Bass
Nexus of the World
Mini-series of the year, my ***.
IDENTITY CRISIS (IC) is the 7-issue mini-series released by DC.
I didn't buy IC originally. I thought it lookd unbelievably stupid. So, I thought to myself, "hey, it's all finished now, why not download it via bittorrent?"
Now, before you go calling me a pirate; firstly, I don't have a beard, parrot or ship, secondly, I downloaded it because everyone's been going on how great it is and I thought, "hey, maybe they're right, I should really read it" but didn't want to spend 15 quid on it. So, I thought I'd download it, and if I liked it, I'd gladly pick up the trade.
Well, sadly, I was right. I didn't like it. But I did try.
This is the synopsis of IC, so don't read any more if you don't want spoilers.
IC #1 opens with Elongated Man on a stakeout, where he reminices with Firehawk about his wife Sue and how much they love each other. As the issue progresses, Sue is killed in her apartment by an unknown assailant. It is presumed that she was killed when the assailant burned her body. There is a funeral, at which Elongated Man, ravaged by grief, cannot bring himself to give a speech. After its close, the DC superheroes split off to track down the possible supervillain culprits. Some go after fire-related villains, others against teleporters since the killer somehow evaded every security system in the house - of which there were many. Green Arrow, Black Canary, Hawkman, Atom, and Zatanna however, remain behind and talk to Ralph, who believes that Dr Light is responsible.
IC #2 revolves around the discovery that, a long while ago, the JLA consisting of the heroes mentioned above, found Dr Light raping Sue in the JLA watchtower. When they intervened, Elongated Man took his wife to the hospital and at this point, Dr Light threatens the JLA that he will come back for their other loved ones. The heroes, along with the old Flash and Green Lantern (Barry Allen and Hal Jordan respectively), wipe his mind and alter his personality to make him more of a joke. This discovery is made by the new Flash and Green Lantern (Wally West and Kyle Rayner), when they confront Green Arrow. This group of heroes (Green Arrow, Black Canary, Hawkman, Atom, Zatanna, Elongated Man, Flash and Green Lantern) all confront Dr Light who has hired a professional supervillain, Deathstroke, to take out these heroes for him. At the same time, Dr Mid-Nite performs an autopsy on Sue's body only to discover that she was dead before she was burned, meaning Dr Light is not responsible.
IC #3 opens with Deathstroke versus the JLA. Deathstroke trounces the JLA, but the tide soon turns and as the JLA are winning, Dr Light remembers that these heroes have messed with his mind. Deathstroke and Dr Light escape, and Superman shows up and the Flash conceals the truth about Dr Light's mindwipe from him. Flash then confronts Green Arrow who then launches into a diatribe about how he and the others were the clean-up crew that Superman and Batman never knew about. Once the big guns left to fight crime elsewhere, Green Arrow and the others would erase the villains' minds of their secret identities. Then, we get a glimpse of a failing, old and out-of-work supervillain called Captain Boomerang who has a job to do, though we are not told what this job is or why he is waiting outside a young adult's house. Meanwhile, Robin and his father are getting closer and the issue ends when the Atom's ex-wife, Jean, is seemingly killed by an unseen assailant who manages to hang her on her door in her apartment.
IC #4 opens with Atom managing to save Jean's life, though the would-be killer's identity is still unknown, even to Batman who cannot work out who benefits from these killings. We discover that the young adult is Captain Boomerang's son and the two begin to form a bond. The issue ends with Lois Lane receiving a letter that claims that she will be the next person to die.
IC #5 opens with all the DC superheroes leaning harder on the supervillain community trying to discover who the secret identity killer is. During this, Firestorm, is killed (not Firehawk, Firestorm). Atom reconciles with his ex-wife Jean and become loves once again. Robin gets closer to his dad, and Captain Boomerang gets closer to his son. Robin leaves his dad to go on patrol, and his dad finds in his kitchen, a gun with the note warning him to protect himself since he is the next target. At this point, Captain Boomerang enters and is killed by Robin's father, who in turn is killed by Captain Boomerang as he manages to throw a razor-boomerang at him before dying.
