Monthly (Comic) Book Club - May - The next Crises17495
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Monthly (Comic) Book Club - May - The next Crises  Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #4-0 Identity Crisis #1-7 Week 1 (5/2-5/8): Zero Hour #4-2 Week 2 (5/9-5/15): Zero Hour #1-0 Week 3 (5/16/-5/22): Identity Crisis #1-4 Week 4 (5/23-5/29): Identity Crisis #5-7 Discussion topic ideas: * Thoughts on the story or artwork * Details in the story, artwork, or presentation * References to outside events or other works of fiction * Making of/Behind the Scenes details * Editions you will be reading from * Items in your collection pertaining to this week’s selection |
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 If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| I've got a busy week but I'm hoping to do the reading on Friday. If I don't I'll probably be playing catch-up since the weekend is FCBD and Mothers Day. | ||
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I’m reading off the omnibus. Not sure if I’ll be able to keep up if I read everything (there’s like 23 issues covering this week’s reading!) but we’ll see! |
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| Alrighty, I’ve read up to Zero Hour #4. The most relevant story comes from the two-part story in Showcase ‘94. Waveryder is hanging out with Rip Hunter, a member of the Linear Men, a group dedicated to studying and preserving time. Waveryder recently destroyed an entire timeline to defeat Monarch, a future version of the hero Hawk, who kills Dove, was in turn killed by Hawk who then became Monarch himself and then became a sort of tyrannical despot. Unfortunately, even destroying a timeline didn’t stop Monarch from escaping. Waveryder’s equipment senses a temporal anomaly in 1994 that ripples through all timelines and locate Monarch around it. Waveryder and Rip travel back to 1994 to find him but are ambushed and captured by Monarch, who reveals he has felt the time distortions but is not responsible for them. Turns out Monarch has created a device allowing him to see through time but not travel through it, which is what he needed the Linear Men‘s technology for. Waveryder breaks free from Monarch’s forcefield and attacks him, not knowing Monarch had built a device into his suit allowing him to absorb Waveryder’s energy. Monarch mentions that Hawk and Dove were the offspring of the Lords of Order and Chaos, making them powerful beings. When Monarch killed Dove, Hawk absorbed her energy. With the energy he absorbed from Waveryder, Monarch becomes a new villain, Extant. Extant takes the time travel control bracelet from Waveryder and disappears through time. In other issues we get glimpses of the time distortions affecting other heroes. Batman suddenly finds himself in the past. On the night his parents were killed. Only it wasn’t his parents who died but Bruce Wayne. Batman, knowing it was Joe Chill who killed his parents, goes searching for him to avenge his parents and himself. When Batman does find him it turns out Joe has been out stoned for days and couldn’t have been the one who killed Bruce Wayne. Batman, on the run from the police tries to get back home to speak with his parents but by the time he gets there he finds himself back in his own time with the doubt over whether it really was Joe who killed his parents or if it was a quirk of the temporal anomaly he just experienced. In Washington DC, Steel faces a tough battle with some villains but is helped by a past version of himself who suddenly disappears. Elsewhere, the Flash is trying to teach Bart Allen, aka Impulse and grandson of Barry Allen, how to use his powers. Apparently Bart was isolated in a VR world in the far future and was sent back in time so Wally could teach him to use and control his speedforce powers. Wally asks Iris, Bart’s grandmother who has also spent time in the future, if she might know of the mysterious man that had come to Wally and encouraged him when he was despairing in his youth eventually leading him to meet Barry and become the Flash himself. Iris says she doesn’t know because they had detected a mysterious and destructive temporal anomaly that makes much of the future unknown to her. She also tells Wally that she fees he will eventually come face to face with that force himself. Wally then gets a lead on a villain he’s been searching for. He tells Bart to stay while he goes take care of it. At the villain’s base Wally is sneaking around about to overhear the plan from the villain himself. Right then Bart bursts in fighting the villains goons. The villain flees and Wally stays to fight alongside Bart to keep him safe. When Wally and Bart try to catch up to the villain they find that he has been mysteriously cut in half with a laser. The culprit reveals himself to be Kadabra, a villain from the future. Wally throws Bart from the scene to keep him safe but the delays allows him to get captured in a net of deadly lasers. As the lasers close in and Wally thinks he’s done for, Kadabra’s costume changes right before their eyes, and then again, surprising even Kadabra himself and giving Wally an opening to escape and attack. As he attacks, Wally realizes they have both been transported forward in time. Wally is confused and then a bright light reveals the arrival of Waveryder leading to…  |
