Identity Crisis #7

[history79]

7.5 pages of 30

Comments

[walkingthroughforest]

If there's one thing I loved about this story, it was the humanizing factor which Meltzer brought to the characters. Each line is raw, and filled with human emotion. For all its flaws, it was an absolute landmark event in DC which dug in much deeper into its characters than any large scale story before it.

[icon_uk]

There are indeed some interesting beats here, and the potential for a genuinely profound story, but it misses every major notion of plot, logic or character to do so The emotion is there, but it's (IMHO) the wrong emotion for nearly every character.

And if it had to do be written beacuse retconning in the rape of a major character, which then has to exist side by side with a LOT of history of that character which (of course) never referenced it, and which basically soured the entire history of several members of the pre-eminent heroic team, and which was also pretty much never referenced by anyone, I'd rather Meltzer hadn't bothered.

[mrstatham]

"Dr Palmer, are you okay?"

Dude. You're.. You're a fucking doctor of mental health. Bowl cut aside, you should not be an unintelligent man. How the fuck is he okay? He just found out that - bullshit plot shenanigans aside that single him out as the killer more than her - his ex-wife murdered one of his best friends and got several others killed. How the fuck do you need to ask if he's okay?

[captainbellman]

"Take care of my wife, Dr. Nerdy McDorkerton."

"That's the third time today! I keep telling you all, my name is Dr. Phillips!"

[icon_uk]

Please, this is Gotham City (and. given the bowl cut, that's probably Professor Milo, an specialist in CAUSING insanity) Ray's story wouldn't even make page 5 of the Gotham Herald as a footnote.

[reveen]

Eh, this is Arkham, his quote-unquote "Doctorate" is probably in Psychometrics.

[yvonmukluk]

Was this a story that needed to be told?

Seriously, WHAT WAS THE POINT.

[md84]

To justify Batman being paranoid enough to build Brother Eye, which later became part of Infinite Crisis.

[sagrada]

To make the Silver Age heroes look as Serious and Important as their later successors. It's a hilariously dumb trend that comics are constantly escalating the tragedies that their characters face, with the measure of a character's importance being just how MUCH tragedy they've faced or endured. With this extra few dollops suddenly Ray Palmer, Hal Jordan and the rest have all the credibility of later incarnations. Making their universe darker than it actually was(Identity Crisis' version of Mr. Mind must be seen to be laughed at) gives the impression that they're relevant, that they dealt with Serious matters, that these were weighty, flawed characters with complex inner lives. Of course it's a lie, but who cares about that?

[jaybee3]

So Didio could make DC compete with Marvel by making their universe as dark and "realistic" as the Marvelous Competition. Seriously. That was the point. This was the title that got DC all the headlines and put them ahead of Marvel for awhile instead of the other way around (though it was Hush that really did it).

[steverodgers5]

This place has corrupted me..All I can think of for that last panel is the caption is saying 'Back to Normal' with a shot of Wally looking at Diana's behind. Except he's not happy. And if the sight of that can't cheer you up, then by golly that's when you know you're really down..

[drtechnobabel]

"Like I said, back to normal. Until I saw the silicone peeking out of Diana's rear, and realized that she had been using padding this whole time. How flat was her butt, really? Clearly, this was the most important internal problem to ever plague the Justice League."

[bizarrohulk]

So Ray just decides to ignore due process and Jean's right to a fair trial (which would obviously be inconvenient for the superhero community) and have her committed to the worst insane asylum in the world where, apparently, she's tortured by the other inmates and drugged into near-catatonia? That's no better than what was done to Dr. Light in the first place, and is arguably *worse*, yet everyone, including Batman, just goes along with it.

And even if you accept - somehow - that institutionalization without trial is the right choice, does DC America not have *any* other psychiatric hospitals? Ones that aren't, y'know, full of supervillains?

[beyondthefringe]

You'd think Bruce Wayne, for instance, could pick up the tab to get Jean treated somewhere private, safe, and exclusive.

What? They need Ray to approve? And he's nowhere to be found? Piffle. I hear getting people to dress up as other people is all the rage. Or just call J'Onn.

But how can we expect Meltzer to know about due process? It's not like he went to Columbia Law School and is also married to a lawyer or anything.
Oh. Ooops.

[reveen]

I'm having a hard time believing that the National Enquirer would run a headline like that because, y'know, it's probably actually fucking happening.

Seriously, why would you specifically choose to have someone sent to Arkham? What the fuck has to be wrong with you to think that's a good idea?

[jekylls_salvation]

It would have to be to punish her. All that "justice, vengeance" stuff, terribly unhealthy. I would not have thought Ray such a spiteful man. I hope he remedied this upon attaining a better state of mind.

[bradygirl_12]

What a sad, dreary little story.

[icon_uk]

Oh, if only it WERE little...

[night4345]

Poor Tim. :(

[wtfomfg2]

I really do not like this story, but I really do like that cover.

[jekylls_salvation]

While nice, it reminds me of how confused I am about Hawkman's wings, and that always leads to an endless pit.