IC #6 revolves around Flash discovering from Green Arrow that on the night they messed with Dr Light's mind, Batman arrived to see the mindwipe taking place. At this point, Green Arrow, Zatanna, et al mindwiped the scene from Batman's mind to keep their secret. Also, Batman and Dr Mid-nite make a discovery - Sue was killed due to the blocking of blood in her brain - which was caused by someone standing inside her brain - and the Atom is now the prime suspect.
IC #7 reveals the identity of the killer. It's not Atom, but rather his lover, Jean. She claims she didn't mean to kill Sue, that it was an accident, but seems to show little remorse about it. It turns out that she wanted Atom back and by killing/harming Sue, it would make him worry more about her and realise what he lost. This sentiment is all over the superhero community - Superman spent more time with his parents, so did Robin, and so on. Atom, realising she's mad, takes her to Arkham Asylum, and then, broken, shrinks down and cuts himself from society. The lives of everyone involved start to return to normal and the secret of the mindwiping is kept by Flash - though there is an ambiguity whether Batman knows he's been mindwiped or not. The series ends on Elongated Man talking to Sue, his dead wife, as if she's in the bedroom with him, as he turns out the lights.
Firstly, I'm going to say that a pet peeve I have is a lack of pacing in comic books. A lot of books use the tool of narrative decompression to milk several issues out of book when there is not enough material to do so. Another more common occurrence is the unbelievable fast pace of some comics which believe the more that they pack into a comic the better it will be because som much happens in it, mistaking kinesis for entertainment.
IC is very well-paced. It allows breathing room where appropriate, and moves on to the next story point without lingering.
However, IC simply, in my opinion does not work.
I'll start out with the mystery. To IC's credit, the murderer, Jean, is in the very first issue. This is good, the book doesn't cheat. Compare this to the recent "Hush" arc of Batman, and you will see what I mean. The creative team did the right thing and set up the killer and their motives from the very first issue so that insight can be gleaned from the revelation of the mystery.
However, insight is not gleaned. The question Batman asks repeatedly, "who benefits", does not have a satisfactory answer. The answer is Jean wanted Atom back, so she killed Sue (intentionally or not) in order to make him fall in love with her again.
While this itself, is credible, it is not when placed in context.
Jean left Atom. Atom never left Jean. Jean was the one who wanted a divorce, while Atom always held a torch for her.
So my question is, instead of stealing Atom's suit and powers and learning to use them to kill her friend Sue, faking an attempt on her own life, and orchestrating the deaths of Robin's dad and Captain Boomerang, why she just didn't tell Atom she made a mistake and wanted him back?
I swear to God, if Atom had left Jean, and he at first, didn't want her back, this would make sense. But it makes more sense Atom did all this to get Jean back, not the other way round.
It possible this frustration is because Atom is such a bit-player in the story, and his love-story with Jean is little more than a sub-plot; that we discover that all this has been put in motion for this rather minor character.
This is an odd complaint to level at a book, which in all honesty, made some very emotional scenes out of second-tier characters.
One scene in particular, is when Elongated Man is unable to speak at his wife's funeral. It is remarkably touching - as is the very last scene of #7.
However, I'm feel that Sue's death is extremely cyncial. It reeks of me of a creative team who fell in love with the character so that we'd fall in love with her too, just so that they could kill her off. It seems to me, that Sue's death was planned before the writing began, and then the story started getting written and no one stopped to ask, "Do we really have to kill her? It seems like we're killing her because it will make people upset but we can get out of it." Indeed, if one looks at IC from this point of view, the entire series is filled with compromise candidates that could be killed without upsetting the DC apple cart. I give the team credit for making us care about these characters, but it seems to me that the sole reason for the creation of this empathy is to sell the books and make us buy Infinite Crisis this summer.
I mean, they can kill Sue, Blue Beetle and all the other lovable characters of the DC, but we know that major characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the rest of the big seven and their supporting casts will not die - or if they do, they'll be back in about 4 months.
So it feels like people killing off characters they know won't bring down sales.
