Identity Crisis #5-#6

 

So far, we have seen:

Dr. Light regaining his memories

Dr. Light cleared of murdering Sue Dibny five seconds later

The League reveal their addiction to mind-wiping their villains (YOU NEED HELP, YOU GUYS)

Jean Loring attacked by…?

The League be stupid

The League be stupid

The League be stupid

Lois Lane threatened by…?

We begin Issue Five with Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Hawkman and the Flash raiding the villain Merlyn’s apartment because… um… er… hey, look, Green Lantern is auditioning for the Hawkeye Initiative!

 

Not bad, but you have to show off your cleavage more.  Maybe tear your costume and pretend it was a result of the bomb.  Or whatever they used to knock down the wall.  I’m not really sure.

A fight ensues between the League vs. Merlyn, Monocle, and Deadshot (who were all there hanging out because why not).  It’s here we learn that every cape in the country has gone bazitz looking for the serial killer, pumping every villain they can think of for info.  Nice to know that that one example of genuine detective work back in Issue One was the exception to the rule, because now we can go back to rampant violence and face-punching!

 

Gonzo likes face-punching.  Also, if this is the Outsiders, shouldn’t the arrow be red for Arsenal and not green for Green Arrow?  I’m no expert, so I could be wrong, but… oh never mind.  I’m too busy laughing at villain guy’s facial expression.  I don’t know who that is, but he looks about as thrilled with this comic as I am.

You know what we need now?  A pointless heroic death!  But not just any death.  How about the death of a hero who hasn’t even shown up in this comic until now?

 

Brilliant!  And nothing says ‘heroic death’ like ‘gratuitous butt shot,’ so we’re gonna need one of those.  Anyone wanna volunteer?

 

 

Not you, Guy.

 

Thank you, Mari.  (Before anyone gets on my case for this, yes, the male heroes get quite a few butt shots as well, including that spine-breaker of GL’s, but none of them show off their Kevlar-clad keisters at quite such an inopportune moment as Vixen does here.  So I stand by my joke.)

Meanwhile, at the Loring house, Ray and Jean are busy getting reacquainted in the wake of her attack.  And by reacquainted I mean they’re totally about to… kiss while almost fully clothed and covered in shadows.

 

Ray, you SCOUNDREL you.

Meanwhile meanwhile, we get more father-son time for Boomerang and Owen, and the latter suddenly discovers he has superspeed.  This leads him to the obvious conclusion that his mother must have had superspeed as well, and that she is therefore not the Golden Glider as the tabloids have been reporting.  He asks his dad for confirmation...

 

…And?  What, that’s it?  You’re just gonna introduce a mystery like that and leave it hanging?  I should not have to look up the solutions to your half-baked subplots, Meltzer!  (For what it’s worth, which isn’t much, Owen’s mother is Meloni Thawne, a speedster from the future.  I don’t know how that works, nor do I want it explained to me.)

Well, I hope you enjoyed those fluffy distractions, because it’s time to dive back into the heavy stuff.  We do need to resolve this story eventually, you know.

So Robin is preparing to go on patrol, and his father is concerned about his teenager hanging out with Batman and getting beat up all the time, but they express their mutual love and respect and Robin heads out.  Well ain’t that sweet.  Last time I felt this warm and fuzzy was right before Sue Dibny… was…

 

Nut bunnies.

Jack receives a mysterious package with a gun inside and a note—just like Lois’s—telling him to “protect yourself.”  He calls Oracle, who patches him through to Robin, for help, but then he decides to ignore their advice and rely on the gun that was left him by a complete stranger and could therefore quite possibly be rigged to explode or backfire in some fashion.  Heck, how does he know the murderer isn’t bulletproof and the person who left the gun just wanted to give him a false sense of security so he’d be easier to pick off?

As you may have guessed, the only way this could end is very badly.  Jack Drake and his attacker, who turns out to be Captain Boomerang, kill each other.  And do you know why?  Because everyone involved is a moron!

