Linkara Tackles Identity Crisis, I Analyse the Incredibles, and An Odd Dr Doom Cover

[espanolbot]

Firstly, the cover,


Linkara's Fifteen Things Wrong with Identity Crisis,


In addition, here's my analysis of the Incredibles, and how I don't think that it's actually about Objectivism, which seems to be the go-to interpretation of the film in certain circles,
http://espanolbot.blogspot.com/2012/01/is-incredibles-objectivist-movie.html

EDIT: Yikes, people are getting personal against Linkara in the comments here, what gives?

Comments

[mrstatham]

There's nothing in Identity Crisis about her being one of the newer members, though. And she actively agrees to let them put it to a vote, from what I recall. She's also the one who stops Batman without intervention from anyone else, so if she was entirely innocent (Guh, I fucking HATE Meltzer for even making me type this shit), then surely she wouldn't have stopped Batman.

[espanolbot]

Her freezing Batman COULD be interpreted as her doing it on reflex... I guess, as an enraged Batman charging towards you with a batarang raised to throw is bound to make people flinch. What happened afterwards... I can't remember if they voted on it or not.

And I've suddenly remembered all the self righteous crap that Hal and Ollie put up to Bruce over the years about how he's too paranoid and unforgiving (when Hal returned to life as a Green Lantern again for example)... yet really, in the context of the Identity Crisis reveal not having been shown yet, they themselves should have known that their decision to mess with his mind is pretty much justification for Batman's behaviour in the FIRST PLACE!

[mrstatham]

I think that was YET ANOTHER (to use Linkara's style of tone) thing that Identity Crisis just left hanging out there thanks to Meltzer - There's that implication that Batman flatout KNOWS something was done to him by his friends, and DC used that, I think, to try and unofficially explain why Batman was getting so dark in the run up to Infinite Crisis. Which was again, something Meltzer never cared to really explain, and DC really dropped the ball on. In reality, of course, it was writer after writer thinking it was good to drop Miller's Batman into the mainstream continuity, and whilst the 'mindwipe paranoia' stuff might've worked as an explanation, it wasn't explained nearly well enough to be satisfactory.

But yes, the way Johns painted Hal and Ollie as basically triumphing over the paranoid and nasty Batman - despite the fact that Identity Crisis was ONGOING as Rebirth was released, was hilarious, somehow. It makes the 'one punch' thing leave an even sourer taste in my mouth - Not only is Hal Jordan a petty little fucker who has to resort to punching the only person who questions his glorious return whilst Guy Gardner squees like a little fangirl, but hey, Hal shit all over the guy in the past, too.

[jaybee3]

Yes, I hated that. What's worse is that it was JOHNS who used that the idea that mind-wiping was what amped up Batman's paranoia to the point it got to Infinite Crisis with the OMAC thing and he also used it in the only real storyline that dealt with the fallout of IC - JLA: Crisis of Conscience where the only 2 conspirators who had actually apolgized to him were Zatanna and Ollie (who always feels guilty after the fact) and yet in Rebirth (also by Johns), Batman comes up looking dumb for questioning the greatness of Hal Jordan and we're supposed to root for him punching Bats.

I think part of it is that DC and Johns didn't know what to do with the mind-wipe of Batman except to use it as part of the Batjerk rationale. For instance, Wonder Woman is incensed when Superman tells her about the mind-wiping of villians. But she never finds out about what they did to Bruce (I can imagine her reaction - now THAT would have been a story). Superman admitted he guessed about the mind-wipes (he is Superman) but looked the other way - but was he really never suspicious that Batman "the World's Greatest Detective" either didn't know about or didn't have a problem with it? Could it be subconsciously Clark knew they did something to him too (THAT would have been a story). How about the super-heroes who are close to Bruce but no close to the conspirators finding out - particularly people like Black Lightning, Katana, Nightwing, Tim Drake and the like (THAT would have been a story). Or Wally facing the fact that Barry (who voted for it) had feet of clay and them discussing it on Barry's return (THAT would have been a story). Or as I've said before the most obvious one - Oracle and Black Canary. Dinah has lived with this secret (and hasn't seemed the bit guilty over it until she got caught) and lived in Gotham and all that and they never had it out over this . Which means they had this whole juicy discussion off-panel (a waste of a story), there is something the all-knowing Oracle didn't know and her best friend and partner was continually lying to her about with aplomb or Oracle did know and had NO problem with it (that I don't buy).

But DC didn't want to explore any of this - except as a reason for Bruce to build Brother One and to drag Zatanna continually through some apology tour each time she appeared.

[mrstatham]

All of this is exactly why it's a bad idea for something like superhero comics - especially poorly written superhero comics - to start bringing in very strong, very morally charged ideas that would be incredibly problematic and divisive. It's bad when Marvel did it with Civil War - because all that broke down to was Iron Man the fascist and Cap the idiot, and it's bad here, because they dump these ideas on the table, and don't bother to fully explore any of them. It's always the same, and it's what pisses me off about event books - even the ones that aren't run through with very real world morality - they want to just bring these issues up and play with them, and then that's it.

Frankly, I think Identity Crisis is a shitty, shitty story that never should've happened, so to some degree, I don't blame DC trying to get shot of it nearly as quickly as possible, but on the other hand, the sheer wealth of stuff that should've come from it is pretty damn astonishing, really, as you're pointed out. If they're going to dump this real world morality on the DC heroes, why isn't it being fully explored instead of the half-assed crap we got? Lines should've been drawn in the sand for good. But Johns evidently wanted to play golden boy and reshuffle things so the heroes could all work together again..

And then of course, DC still insisted on dragging up the bleaker stuff that happened prior to IC.