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| Issue 4 feels like a barrage of imagery hitting the reader at a rapid fire pace. It begins with an apparently omnipotent being being killed by an unseen assailant in the far future at the end of time. Darkseid’s servant, Metron, informs him he’s discovered time is unravelling and that they must find allies to stop it. In Gotham the Joker is foiled by Batgirl, at a time when she should still be injured from the events of Killing Joke. A fact that confuses and distracts Batman, allowing the Joker to escape. We cut to Rip Hunter and Waverider discovering the future is disappearing. They catch up to the event in the 64th Century were we’d previously left the Flash and Kadabra. Face to face with the the end of time, Kadabra suggests Flash running through the anomaly at Ultimate speed might cause a shockwave powerful enough to close it. Flash attempts it but vanishes while failing to close the anomaly. Batman and Superman meet to talk about the time anomalies they have witnessed when Metron appears to them. Waverider and Rip Hunter catch up to the time-destroying anomaly in the 58th century where they find a time-displaced Hal Jordan trying to close the rift. He too fails and just before being consumed by the anomaly Rip Hunter urges Waverider to find the Crisis event. On Earth 2 Hawkman apprehends an immortal whose longevity allows him to fee the distortion in time. At the same time, various iterations of Hawkman appear. Superman and Metron then appear to Kyle Rayar and use his powers to communicate with various superheroes to help combat the coming catastrophe. Afterwards Metron departs to recruit the Spectre but seemingly fails. Back at the Linear Men’s base, Waverider uses their equipment to find the Crisis event Back on Earth 2 the Justice Society gathers around Hawkman when his captive disappears. Waverider appears and shares with the original Flash the fate of Wally West. Back at the Linear Men’s base, Extant arrives |
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| So my two main takeaways from that first issue are that Dan Jurgens really intends to make the scale of this story match Crisis on Infinite Earths. The second is that in order to do that he is trying to set up many threads very quickly. As a result, we never seem to follow any thread for more than a page or two before shifting focus to something else. I think the issue did a good job of establishing the scale of the threat by seeing it work its way backwards across centuries. However, with less than half the number of issues as the original Crisis, the story does have to work fast, often inelegantly so. Metron just suddenly knows something so big is wrong that he must get assistance from Darkseid’s greatest enemies. Kadabra hypothesizes a solution in mere moments and the Flash follows it to his death, meant to invoke Barry Allen’s memorable death in Crisis on Infinite Earths but lacking the gravitas in its brevity. The issue also reminds us how stacked DC was with major events at this time as the Batman books were just concluding the Knightfall arc and Superman the Death and Return of Superman. I also think Monarch, who would later become Extant, was introduced in a big-ish event not too long before this. We haven’t had a chance yet to see Superman’s selected team in action but it still seems like an odd assemblage of heroes. Some make sense like Aquaman, Green Lantern, and Green Arrow, though why just them and not the whole Justice League, I don’t know. The Teen Titans, the Atom, and Dr Fate? Not my first choice but they still make sense. Then we have some powerless heroes and some I can’t even name filling out the rest of the roster. Still, with the more accelerated pace our heroes don’t come together as naturally as they did in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Going forward I’m wondering how all the pieces will come together; Superman’s team, Waverider and the Justice Society, is the time anomaly a natural phenomenon or the work of Extant? Was that even Extant killing the Trapper at the start of the issue? |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| #4 sets up some mysteries. Who are the people at the end of time, and should I know who Trapper is? Why the references to "X hours ago" in various places when those places happen at different times or are described as outside of time? Why is Batgirl walking and why are there two Robins? As a more casual DC reader, how many of these people should I recognize? Should I know who Extant is? The Spectre declining to join in makes me think there's a sci-fi trope that could be explored. The Spectre punishes evil, and there would be no evil if he destroyed anything. Perfectly imperfect robot logic! Having read the original Crisis, I see some connections. The Flash sacrificing himself, followed by Jay Garrick holding his costume in a panel like the Superman/Supergirl cover. I agree that things feel rushed. There are some confusing things, like why time is suddenly also being eaten from the past as well as the future. If the past is being eaten, will some characters with ancient origins (like those powered by gods or alien rings) disappear or be depowered? Should the New Gods disappear? I guess maybe we'll find out. |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| #3 makes me think that, unsurprisingly, there are some crossover issues happening. I assume that's where Superman would see his alternate parents. I guess the reveal that the Time Trapper is a future Rokk would have more impact if I knew who at least one of them is. Not being as familiar with the DC universe, I also wonder what all these other universes/timelines are. Wasn't the point of Infinite Earths to get rid of them? Did they start bringing them back, or is this series bringing them back? Similarly, I would probably be more invested in Extant being Waverider if I knew more about him, or Hawk, or Monarch. Some of the dialogue is a little hokey. Extant makes a big entrance, including saying who he is, and the response is "who is this guy?" @dielinfinite mentioned all the big events that happened around this time. I guess that includes Guy Gardner being in a armor suit (?) and Powergirl being magically pregnant. The 90s were wild. |
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| #2: Garrick and Alan Scott's retirement didn't have the impact for me that the text says it should have. Of course, retirement is a relative term as it looks like Garrick is going to have a chat with the Spectre. I'm also not confident of the superheroes' approach. They send a team to the past right when the entropy wave is arriving, but they didn't have a plan on what to do when they got there? And then they put Nightwing in charge? No slight to Dick but he wouldn't be my first choice for solving a bizarre time wave. Metron's group fairs much better. We get another mystery, which is who zipped in to grab the Green Lantern ring and then duck out. I'm agreeing more about the rushed feeling. There are so many big events happening that they all just wash over you. It doesn't help that for whatever reason I knew more of the Infinite Earths characters, if only from other media, than I do in this series. |