Oracle is a moron for not calling every hero with superspeed to get their butts down to the Drake home the minute she realized Jack was in danger.  She only calls the Flash, who conveniently fails to answer the phone, and then she’s all like “whoops, hands are tied, my condolences.”  What about Kid Flash?  Superman?  Wonder Woman?  Power Girl?  Jay Garrick?  The Marvel Family?  To say nothing of the myriad teleporters she could have called.  It has already been established that all of the heroes know each other and that they are all available to each other in times of need (see the examination of the Dibnys’ apartment in Issue One), so it makes absolutely NO sense that Oracle wouldn't even try to contact any of them in an emergency.

 

Sure.  Whatever helps you sleep at night.

Jack Drake is a moron for trusting that gun to keep him safe and not listening to the experienced superheroes who are telling him to get out.  Though again, all the experienced superheroes in this comic are idiots, so I guess I wouldn’t trust them either.

Captain Boomerang is… just a moron.

Robin is a moron because he’d rather go out and fight crime rather than stay home and protect his dad.  Way to show concern, kid.

 

 

Oh, I apologize.  Tim does show concern.  Look at that, he’s telling his dad to keep the door shut and not let anybody in OH WAIT A MINUTE.

 

That’s right, it’s been firmly established that the killer can break into places without the use of doors or windows.  So Tim is either stupid, disastrously forgetful, or actually wants his father dead.  Also not helping is the fact that Tim gave his dad what appears to be the same League-connected panic button that didn’t help Sue Dibny in the least back in Issue Two.  Apparently, they haven’t made any improvements to it since then.

Man, Meltzer must be losing his touch when it comes to leading up to character deaths.  With Sue’s, I was crushed.  With Jack’s, I’m tempted to grab my laptop and beat Tim over the head with it.

Issue Six begins with Robin belatedly making it home, only to find his father has ceased to be.  Again, I don’t care.  Oh yeah, and Owen finds out about his father’s death from a report on TV and is less than thrilled, which leads him to take on the oh-so-distinguished mantle of Captain Boomerang.  Which has nothing to do with anything, since we never see him again after this, but that’s just par for the course by now.

 

Er, who’s he talking to?

And then—would you believe it—we get even more padding, this time with Green Arrow narrating about how everyone has lost someone over the years but they all have to move on with their lives.  And he does this for seven pages.  I understand they’d want to show the characters moving on now that they think the nightmare is over (for stupid reasons which we’ll get to in a second), but we’ve already had so much useless junk gumming up the works.  I’m getting tired of sifting through the side stories for the one or two tiny narration boxes that actually have information pertaining to the plot.  Like this one, for instance.

Oh, come off it.  We know you would have just mind-wiped him.
 

But seriously, the main thing I wanted to discuss about this panel is the fact that Ollie seems convinced Boomerang is the one who got a hold of the heroes’ personal info and used it to systematically attack their loved ones.

 

…

Did you guys lobotomize yourselves while you were at it, or did your mothers just drop you on your heads on when you were babies?!!

It has been repeatedly emphasized that Boomerang is a “letch” who is no longer at the top of his game.  He’s barely even in the game anymore: no villain will hire him and most won’t even associate with him because of how far he has fallen.  Dude couldn’t even kill an out-of-shape civilian correctly—Jack heard him the second he showed up, could track his movements through the building as he approached (“He’s on my roof!” “I think he’s in the hallway.” “He’s definitely in the hall!”), and shot Boomerang first before Boomerang barely managed to kill him with his dying breath.

How could anyone think that this man is capable of slipping into Sue’s and Jean’s homes without tripping the security—especially since he is clearly shown violently kicking the door down to get into the Drake apartment—and, in the case of Sue’s death, employing a weapon so sneaky that the League STILL hasn’t identified what killed her?  First off, they should have known how useless he’d become, and second, they have Jack Drake’s own account of events, as told to Oracle, that show Boomerang’s MO doesn’t line up with the real killer’s.  Why isn’t anyone questioning this?  It could be a set-up!  Or maybe Boomerang was just trying to cash in on the whole murder-a-loved-one craze!

