Identity Crisis #7? If you've not read it, well, I'm sorry, I'm going to rant anyway.
I figured it was Jean Loring. I figured out that she'd gotten the equipment, but I couldn't figure out
why she'd do it. Apparently, Metzler didn't bother work up a decent motive, either. The following is what we've learned from
Identity Crisis:
- Batman apparently hands out business cards that say "Bruce Wayne, Superhero" because everyone seems to know the secret, even the Atom's spouse!
- Superman apparently hit the same Staples location because - I'm going to repeat this - the wife of a B-list hero knows that he's Clark Kent, who is married to Lois Lane!
Now, I can buy into the core JLA members knowing, but I can also see them being told "If you tell anyone, Batman gets to put you in the Robinator
1 for a three hour hard anal workout." It makes
no sense for a civilian to know, just like an undercover cop's spouse shouldn't know the IDs of the people he's working with. That she went bugfuck crazy, missed her now-ex-husband, came up with some bullshit plan, and
then ended up accidentally killing not only Sue Dibny (while happening to be carrying a
flamethrower, you know, just in case), but Jack Drake and Captain Boomerang snaps credulity like a three-decade-old rubber band. There's consequences to this, of course, and some of them are slightly interesting: Ralph's never going to be, you know,
right in the head, and once again, Batman distrusts everyone, but that's the status quo for him anymore, innit? I guess everyone can save themselves the effort of writing The Atom any Christmas cards as well, since I imagine he's not really in a fit state.
All of this senseless, stupid death and subsequent thrashing about could have been avoided if she'd rung up The Atom, who's been wanting to get back with her since at
least the late 80s, and offered her ex-husband a hummer. Maybe a three-way with Zatanna, who could brainwash herself afterwards.
Aaron warned me I would want to "un-read" it and maintain the generally positive feelings I had for the structure, if not all of the content presented within. This, combined with recent events in
JSA has tainted the DCU for me as a reader. It's so
dark with no sense of wonder or joy. Outside of the silver-age throwback
New Frontier, I can't think of a wholly positive experience I've had with the any of the superhero titles. It's telling that my favorite currently-published DCU title is
Gotham Central, which is a procedural with people who have no powers and are colliding with a city gone mad and a masked hero whose motivations and actions they can't grapple with. I can take the darkness and fumbling with these characters - they're
human. I guess I just want my comics simple and all, but why can't heroes be
cool again? Why does Dan Didio and the current editorial staff assume that we always need to see the dark underbelly with people who should rise above it all
2?
While I do think that something like
Identity Crisis can serve to give us a new angle on this fictional world, I hate that it takes away what makes these guys compelling. There's a moment in
New Frontier (yes, again with my mentioning this) that gives me everything I want from comics:
The Flash, about to go fight the big bad menace, turns to the assembled heroes and the scientists, tells them to "Cover their ears," and the next panel features the crowd in the same position, the Flash replaced with a loud BOOM. The next page is a splash - a long shot of the hero running over the ocean towards danger like it ain't no thing.
That right there. That's what I want. Wonder, joy, glorious
fun. What do I have to do to get that back from people who aren't named Grant Morrison or Darwyn Cooke?
1Josh says: "The Robinator" is an apparatus that anyone who's seen the Bruce Willis segment of Pulp Fiction will be passingly familiar with.
2Apologies to any Todd McFarlane fans for that one.
