The ending of a world can feel like the loss of a life, and a loss of a life is always a tragedy. Change is the only constant. Art is subjective. For me, I actually enjoyed the story. I never read it until I saw this thread. I’ve heard bad things about Identity Crisis, but never read it. I also saw that many didn’t care for Heroes in Crisis. I enjoyed it. I mean, until I got to the ending. Coincidentally, this is also how I felt about, Identity Crisis. They are different. But, first I want to talk about my initial problems with the story, next what I believe are blatant examples of how the story is flawed, and after that talk about how comics are a bittersweet medium.
{{{{Disclaimer: There WILL be . Read the story then come back to my post}}}}
I feel compelled to reiterate that I actually enjoyed the story for the most part. To be transparent, I read this book with the intention to enjoy it while looking for reasons why others could hate this story. To start, I personally would have never read this story after the initial pages. I may or may not have read this arc after the 1st issue. Why? It was a drag to start. The story asks the reader to care about, frankly, obscure characters. I am not that familiar with Elongated Man, or FirebirdGirl(?). Moreover, I was initially confused as to who was the narrator of the story. I legitimately kept thinking, why should I care, and who is the narrator. It wasn’t until I deduced that the author wants the audience to care for these characters because they will be essential to the story. Moreover, the death was confusing to me. I was lost as to how Elongated Man knew, why we were supposed to care about Deadbolt (or whoever he is), and what was so important about the Calculator. It felt like a lot to ask for the reader. Maybe at the time it made more sense with the comic climate, but for me, initially, I was left confused.
The story does pick up and it is a solid read for me personally. However, that does not mean I did not see flaws. IMHO(in my honest opinion), every form of creation has flaws. It’s natural. What we chose to focus on makes something great or terrible. That’s why people love The Dark Knight film even though it has several flaws and people don’t care as much for The Dark Knight Rises even though it is a very well made film as well. But I digress, the story was solid. The writing was solid. However, there are some aspects of the writing that leave something to be desired**. The tropes that I wasn’t the biggest fan of and I can understand why someone else can not tolerate are,** the use of shock value, the red herrings, and worst of all the woman in the fridge trope. A lot of the creative writing choices made felt like they were made for the sake of shock value. They did work. However, again, I can understand why others will not tolerate this choice especially because they all differ. The easiest one to point out is the, Dr. Light scene when he finds Sue. I understand that it is important to show the world the ugly truth. I would still argue that there is a more respectful way to highlight this ugly truth. For me, we don’t need to see that much. This is always, always, always a complaint of mine. Every medium is different, but, this might be the Dad in me, this is a comic book, not a gritty crime docu drama. I understand this is what the author was going for, but as another user stated, it came off as crass and distasteful.
The other shock values are, what I consider, unnecessary story elements. Boomer being a father, Slade beating the Justice League with ease, Zatanna mind wiping, the death of Tim’s father, and Batman. How are they unnecessary? Better question, what do they add to the story besides tension that is left unresolved and shock value? There are arguments to be made why these choices are necessary for the overall plot, but they failed to be proven to me by simply finishing the story. Boomer being a father added more weight to his death, but why was his death or Tim’s father’s death necessary? Slade beating the League created tension, but what else does it add? Zaranna mind wiping adds another layer to the story, but why did it have to be Zatanna? And, Batman, is… the biggest complaint, because I do not understand why his “arc” is even in this story besides adding superficial tension and shock value. Again, it worked, but I utterly understand why another reader would not tolerate these creative decisions. Moreover, I must add what I mean with the notion of “needing” to add to the overall narrative. My paradigm for storytelling is that there must be a lesson or argument to be made. The overall narrative should have an overall lesson/argument. The lesson or argument I got from this read was, everyone is flawed. This does work for the choices but not by much for me. It doesn’t feel necessary. It felt like shock value for the sake of tension which was kinda superficial, IMHO. In addition, I also felt that some choices were made to simply say, I GOTCHA!!! This leads me to the other example of how the writing left something to be desired.