Well, actually, I think Batman smells something fishy, but he decides not to share that info with the class.  And given what we learn in an upcoming scene, I’m not sure I blame him.

The scene in question is… *sigh*… another chat between Green Arrow and the Flash.  Not making a lot of progress here, are we?  Ugh, fine.  So what childhood-ruining revelation does the Emerald Archer have for us this time?

Yup!  Batman interrupted Zatanna’s little mind-whammy on Light and, being the upstanding fellow that he is, had a few issues with this.  Or maybe he was just mad they didn’t ask his opinion first. (Told you this would ruin bingo night, but did you listen?  Noooo…) Anyway, outcome is the same either way: they erased Batman’s memories as well.

 

You can argue that stealing the villains’ memories was necessary from time to time, and I’d probably agree with you on a lot of it, but this is one of your best friends, guys.  It’s at this point that any scrap of sympathy or understanding I may have had for the League is now gone.  Yes, the situations they found themselves in were difficult.  Of course their morals are going to be strained or put to the test on occasion, and part of being a hero is sticking by your morals under ANY circumstances, not changing the rules just because they’ve become inconvenient all of a sudden.  And as far as I’ve seen, these “heroes” have utterly failed every single one of those tests by taking the easy way out instead of taking two seconds to think about what they’re actually doing.  And those who have thought about it are too busy making excuses to justify their behavior to realize that maybe, just maybe, there are alternatives to brainwashing someone who trusted you.

Messing with your own friends just to cover up your own stupidity is exactly what the real serial killer did, as we’ll find out next week.  To say nothing of the fact that the League has consistently put their group’s reputation and survival before the well-being of individuals, which is the same kind of sick mentality that Penn State and the Catholic Church have been rightly vilified for in the past couple of years.  Now again, I’m not trying to rank crimes or compare real-world horrors to what is ultimately just a colorful piece of paper.  But when the heroes of your story are using the same logic and excuses as the people who allowed pedophiles and rapists to remain free, you have a very serious problem.

 

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

GA finishes his big impressive speech by extolling the virtues of secret identities.

 

You mean aside from that time in the eighties where Wally had a public identity?  And that time in the nineties where Ollie had a public identity?  These are the last two characters to be having this conversation.

Aaaaand here’s where my problems with this little speech go from minor nitpicks to headdesking aggravation.

One: Did Robin’s mask protect Jack Drake?  Did Atom’s mask protect Jean Loring?  Did Superman’s… lack of glasses… protect Lois Lane?  No?  Then shut up.

Two: Ollie believes that any superhero who cares about his family will wear a mask to protect them.  So what does that say about people like Ralph who chose to forgo a mask?  Have they fought about it?  Obviously Ralph didn’t feel quite as strongly about this as Ollie did, but we never get an explanation why.  Back in Issue One, Ralph does tell Firehawk a little bit about how he likes the attention that comes with a public identity, but that doesn’t explain why he outted himself in the first place.  Was it just for the attention?  Was it less hassle?

You can’t just have one character briefly present half of his view at the very beginning of the story, spend the entire rest of the narrative arguing the opposite, and declare that you’ve done your job.  That’s lazy.  And it leads to a bigger problem: after being bombarded with so much evidence for why superheroes need secret identities (ill-conceived as some of that evidence might be), it implies that Sue’s death is Ralph’s own fault for not caring enough to protect her… in which case, why go to the trouble of making us feel sorry for him if you’re just going to take that all away by implicitly implicating him in her death?  Ralph has completely disappeared from the story by this point, so we never know if he now agrees with Green Arrow and believes that going public was a mistake.