This is most apparent in Firestorm's death. Firestorm, I believe, at most appears in the background of a couple of panels in IC. Then he dies. Not only is his death out of place, but it just begs a question:
What is the point of all this?
It seems to me to be about how superheroes will do anything to protect the people they love. Even if it means doing horrific things in the process. However, if we study the climax of the story, it seems to say that "Evil triumphs, because even if we do our best to protect ourselves from those who do harm, even if we try to always to the right thing, evil is totally relentless and unstoppable because it is selfish and insane."
Which makes me wonder what the whole "mindwiping" discussion has to do with anything other than to tie into upcoming DC mini-series leading up to Infinite Crisis.
So, just what is the point of all this?
IC series seems remarkably retarded (not in a mental way, but in a stunted growth) as it is retreading the same issues we've seen for the past 20 years, without any new insight.
It's dark, grim and gritty filled with violence and the horrific trauma and fear of someone preying on your family, while discussing the ethics of capital punishment.
The former style has been done repeatedly and I thought we'd finally moved beyond it 10 years ago - although to be fair, IC is actually much better than many other 'grim and gritty' books out there as it does have several genuine scenes of meaningful emotion.
The latter discussion of captial punishement was discussed, rather effectively, in the late 70s in Marvel's Squadron Supreme series. While the style and pacing of IC may indeed, trump the Squadron, the Squadron delves far more deeply into the issue. Indeed, IC seems to be just a primer to that issue, with the continuous promise that, don't worry, the next mini-series will give you more on this issue.
Perhaps, I would have been more forgiving with this similarity had not Green Arrow been continously rehashing the same argument of ends justifying the means for most of the series. To me, Green Arrow's continous lecturing, instead of being poetic or thought-provoking, seemed to be the writer desperately struggling to come up with a sentence that would encapsulate the point of the mindwiping theme, but seemed unable to do so, and so continued to just ramble on and on hoping that eventually, if he talked enough, he'd convince us.
To make matters worse, #7 quotes Arthur Miller which seems to reek of "I couldn't work out how to be succinct about the series, so I just quoted someone else to prove that I'm literate".
I feel that its possible that the reason for the continous laboring of ethical points in this series may be because the question, "What is the point?" was not able to be answered by the creative team.
To further point out that the creative team seemed unable to fully work out what IC was all about, they seem to dart all over the place.
First of all, there seems to be a genuine attempt to create sympathy, if not empathy, for the villains. Slipknot and Captain Boomerang are obvious examples of this. Indeed, it would appear this attempt at emotional confusion is designed to make us question further, the appropriateness of Green Arrow's actions in relation to Dr Light, Batman and countless other villains.
In fact, this is handled remarkably well. In another series, I'd be applauding this, except in IC, it's somewhat inappropriate. Considering this book seems to be about who would kill Sue, the attempts to make us feel for the people who may be responsible only clouds the central plot further, for what seems to be a set-up for the upcoming series "Society of Super-Villains" or whatever it is called.
It also inappropriate because the sense of fear trying to be created by the identity killer is undercut because we think, "hey, some of these villains are just boy scouts in stupid costumes - they ain't that bad".
While I'm capable of enjoying ambiguity of ethics and morality (indeed, part of me tingles at the aspect of IC that makes us think, "hey, should superheroes be torturing supervillains like this?"), I find it strange in a murder mystery that a writer would put across the concept that the murderer really isn't that bad a person. It kind of makes the whole point of catching the murderer pointless, and therefore, the story itself, pointless. So, while I think the sympathy for villains is well done, I feel that maybe it shouldn't be in this series.
Secondly, in regards to a lack of direction of the book, is the whimsical nature the book has with superheroes and grim and gritty. On one hand, the book seems to treat superheroes as the police at best, the mafia at worst. Indeed, IC could've been done as a police drama with a killer targeting the families of police officers.
However, IC uses superheroes, and a lot of this book is just plain stupid.
While I can handle people trying to be 'real' about superheroes, I cannot stand it when it appears that people mistake suffering for 'reality'. For example, the double-page spread of the solemn funeral is almost laughable as we can see Superman, Batman, and countless other superheroes where garish costumes of almost all the colours of the rainbow. While in some countries, white is worn to funerals instead of black, I doubt many show up in capes and cowls, with crackling energy all around them. Instead of appearing 'realistic', this seems to appear like nonsense.