The red herrings are a stable for narrations. I am a big fan of them. So much so that I expect there to be red herrings and I have multiple conclusions prepared while consuming a story. Sometimes I predict the ending, other times I prefer the ending I created, and on rare occasions I am shocked and applaud the decision. I am also jokingly tough on myself for not seeing the brilliant choice that the creator made. That being said, the red herrings were a bit ridiculous. Not because they didn’t make sense, but because the explanations why they were red herrings and not the actual killer was ridiculous. Dr. Light makes total sense, then the added twist makes even more sense, but it was a red herring because she died before she was burned. Okay, that’s logical. It makes sense that it is SlipKnot, especially with the Suicide Squad connection. The lasso proving it is not him, still makes sense because again the Suicide Squad connection. Boomer makes sense because he’s viewed as a loser and again Suicide Squad connection. The Calculator makes sense because of the typical, it was the person in the background pulling all the strings, and we haven’t shown you all the information yet. It not being the Calculator, makes sense because he had nothing to gain, arguably. Because one could argue that the killer wanted to cause chaos, destruction, and distrust within the league.
The part that ruins everything is the final twist**. Why?** Shock value? I GOTCHA Moment? This part is poorly written and I understand if others choose to not overlook it. Why did she do all this to get Ray back? From the start of the story, we know that Atom still loves her. Why do this? How did she know about Dr. Light as a cover? Why did she have a flame thrower if she never planned to kill her friend? Why did she tie the knot in a distinctive way? How did she know? It’s very very very cartoony. Which is fine by me, but I understand why it’s not for others especially when the start of the story is a tone of it being hyper realistic. This is made worse because it is never fully explored nor explained. Additionally, the mind wiping is also not fully explored or explained. Most of the substories are not fully explored or explained, which are also arguably the main stories because the initial story kind of gets put to the side. We hardly see Elongated Man after a while it becomes Green Arrow, Tim’s, Boomer, and Batman’s story. The writing at the end felt like, i-Gotcha moments. You thought Batman was going to figure it out. He’s not cuz he doesn’t want to. You think there will be consequences because Kyle and Wally found out about the mind wiping, there’s not because, because, heroes endure.
What?
Honestly, the story is arguably kind of meaningless which makes all the shock value decisions even more reprehensible and undesirable. Tim is drastically changed? Why? For the sake of change? That’s a poor argument to make a decision. We find out something horrible about so many characters. Why? To understand that everyone is flawed. Okay, and the rest of the decisions add to that how? The death of Tim’s father adds little to the notion/argument/lesson that everyone is flawed. The same can be said about other creative choices. Because these big choices added little to the overall lesson/argument of the story but did impact the stories of these characters for the future. That being said, I did enjoy the story. Is it flawless? No, but nothing in this world is without flaws.
Lastly though, this is sadly a truth about the medium of comic books. They make stories meant to give us an adventure, wonder, explore emotions, and also wrap it up so not much changes. Furthermore, a new writer can do whatever they want, there is no possible way that every writer will respect and research everything every other writer before them has written about every single character they are choosing to use for their story. In addition, I personally feel like the medium of comic books encourages writers to create something new at the start but doesn’t really encourage writers to have a planned ending. Most comic book stories, for me personally, start off strong and end poorly. This isn’t surprising given the fact that they are writing a single issue at a time without ever knowing what the “end” is because comic books are not designed to have an ending. They are designed to continue. That’s why we have reboots and that’s why Batman is not an old man in the popular canon. If there was a planned ending then maybe this story and others stories like this wouldn’t get such a bad rep. If there was a clear plan for every character in this story and the writer had complete freedom, then the choices made would have a stronger impact and could have been better received than an ending that, in a literal sense, repeatedly states that everything will go back to normal, because, that’s what heroes do. If there isn’t any consequence for mind wiping, then why bring it up? If everything is supposed to go back to normal, then why did Tim’s Dad die? But, that’s comic books. For me, I’ve made the personal decision to take every author’s run with a character as an alternate universe. It works wonders for me*. Scott Snyder’s Batman is not Tom King’s Batman. They are each from different universes.* What else can we do? This is the world of comic books.
So, to recap, we explored my initial complaint, viewed some examples of writing choices that left something to be desired, and then took a dive on how bittersweet comics can be. To reiterate, even with all these flaws/mistakes, I heavily enjoyed reading this. Art is always subjective. Therefore, I understand why people cannot overlook these flaws. Make no mistake though. Every art form has flaws. What we choose to overlook and not tolerate is based on our personal tastes which is also consequently possible to change in time. Nothing lasts forever. It’s what makes today special, because it will never be the same again. This is a sad but beautiful truth. So, hopefully, we can cherish our good times a little bit more when we realize that they will never be recreated. Thanks for reading. I appreciate it, even if you just took the time to scan through it. Stay blessed. [ x ]
