Heroes in Crisis #9

[history79]

Comments

[elilla]

Ok all's well that end well, but……… isn't that rationale a little bit weird? Flash shouldn't sacrifice himself because… "bros before heroes"? Shouldn't it be because heroic sacrifice is a means, not an end; that you don't become a hero by virtue of sacrifice, but rather you're willing to do the right thing, and that sometimes costs sacrifices? Which implies that sacrificing just for the sake of it is silly, and you can and should avoid hurting yourself when there's a better solution, and in this case there's a better solution?

[laughing_tree]

They go into that a bit in some of the unposted pages.

[lordultimus]

Ummm... Wasn't the whole point that losing Linda and the kids was something that was wrong with reality that needed to be fixed?

[jlbarnett]

unfortunately DC's editorial stance since Flashpoint New52 seems to be reality is what it is, and it's wrong for heroes to try to change it

[mizerous]

...How bad is it that Daredevil could tell a story of a hero accidentally killing someone in a more human and real tone than this...

[thehood]

Right? Daredevil handled it far better.

[onsokumaru]

This is the kind of thing that makes me stay away from DC. Not that Marvel is better. It's just that I'm glad I've never read enough DC to grew attached to all the characters featured in that mini.

Most people are complaining about Wally being ruined.
But trying to think what it would be like as a Marvel comics, I'd say maybe Miles Morales would be in Wally's shoes.
And most readers would say "poor Miles, he is ruined", but he would still be alive and get his own ongoing and writers would talk about him, about where he is going now, all that.
While his victims, let's say Finesse, Prodigy, Anthem, el Aguila, Jackpot, Turbo, Century... would stay dead and almost nobody would talk/care about it.

So I figure if I was a DC reader, I would probably be sad about Wally, but I would mostly be pissed that Kid Devil, Blue Jay and others goy killed to provide him Important-character Pain

[janegray]

This.

They say "nobody stays dead in comics." But minor characters very much do.

[deh_tommy]

Poison Ivy is not Swamp Thing, and I'm not sure I appreciate this series in trying to make her Swamp Thing.

Cripes, I didn't like this book. Everyone comes out worse for wear.

[ebailey140]

It's a story thread that started in Swamp Thing and Damage. The Parliament of Trees isn't happy with Alec and wants a more warlike Avatar of the Green that they have more control over. Pam refuses to be controlled, but Alec thinks the Parliament will keep trying, that Pam has some trials ahead of her. She has someone to keep her grounded, though.

As for this series, I expect it will read better as a single collection. The Robins had some nice moments, this issue, and Cass said what Cass would say under the circumstances. The folks who want Harley back with the Joker are REALLY not going to like this series.

Wally came out worse for wear.

[zachbeacon]

Yep, they've pulled a Speedball/Penance.

I wonder how Wally's best friend, Dick Grayson, will react to all this.

Oh right, never mind.

[shadwing]

The Cynic in me is wondering if King got Dick shot JUST to be sure he wouldn't be 'in the way' of this story.

[crinos]

So.... still pretending this never happened.

[lucean]

So I give it four years before they Parallax the hell out of this.

[ebailey140]

You don't think it will be Dr. Manhattan's meddling, like in the next couple of months?

[tripodeca113]

Huh. Well that certainly was an ending.

[flint_marko]

It's the little things, but I like how they allude to Maxwell Lord shooting Ted, Terra betraying the Titans, or Kimiyo Hoshi being Dr. Light (with the implication she was upset about using the name because the original was a rapist), like any of that is still canon.

And they're still using Sanctuary, despite how well that worked the last time when they decided to not use actual therapists to help the heroes?

Just crap.

[ebailey140]

A lot of Pre-Flashpoint stories were restored with Rebirth. They even did a sequel to The Judus Contract. The Batman family have had years restored. Damian is 13, now. Details of the earlier stories changed due to what back stories were kept from the New 52. Morrison's Joker history was restored, which is why he acts like the Bronze Age Joker in flashbacks where he's affectionate and caring with Harley and like an uncle to Astrid Arkham. It undercuts Snyder's Joker a bit, since he now wasn't always that way, but it makes the history with Harley make sense, as Harley, as we know her, would never have gotten involved with Snyder's Joker. The Silver and Bronze Age versions, sure...

