scrolls on Tiktok to see people's reaction to Slade's death. She consumes online studies about psychology, and theories about her exes' death. She tries so hard to suck it all up and bear it, to hide her true feelings when she's on the job. The first time we see her talk much on the job is in her fight with Mia.
Her and Mia are foils. Mia quotes studies she read online, just like Dinah. She feels the same way as her. She just doesn't hide it the way she does. In fact, she's extremely vocal about it, in real life and online. She even has the same sort of job Dinah used to have and liked. They go off the topic of Oliver's death pretty quickly, because they both know what's really going on here. They don't ignore it. And this conversation instantly leaves Dinah's partner extremely uncomfortable, because he either hasn't realized it or just wants to ignore it. (Genuinely, this moment is my favourite in the series so far)
She's not a generic plot device whose only point is to get radicalized by Green Arrow, tell you that you should be against murder, ease you into the radical message of the story, convince dc to publish the comic, or whatever other excuses people have come up with. She is a full fledged character! Just because the story centers around political messages doesn't mean that the characters in the story aren't written like real people with their own lives and opinions.
And isn't one of the biggest compliments about Abs GA that it portrays the way working class Americans feel about our economic situation really well? Please explain to me why we can't extend this opinion to the female protagonist who is spearheading it.
Maybe, just maybe, you're supposed to pay attention to the protagonists thoughts that are being actively shown to you!
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