Indeed, we also have the outrageous Deathstroke fight. Deathstroke has all these incredible powers; reflexes, enhanced vision and coordination, as well as a ridiculously tactical mind because he uses 90% of his brain power while most people use only 10% of their brain power. This would be nice, if it wasn't total nonsense. There is no scientific proof that people use only 10% of their brain, it is a myth accepted as canon by the general public. But I'll let that slide. Despite all his skill, Deathstroke is not a credible villain. Firstly, for this serious book, he looks like a ****. He stands in a horrificly garish blue and yellow costume with buccanneer boots and a hood with one eyehole. Secondly, he defeats the Flash by doing this: Flash rushes him, so he presses a button which sets off explosions in a predetermined manner in which Flash, in order to avoid the blasts, ends up in the precise place for Deathstroke to stab him with his sword. While this is nice, it's unbelievable that the Flash, who we've seen earlier, is capable of moving so fast that he's invisible, cannot reach Deathstroke before he pushes the detonator. Even if Deathstroke can press the detonator, the explosions would be in slow motion to the Flash, as would the sword.
Apart from that particular part of the fight, the rest of the Deathstroke fight is particularly well choreographed... except that the JLA, who are, we are told, a team, seem to take the same method of fighting from every bad ninja film in history - that of attacking Deathstroke one at a time (I understand the idea that Deathstroke is picking them off one-by-one, but I fail to see why someone like Green Latern or Hawkman couldn't intervene when he was attacking Zatanna or Green Arrow or Atom). What's also more nonsensical is that Deathstroke is fighting half a dozen superheroes, one of whom is Green Lantern, and the fight is containable within an alley.
I find nothing more insipid that superheros with powers, on one hand we are told, are capable of erasing peoples minds, boiling their blood, saving the world on a daily basis and all manner of other outlandish feats, are capable of restraining an all out brawl within the confines of a common alley way.
While I generally don't nitpick fight scenes, and powers of superheroes, in this case, since the book is trying to be so relentlesly realistic wihtout any sense of wonderment, I feel that this type of criticism, which I would normally avoid, is appropriate.
Another example of a reaching for a point is Dr Light. We see, throughout IC continous references to jokey-supervillains who are just plain stupid and harmless. They wear stupid costumes such as Calculator wore a suit with huge buttons on it, while the Injustice Gang, we are told, deserved to be beaten because they had such a stupid name.
However, Dr Light is a villain, who for no apparent motive or desire, decides to rape Sue, then proceed to tell everyone, while foaming at the mouth and replaying an optical illusion of the rape, how he'll do it again and again. This is a ridiculous cliche' - the depraved supervillain and smacks of "people are easily riled by rape, so we'll have Dr Light rape Sue - that'll make him seem evil". A rape, well done, can be a marvellous scene of writing... or it can be gratuitous like in this series and countless other 'grim and gritty' stories which mistook violent depravity for drama.
The problem to me, is a lack of consistency within in the world of this series, which I attribute to a lack of any real point to be made by this series other than, "It's all these cool superheroes fighting, some of their friends die, and be sure to pick up Infinite Crisis and all its tie-ins".
Despite its well-placing and genuine emotion in any given issue of this series, what could have been a twisting and powerful murder mystery that deserves to be held up high, flounders and falls because it doesn't know what it's trying to say or do, other than be a superhero comic about superheroes and an upcoming summer event.
While I may be a bit harsh on this series, it's probably due to two factors: firstly, that it's being hailed as a monument of fantastic craft in comics and a milestone in the superhero genre - and this of course, would make me only more driven to tear it down if I didn't totally agree, and secondly, that throughout I felt the only reason I was enjoying any of this series at all was because I was having my heart played with by writers more intent on sales than meaning. I must state I don't think IC is awful, or a travesty. I feel that it is a mediocre work, that possesses genuine scenes of interest despite its apparent lack of cohesion and direction.
A strange fate that a series called IDENTITY CRISIS should not know just what it is about.