Now personally, I do believe in the importance of secret identities, but as far as this series is concerned, it’s very much irrelevant.  You’ll see why next time, if you don’t already know.

Three: How can you claim to be protecting your secret identities when you’re calling each other by your civilian names on a rooftop in the middle of a city?!!!

 

Argh.  We’re almost done for today, let’s just power through it.

While Flash and GA are being useless yet again, Batman has been doing all the heavy lifting… yet again.  I don’t know if I’m just getting stupider from reading this lousy comic or if the next part is genuinely confusing, so bear with me: Batman tries to confront Calculator about Boomerang’s death, either under the assumption that Calculator sent Jack the gun and/or that Calculator was behind the whole serial killer plot.  He fails to find the guy, though he does find a note from Calculator that proves his innocence for some reason.  Again, I’m not a hundred percent clear on just what the heck is going on.

And since when was the Calculator a suspect?  And if he was a suspect, why did no one try to go after him earlier when they were busy beating up every villain they could think of?  Heck, if Calculator is really so knowledgeable about everything that happens in the villain community, why didn’t they go after him earlier anyway?

Or maybe Batman has been looking for Calculator this whole time and the comic never bothered to tell us.  It’s becoming increasingly obvious that all of the real detective work is conveniently happening off-screen.  How did Batman come to suspect Calculator and, admittedly unsuccessfully, track him down to a specific location?  Why did he choose to do so?  This is a murder mystery, isn’t it?  So where’s the damn mystery?!  Batman has apparently been doing all this awesome detective work, and meanwhile, all we get is random confrontations and repetitive conversations.  Flash has threatened to tattle on Green Arrow three times already!  Do something else!

 

Well, it beats what we’ve been getting.  Dr. Mid-Nite discovers that Sue died because the bloodstream to her brain was blocked.  And what caused the block?  Well apparently someone shrank down and stood in her brain.  I know diddlysquat about medicine, so while I’m sure having a person stand on your brain would mean bad news, I don’t know whether or not this would be the outcome.  Still, for an ignoramus like me, I have to admit that this is a pretty clever way to off someone.  “Microscopic assassination,” as Mr. Terrific labels it.  And who’s the first person who instantly springs to mind when you hear the word microscopic?

 

“That jerk stole my sandwich out of the community fridge again!”

That’s right, everyone immediately suspects the Atom.  I guess Batman isn’t immune to the whole turning-on-your-friends-for-no-reason thing.  Note to self: do not befriend anyone in the Justice League.

What really kills me is the fact that everyone—Batman, Dr. Mid-Nite, Mr. Terrific…—instantly believes that Ray is the killer.  Why?  It’s not like he’s the only person in the DC Universe who can alter his size.  There’s Shrinking Violet.  Just about any magician/sorcerer you can think of.  Probably Martian Manhunter, since he’s a shapeshifter.  Alternate universe versions of all of the above.  Anyone who could get a hold of Ray’s shrinky-drink suits.  But no, they all jump on Batman’s “ZOMG RAY’S A BAD GUY” bandwagon.  Logic at its finest.

As the League is scrambling to get a hold of Ray, the prime suspect is enjoying a night in with Jean.  The comic ends with Ray looking creepy.

 

(Okay, okay, I kinda like these panels too, regardless of the not-logic it took to get us here.)

I’d summarize this entry, but it’s just more of the same, and I’m sure you’re getting tired of me repeating the same three complaints—too much padding, too little plot, and everyone is stupid.  The end.  Well, almost the end.  There’s one more issue to go plus final thoughts, so rest up, folks.  I’ve still got some rant left in me!

Next Time: Gee, I really miss my ex-husband and wish we hadn’t divorced.  We’re still on friendly terms and I don’t think he’s seeing anyone, so I’ll just pick up the phone and MURDER EVERYONE UNTIL HE LOVES ME AGAIN.

Images from Identity Crisis #5, Green Lantern Corps: Recharge #1, Identity Crisis #6, and Identity Crisis #4