Continuity is basically whatever the current stories say it is. Bronze Age Joker stories happened, but Harley was there. So, we can presume the incident where he was trying to copyright fish happened, but it was more like this...

https://youtu.be/gf7Tbt9ewY8

Personally, since the Bronze Age Joker is my favorite one, I like having that period restored, but I understand others might not feel the same.

[informationgeek]

After this has all ended, I come back to thinking about this interview with Tom King recently. One quote from it jumps out:

"As I've said many times before, I don't pick the characters for my story; I give my plot to the editors and then the editors pick the characters for me. So I told them in the beginning, "this is what it's going to be -- it's going to be about one hero who's made a mistake and it's going to be about the two heroes that get framed for that mistake." And they said, "okay, it's Booster, Harley, and Wally, those are the three characters.""

[flint_marko]

I knew the c-listers killed off were just characters he picked from a list DC gave him, but wow.

[spider_man6]

Gonna bet at least a year and a half before they retcon any of this to make the fans happy.

[locuatico]

So... were any of the deaths prevented? or are they still dead? because my dislike of the series will be different depending of the outcome.

[flint_marko]

Only Ivy and Wally.

[mastermahan]

So if they can subvert Wally's death with time travel and a speed-clone corpse, I assume they'll also going to do that for everyone else.

They're not? Okay. Sure.

Bros before C-Listers, apparently.

[ebailey140]

They got to Wally before he killed himself, so he didn't die in the first place.

[starwolf_oakley]

Sacrificial heroism is deconstructed from time to time.

"You aren't sacrificing yourself to be a hero! You're sacrificing yourself because you can't think of anything else to do! You're sacrificing yourself to avoid the consequences! And most importantly, you're sacrificing yourself TO MAKE ME LOOK BAD!"

Or, as Mara Jade said in DARK FORCE RISING, "Let's not be heroic to the point of stupidity here."

[deh_tommy]

"To die for one's people is a great sacrifice. To live for one's people, an even greater sacrifice. I choose to live for my people. What do you choose?"

[malitia]

...

EW

[scorntx]

So, after Wally has a breakdown that results in several people dying, on account of his powers (suddenly) going all destructive when he loses emotional control, rather than trying to get him any sort of actual, constructive help (because hey, if it fails the first time, just give up forever!) they're going to... bung him in a prison cell.

Okay...

[icon_uk]

Arkham was full...

[kurenai_tenka]

My main problem with this is them straight up stating that Wally sharing people's private therapy videos was somehow noble/good. If he'd wanted to do that, he could've just used his own, and avoided the gross violation of privacy.

[locuatico]

I am willing to say, it was morally questionable, but there can be points made defending Wally's decision to do so. Lois Lane's decision of using them like she did... not so much.

[beyondthefringe]

I've said it before, I'll say it again.
This series infuriates me because fundamentally, it's a bad story. It's got a great premise, and some really good concepts were introduced, but at the end of the day, it's poorly-written and executed, and now that it's all over, Tom King utterly botched the ending.

Wally West, a fan favorite who people had been asking to return for YEARS, is brought back, only to be utterly ruined by turning him into an accidental mass murderer, a would-be suicide, and a broken man.

Over a dozen other characters are dragged out of comic Limbo to be unceremoniously slaughtered, whether or not it made any sense for them to exist in continuity at this moment in time anyway, their traumas mined from obscure stories. Some were out-of-character, some weren't even correctly depicted. And yet all were wasted just to heap more trauma on Wally.

The entire -mystery- turned out to staged, and the answer involved time travel bullshit. The resolution involved time travel bullshit and future cloning technology. The whodunnit portion was -explained- to the audience by the perpetrator in such a fashion that the world's greatest detective and forensic scientist, the ones investigating the mystery, essentially had no part in solving it. Lois Lane, the world's best investigative journalist, was drawn in but likewise useless in solving anything.

The ending shows that no one's learned a damn thing about how to properly treat superhero grief, trauma, and PTSD, and no one's learned a damn thing from the tragedy in the first place.