IDENTITY CRISIS (IC) is the 7-issue mini-series released by DC.
I didn't buy IC originally. I thought it lookd unbelievably stupid. So, I thought to myself, "hey, it's all finished now, why not download it via bittorrent?"
Now, before you go calling me a pirate; firstly, I don't have a beard, parrot or ship, secondly, I downloaded it because everyone's been going on how great it is and I thought, "hey, maybe they're right, I should really read it" but didn't want to spend 15 quid on it. So, I thought I'd download it, and if I liked it, I'd gladly pick up the trade.
Well, sadly, I was right. I didn't like it. But I did try.
This is the synopsis of IC, so don't read any more if you don't want spoilers.
IC #1 opens with Elongated Man on a stakeout, where he reminices with Firehawk about his wife Sue and how much they love each other. As the issue progresses, Sue is killed in her apartment by an unknown assailant. It is presumed that she was killed when the assailant burned her body. There is a funeral, at which Elongated Man, ravaged by grief, cannot bring himself to give a speech. After its close, the DC superheroes split off to track down the possible supervillain culprits. Some go after fire-related villains, others against teleporters since the killer somehow evaded every security system in the house - of which there were many. Green Arrow, Black Canary, Hawkman, Atom, and Zatanna however, remain behind and talk to Ralph, who believes that Dr Light is responsible.
IC #2 revolves around the discovery that, a long while ago, the JLA consisting of the heroes mentioned above, found Dr Light raping Sue in the JLA watchtower. When they intervened, Elongated Man took his wife to the hospital and at this point, Dr Light threatens the JLA that he will come back for their other loved ones. The heroes, along with the old Flash and Green Lantern (Barry Allen and Hal Jordan respectively), wipe his mind and alter his personality to make him more of a joke. This discovery is made by the new Flash and Green Lantern (Wally West and Kyle Rayner), when they confront Green Arrow. This group of heroes (Green Arrow, Black Canary, Hawkman, Atom, Zatanna, Elongated Man, Flash and Green Lantern) all confront Dr Light who has hired a professional supervillain, Deathstroke, to take out these heroes for him. At the same time, Dr Mid-Nite performs an autopsy on Sue's body only to discover that she was dead before she was burned, meaning Dr Light is not responsible.
IC #3 opens with Deathstroke versus the JLA. Deathstroke trounces the JLA, but the tide soon turns and as the JLA are winning, Dr Light remembers that these heroes have messed with his mind. Deathstroke and Dr Light escape, and Superman shows up and the Flash conceals the truth about Dr Light's mindwipe from him. Flash then confronts Green Arrow who then launches into a diatribe about how he and the others were the clean-up crew that Superman and Batman never knew about. Once the big guns left to fight crime elsewhere, Green Arrow and the others would erase the villains' minds of their secret identities. Then, we get a glimpse of a failing, old and out-of-work supervillain called Captain Boomerang who has a job to do, though we are not told what this job is or why he is waiting outside a young adult's house. Meanwhile, Robin and his father are getting closer and the issue ends when the Atom's ex-wife, Jean, is seemingly killed by an unseen assailant who manages to hang her on her door in her apartment.
IC #4 opens with Atom managing to save Jean's life, though the would-be killer's identity is still unknown, even to Batman who cannot work out who benefits from these killings. We discover that the young adult is Captain Boomerang's son and the two begin to form a bond. The issue ends with Lois Lane receiving a letter that claims that she will be the next person to die.
IC #5 opens with all the DC superheroes leaning harder on the supervillain community trying to discover who the secret identity killer is. During this, Firestorm, is killed (not Firehawk, Firestorm). Atom reconciles with his ex-wife Jean and become loves once again. Robin gets closer to his dad, and Captain Boomerang gets closer to his son. Robin leaves his dad to go on patrol, and his dad finds in his kitchen, a gun with the note warning him to protect himself since he is the next target. At this point, Captain Boomerang enters and is killed by Robin's father, who in turn is killed by Captain Boomerang as he manages to throw a razor-boomerang at him before dying.