[ekrolo2]

Nothings funnier than people complaining about a story that's not canon anymore and for all intents and purposes doesn't exist anymore.

[beyondthefringe]

Haven't you heard? In DC's viewpoint, all stories are valid until they're not.
I'm surprised one of the Convergence titles isn't about the Identity Crisis heroes attacking the world of the groovy '60s-era Teen Titans or something.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

...how did Ray institutionalize Jean? I mean, they're freakin' divorced, it was stated earlier in the story!

[salad_barbarian]

The only thing I can think of it that he's a superhero. Whatever he does is assumed to be right. I'm pretty sure Batman drops people off there all the time with few questions.

[yvonmukluk]

Ugh...someone post Ralph & Sue Dibney, ghost detectives as a palate cleanser.

Actually that reminds me: Boston Brand was a ghost who possessed people to fight crime whose body got reanimated in Blackest Night and then was resurrected completely.

The Dibneys were also ghosts who possessed people to fight crime and whose bodies were reanimated in Blackest Night...but they stayed dead. While Captain Boomerang and Maxwell Lord were resurrected. There's no fucking justice.

[steverodgers5]

Man, I hope Routh and the Arrow writers when researching the history of Atom don't pay any attention to this nonsense!

[bradygirl_12]

Amen to that, brother!

[q99]

Hm.... why did they *not* break up over this when they *did* break up over Wonder Woman killing Max Lord...?

[jekylls_salvation]

Diana is rocking some serious hourglass curves there.

[tigerkaya]

Being a Marvel I was rather annoyed by the Justice League and their sanctimonious view on Marvel during Avengers vs JLA and while I did have respect for DC I just can't help but feel bias at how they act as if their so perfect. But reading and watching the reviews of Identity Crisis well payback is one of hell of a Karma. Plus slogging through the various comments on these sites about how DC is more perfect and morally upright than Marvel and how the Marvel U. should be destroyed well all I can say is at least we don't pull a Wizard in brainwashing people against their will. Now the DC universe is even more convoluted with this New52 with heroes being more unstable and immorally heroic.

This is a well deserved payback.

[wizardru]

So....Identity Crisis.

Let's be clear here: in terms of story beats and pacing, this is pretty well done stuff. Meltzer is a well-known writer outside of comics (or so I understand, I'd never heard of him prior, haven't read him post, but that's no reflection on him, just my tastes). He understands how to deliver a story and this one works just fine.

The issues with this story, however, are legion for me. First, it wants to eat its cake and have it, too. It wants to evoke the Silver Age, but then make it all 'but now you know the TRUTH!' in terms of giving the whole exercise a seedy underbelly and noir sensibility that it really can't bear the weight of in context. As an Otherworlds story, this would work. This is clearly an 'I'm going to take the comics of my youth and write something HARDCORE with them' effort, except that instead of being fanfic, it's a major event in-universe.

Much has been written about how the characters are all badly off, as if Meltzer didn't know or care to know much about them individually, other than how he decided they'd be. That's excusable in a stand-alone title or Otherworld story, but this was a core tale that set the tone of the entire line for years. Presumably it was very financially successful, although again it wasn't something I wanted to read and thus didn't. I see it sold in the top 5 each month ~140,000 copies back in 2004...so succesful, but not unbelievably so (Astonishing X-Men and the Loeb/Turner/Guiness Batman/Superman outsold it mostly). But as a core story of the DCU, it seems really odd: all at once part of the DCU but then not; it wants to 'change everything' but many of the other titles generally spent time ignoring it whenever possible.

In terms of being a 'mystery', it really isn't one. It's all Red Herrings; there's no logical way to guess that Jean is the murderer at all. No hints to really explain it logically, with tons of leaps that are never explained in story. Some of them probably just got dropped due to editing, but some are just oversights that could have been solved, but are never addressed, making them egregious. If you have a murder mystery (and my understanding is Meltzer is a crime fiction writer) then knowing ALL THE DETAILS of the murder is pretty much expected and demanded. It appears here that Meltzer expected to apply a degree of realism to his tale, but then didn't think he had to apply rigor because 'superheroes'. He never commits fully to his premise, conveniently forgetting details of the characters to serve his plot.

He also makes some really weird choices in terms of characters. Targeting Wally for the 'you know we need to keep our identities secret!' to the guy's who identity had been public knowledge for 20 years seemed off, but then this is right when DC made his wife a target and killed his children (temporarily?), I guess, as a tie-in to the event. So there's that. Thanks, Geoff Johns. The problem is that Wally never gets to be anything but a sounding board for Ollie to say whatever he wants. Wally is never presented as putting forth any counter-arguments, with Meltzer apparently intending Wally to sound naive and inexperienced, which is kind of bullshit.

I hadn't realized how problematic the series was for women until rereading this and seeing just how shitty the women are treated in this. Most of the female heroes are marginalized at best, villified at worst. That one shot zooming in on Zatana, making her the focal point? Not great. The book not having a single female protagonist of any size or input? Not great. It's treatment of female characters overall? Super Not Great.

All in all this thing is damaged goods and a hot mess, IMHO. It's not what I want from my comics. Period.