This story REEKS of editorial interference (write extra issues! kill these random characters chosen from a list!) and authorial incompetence. (And I don't say the last lightly...) It basically took a good idea and good characters and created a flaming toxic mess that will take years to undo and which has eradicated a tremendous amount of goodwill on the part of the fanbase.

If this series had retconned itself out of existence on the final page, I'd have been annoyed but at the same time relieved. As it stands, if any of the victims of this massacre return without explanation, I'd be okay with that. Because they deserve better.

[zylly]

That sums up my thoughts exactly

[shakalooloo]

Did DC just release this series in an effort to make Identity Crisis look better by comparison?

[lego_joker]

Y'know what, I'm going to make that my leading theory.

[luxshine]

Can anyone explain to me what was the point of this? I mean... besides killing a few c-listers and giving lip service to certain events as "therapy", what was resolved? Did any character grew? Will this even matter in the long run? Why did Lois simply showed all the therapy tapes? What was the follow up of that? Why did heroes go back to Sanctuary to tell its secrets when it had been hacked once? Why is Kyle singing in spanish? Why should ANYONE care?

[wizardru]

So can someone give the simplified version here? Because I'm terribly confused.

The gist I get is this: Wally has PTSD from being brought back without his family. He goes to Sanctuary to tell his trauma to a video recorder and then freaks out and needs to be somewhere quiet, outside. But his running out triggers an alarm so a bunch of people run outside and then...what, he release a ton of speed energy and kills a bunch of C-list characters and then desperately races to cover it up with a...robot?

And then Booster and Harley are implicated...somehow? And what does this resolution entail? I don't understand the reason for subterfuge or what they're actually doing in the end, here. Making sure to stage everything so the false narrative they set up still tracks, but somehow saving all the people he killed who are bankable? Or something? I don't follow this.

The greater question of 'why was this done' and 'who was this for' are out there, of course. Watching Wally go from 'sidekick' to 'hero thrust into mentor's legacy role and growing into it (and earning the respect of his peers)' to 'Successful hero respected by his peers' to 'Superhero father' to 'victim and accidental murderer' is...it's not great.

[flint_marko]

Wally framed Booster and Harley to cover his tracks.

[zer0man]

So, we've come to the end of this so-called 'Crisis' and what have we learned? What have the characters learned? How has the DC Universe been irrevocably changed? Well... Nothing that we already knew, nothing that they already knew... and nothing really overall. So, 3 for 3, this ends up being a waste of time. But this had so much potential.

Like others, I feel that the premise of having a safe haven for heroes and reformed villains to be able to come to terms with their mental issues like PTSD is very viable and has a chance to tell stories that can allow characters to process past tales, allowing them to give greater characterization during those critical moments in DC history. Hell, DC could easily do Sanctuary 1-shots that are released at the end of ongoing major events transpiring at the time.

My biggest issue is the type of story that is told: The murder mystery. When we saw the various victims in Sanctuary, we knew that right away that something didn't click. So many people killed in quick succession, and somehow one of the victims is legitimately considered the fastest man alive and is able to travel through time? Uh-uh, that felt wrong. The fact that you had the world's greatest detective and one of the top forensic scientists stymied by what happened? Again, it felt wrong. Having one of the victims in fact be the killer? It's fair to say we expected it, especially in a comic-book universe and moreso considering one of the victims.

However, given some time to think, I actually do have a sense of appreciation with King's take on Wally's thoughts during Issue 8... up to a point. You see, I've spent a lot of time dealing with depression and PTSD myself (and still do to this day), and I know that having it will cause you to see things in a different light. You often feel alone, that you have this guilty shame that no one else could possibly understand or deal with. You feel that people want you to be okay, so you try and show yourself to be strong, to be okay for their sakes. And for a period of time, you do feel okay. Then something happens, some incident that throws you off balance, that makes you feel like you did before, and the pain from the past comes back as fresh as it did the first time, leading to you performing the same actions as before to return back to the norm. This goes on for some time, then you see others who act like you do, and you realize that you are indeed not alone in suffering. Having Wally go through all that before HiC (and in turn detailing it in HiC) works. Having him lose control over the Speed Force when he finds that he is not alone does not. And having him trying to do everything he can to circumvent his involuntary manslaughter being found out absolutely does not.

[super_fly]

Oh hey, the Chrono Trigger plan.