IC #6 revolves around Flash discovering from Green Arrow that on the night they messed with Dr Light's mind, Batman arrived to see the mindwipe taking place. At this point, Green Arrow, Zatanna, et al mindwiped the scene from Batman's mind to keep their secret. Also, Batman and Dr Mid-nite make a discovery - Sue was killed due to the blocking of blood in her brain - which was caused by someone standing inside her brain - and the Atom is now the prime suspect.
IC #7 reveals the identity of the killer. It's not Atom, but rather his lover, Jean. She claims she didn't mean to kill Sue, that it was an accident, but seems to show little remorse about it. It turns out that she wanted Atom back and by killing/harming Sue, it would make him worry more about her and realise what he lost. This sentiment is all over the superhero community - Superman spent more time with his parents, so did Robin, and so on. Atom, realising she's mad, takes her to Arkham Asylum, and then, broken, shrinks down and cuts himself from society. The lives of everyone involved start to return to normal and the secret of the mindwiping is kept by Flash - though there is an ambiguity whether Batman knows he's been mindwiped or not. The series ends on Elongated Man talking to Sue, his dead wife, as if she's in the bedroom with him, as he turns out the lights.
Firstly, I'm going to say that a pet peeve I have is a lack of pacing in comic books. A lot of books use the tool of narrative decompression to milk several issues out of book when there is not enough material to do so. Another more common occurrence is the unbelievable fast pace of some comics which believe the more that they pack into a comic the better it will be because som much happens in it, mistaking kinesis for entertainment.
IC is very well-paced. It allows breathing room where appropriate, and moves on to the next story point without lingering.
However, IC simply, in my opinion does not work.
I'll start out with the mystery. To IC's credit, the murderer, Jean, is in the very first issue. This is good, the book doesn't cheat. Compare this to the recent "Hush" arc of Batman, and you will see what I mean. The creative team did the right thing and set up the killer and their motives from the very first issue so that insight can be gleaned from the revelation of the mystery.
However, insight is not gleaned. The question Batman asks repeatedly, "who benefits", does not have a satisfactory answer. The answer is Jean wanted Atom back, so she killed Sue (intentionally or not) in order to make him fall in love with her again.
While this itself, is credible, it is not when placed in context.
Jean left Atom. Atom never left Jean. Jean was the one who wanted a divorce, while Atom always held a torch for her.
So my question is, instead of stealing Atom's suit and powers and learning to use them to kill her friend Sue, faking an attempt on her own life, and orchestrating the deaths of Robin's dad and Captain Boomerang, why she just didn't tell Atom she made a mistake and wanted him back?
I swear to God, if Atom had left Jean, and he at first, didn't want her back, this would make sense. But it makes more sense Atom did all this to get Jean back, not the other way round.
It possible this frustration is because Atom is such a bit-player in the story, and his love-story with Jean is little more than a sub-plot; that we discover that all this has been put in motion for this rather minor character.
This is an odd complaint to level at a book, which in all honesty, made some very emotional scenes out of second-tier characters.
One scene in particular, is when Elongated Man is unable to speak at his wife's funeral. It is remarkably touching - as is the very last scene of #7.
However, I'm feel that Sue's death is extremely cyncial. It reeks of me of a creative team who fell in love with the character so that we'd fall in love with her too, just so that they could kill her off. It seems to me, that Sue's death was planned before the writing began, and then the story started getting written and no one stopped to ask, "Do we really have to kill her? It seems like we're killing her because it will make people upset but we can get out of it." Indeed, if one looks at IC from this point of view, the entire series is filled with compromise candidates that could be killed without upsetting the DC apple cart. I give the team credit for making us care about these characters, but it seems to me that the sole reason for the creation of this empathy is to sell the books and make us buy Infinite Crisis this summer.
I mean, they can kill Sue, Blue Beetle and all the other lovable characters of the DC, but we know that major characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the rest of the big seven and their supporting casts will not die - or if they do, they'll be back in about 4 months.
So it feels like people killing off characters they know won't bring down sales.
This is most apparent in Firestorm's death. Firestorm, I believe, at most appears in the background of a couple of panels in IC. Then he dies. Not only is his death out of place, but it just begs a question:
What is the point of all this?
It seems to me to be about how superheroes will do anything to protect the people they love. Even if it means doing horrific things in the process. However, if we study the climax of the story, it seems to say that "Evil triumphs, because even if we do our best to protect ourselves from those who do harm, even if we try to always to the right thing, evil is totally relentless and unstoppable because it is selfish and insane."
Which makes me wonder what the whole "mindwiping" discussion has to do with anything other than to tie into upcoming DC mini-series leading up to Infinite Crisis.
So, just what is the point of all this?
IC series seems remarkably retarded (not in a mental way, but in a stunted growth) as it is retreading the same issues we've seen for the past 20 years, without any new insight.
It's dark, grim and gritty filled with violence and the horrific trauma and fear of someone preying on your family, while discussing the ethics of capital punishment.
The former style has been done repeatedly and I thought we'd finally moved beyond it 10 years ago - although to be fair, IC is actually much better than many other 'grim and gritty' books out there as it does have several genuine scenes of meaningful emotion.
The latter discussion of captial punishement was discussed, rather effectively, in the late 70s in Marvel's Squadron Supreme series. While the style and pacing of IC may indeed, trump the Squadron, the Squadron delves far more deeply into the issue. Indeed, IC seems to be just a primer to that issue, with the continuous promise that, don't worry, the next mini-series will give you more on this issue.
Perhaps, I would have been more forgiving with this similarity had not Green Arrow been continously rehashing the same argument of ends justifying the means for most of the series. To me, Green Arrow's continous lecturing, instead of being poetic or thought-provoking, seemed to be the writer desperately struggling to come up with a sentence that would encapsulate the point of the mindwiping theme, but seemed unable to do so, and so continued to just ramble on and on hoping that eventually, if he talked enough, he'd convince us.
To make matters worse, #7 quotes Arthur Miller which seems to reek of "I couldn't work out how to be succinct about the series, so I just quoted someone else to prove that I'm literate".
I feel that its possible that the reason for the continous laboring of ethical points in this series may be because the question, "What is the point?" was not able to be answered by the creative team.
To further point out that the creative team seemed unable to fully work out what IC was all about, they seem to dart all over the place.
First of all, there seems to be a genuine attempt to create sympathy, if not empathy, for the villains. Slipknot and Captain Boomerang are obvious examples of this. Indeed, it would appear this attempt at emotional confusion is designed to make us question further, the appropriateness of Green Arrow's actions in relation to Dr Light, Batman and countless other villains.
In fact, this is handled remarkably well. In another series, I'd be applauding this, except in IC, it's somewhat inappropriate. Considering this book seems to be about who would kill Sue, the attempts to make us feel for the people who may be responsible only clouds the central plot further, for what seems to be a set-up for the upcoming series "Society of Super-Villains" or whatever it is called.
It also inappropriate because the sense of fear trying to be created by the identity killer is undercut because we think, "hey, some of these villains are just boy scouts in stupid costumes - they ain't that bad".
While I'm capable of enjoying ambiguity of ethics and morality (indeed, part of me tingles at the aspect of IC that makes us think, "hey, should superheroes be torturing supervillains like this?"), I find it strange in a murder mystery that a writer would put across the concept that the murderer really isn't that bad a person. It kind of makes the whole point of catching the murderer pointless, and therefore, the story itself, pointless. So, while I think the sympathy for villains is well done, I feel that maybe it shouldn't be in this series.
Secondly, in regards to a lack of direction of the book, is the whimsical nature the book has with superheroes and grim and gritty. On one hand, the book seems to treat superheroes as the police at best, the mafia at worst. Indeed, IC could've been done as a police drama with a killer targeting the families of police officers.
However, IC uses superheroes, and a lot of this book is just plain stupid.
While I can handle people trying to be 'real' about superheroes, I cannot stand it when it appears that people mistake suffering for 'reality'. For example, the double-page spread of the solemn funeral is almost laughable as we can see Superman, Batman, and countless other superheroes where garish costumes of almost all the colours of the rainbow. While in some countries, white is worn to funerals instead of black, I doubt many show up in capes and cowls, with crackling energy all around them. Instead of appearing 'realistic', this seems to appear like nonsense.
Indeed, we also have the outrageous Deathstroke fight. Deathstroke has all these incredible powers; reflexes, enhanced vision and coordination, as well as a ridiculously tactical mind because he uses 90% of his brain power while most people use only 10% of their brain power. This would be nice, if it wasn't total nonsense. There is no scientific proof that people use only 10% of their brain, it is a myth accepted as canon by the general public. But I'll let that slide. Despite all his skill, Deathstroke is not a credible villain. Firstly, for this serious book, he looks like a ****. He stands in a horrificly garish blue and yellow costume with buccanneer boots and a hood with one eyehole. Secondly, he defeats the Flash by doing this: Flash rushes him, so he presses a button which sets off explosions in a predetermined manner in which Flash, in order to avoid the blasts, ends up in the precise place for Deathstroke to stab him with his sword. While this is nice, it's unbelievable that the Flash, who we've seen earlier, is capable of moving so fast that he's invisible, cannot reach Deathstroke before he pushes the detonator. Even if Deathstroke can press the detonator, the explosions would be in slow motion to the Flash, as would the sword.
Apart from that particular part of the fight, the rest of the Deathstroke fight is particularly well choreographed... except that the JLA, who are, we are told, a team, seem to take the same method of fighting from every bad ninja film in history - that of attacking Deathstroke one at a time (I understand the idea that Deathstroke is picking them off one-by-one, but I fail to see why someone like Green Latern or Hawkman couldn't intervene when he was attacking Zatanna or Green Arrow or Atom). What's also more nonsensical is that Deathstroke is fighting half a dozen superheroes, one of whom is Green Lantern, and the fight is containable within an alley.
I find nothing more insipid that superheros with powers, on one hand we are told, are capable of erasing peoples minds, boiling their blood, saving the world on a daily basis and all manner of other outlandish feats, are capable of restraining an all out brawl within the confines of a common alley way.
While I generally don't nitpick fight scenes, and powers of superheroes, in this case, since the book is trying to be so relentlesly realistic wihtout any sense of wonderment, I feel that this type of criticism, which I would normally avoid, is appropriate.
Another example of a reaching for a point is Dr Light. We see, throughout IC continous references to jokey-supervillains who are just plain stupid and harmless. They wear stupid costumes such as Calculator wore a suit with huge buttons on it, while the Injustice Gang, we are told, deserved to be beaten because they had such a stupid name.
However, Dr Light is a villain, who for no apparent motive or desire, decides to rape Sue, then proceed to tell everyone, while foaming at the mouth and replaying an optical illusion of the rape, how he'll do it again and again. This is a ridiculous cliche' - the depraved supervillain and smacks of "people are easily riled by rape, so we'll have Dr Light rape Sue - that'll make him seem evil". A rape, well done, can be a marvellous scene of writing... or it can be gratuitous like in this series and countless other 'grim and gritty' stories which mistook violent depravity for drama.
The problem to me, is a lack of consistency within in the world of this series, which I attribute to a lack of any real point to be made by this series other than, "It's all these cool superheroes fighting, some of their friends die, and be sure to pick up Infinite Crisis and all its tie-ins".
Despite its well-placing and genuine emotion in any given issue of this series, what could have been a twisting and powerful murder mystery that deserves to be held up high, flounders and falls because it doesn't know what it's trying to say or do, other than be a superhero comic about superheroes and an upcoming summer event.
While I may be a bit harsh on this series, it's probably due to two factors: firstly, that it's being hailed as a monument of fantastic craft in comics and a milestone in the superhero genre - and this of course, would make me only more driven to tear it down if I didn't totally agree, and secondly, that throughout I felt the only reason I was enjoying any of this series at all was because I was having my heart played with by writers more intent on sales than meaning. I must state I don't think IC is awful, or a travesty. I feel that it is a mediocre work, that possesses genuine scenes of interest despite its apparent lack of cohesion and direction.
A strange fate that a series called IDENTITY CRISIS should not know just what it is about.