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| So I just finished Batman 511, I aldo took a peek at the ends of the upcoming issues and it looks like the issues follow the individual characters from the points we’d already seen in Zero Hour. For example, this issue of Batman begins with Batgirl stopping the Joker with all the dialogue verbatim from what we saw except it doesn’t cut away when they leave the scene. Batman find out that the police have standing orders to shoot Batman on site. Batgirl explains that in the events of Killing Joke played out differently with Jim Gordon being shot (and killed) and Barbara being abducted. Harvey Dent, having never become Two-Face, is the new commissioner. Batman talks with Oracle and they conclude that different realities are overlapping as elements from different realities seem to fade in and out. Batman goes to see Harvey but ends up foiling Joker’s plan to kill him only to find both Joker and Dent missing and Gordon alive again. However, not everything is back to normal as Batgirl is still around and the issue ends with Batman meeting with Superman which we see a few pages later in Zero Hour |
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| Superman: The Man of Steel is pretty entertaining. it begins with Superman meeting with Batman as we saw in Zero Hour though this time the dialogue isn’t identical. It diverges when Batman corrects Superman, saying he never broke his back. The whole issue is set around a big benefit concert to help rebuild Metropolis. A roadie is attacked by the Mutants gang from Dark Knight Returns and the DKR Batman arrives to stop them. Superman and the other Batman are attracted by the sound of the fight and DKR Batman warns Superman of the temporal anomaly the other Batman did. They are soon joined by the Batman as he appeared in his first appearance who brings the same warning to Superman. The gang finally attacks the concert and Superman and the Batmen foil the attack. With the concert situation taken care of, Superman is able to meet with a physicist to discuss the Batmen and the temporal anomaly they are trying to warn him about as the Batmen continue to change appearance. the physicist suggest that Superman might be at the center of the anomaly since Batmen from so many realities are trying to warn him of it. The physicist suggests Superman try to find the Batman of his reality since he’ll probably be searching for Superman as well. This time the conversation with Batman proceeds exactly as we saw it in Zero Hour complete with the interruption by Metron. |
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| Green Lantern 55 takes place right after the infamous “Women in Refrigerators” incident in Green Lantern 54. The issue begins with Kyle Raynar fighting Major Force who had killed his girlfriend. When Kyle returns home he is met by the Golden Age Green Lantern, Alan Scott. Scott tells Raynar about Hal Jordan, whose hometown was recently destroyed. Hal disobeyed the Guardians by trying to rebuild the city resulting in Hal turning on the Guardians. Scott tells Raynar that, as the last of the Green Lanterns, he will likely have to help stop Hal in the near future. The next morning Kyle is remembering his girlfriend and using that memory to encourage him to keep the ring and the responsibility it represents. As he flies off he is met by Superman and Metron as seen in Zero Hour. |
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a page from Superman |
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| That's cool. I appreciate when they mix in art styles from different eras as opposed to just changing the costume. | ||
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The Bat Gun didn’t make an appearance, though! I still need to catch up (and without reading your comments to look ahead) but while issue 1 felt rushed, I fee that there is a better, more decompressed version of the story unfolding throughout the tie-ins. Issue 1 of Zero hour feels like a highlight reel of all these other stories. If the B-stories were removed or diminished a “Snyder Cut” of Zero Hour 1 could possibly be cobbled together. The Batman and Superman tie-ins were interesting and great fun but the next issue is Darkstars and not only do I not know who these characters are, they also don’t have much impact on Zero Hour 1 (I think you just see one or two characters when Superman does his roll call) so I’m not especially motivated to read the issue lol |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| Going from #2 to #1, I definitely feel like I missed something. 2 ended on something of a calm note with the heroes succeeding in the future but failing in the past, and some monologuing by Extant. But #1 starts with some of the heroes in the middle of trying to escape another entropy hole (or whatever) and referencing things we haven't seen happen. The big reveal is that the bad guy organizing things beyond Extant is Hal Jordan, now calling himself Parallax. I'm not really invested in the story but I'm sure fans at the time were surprised. I am not the biggest Green Lantern reader but this seems a bit past his pay grade, no? I wonder if the last issue will explain how he pulled this off. |
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| #0 falls too heavily on the exposition side for me. How Hal got all the power to do what he's doing, how Waverider is trying to create his own universe and then pull it off after Hal dies; it's a lot of words. I sympathize with some of the characters' confusion or conflicted feelings; a lot of this is above their pay grade, and if Hal is going to make infinite universes where everyone can live a good version of their life, then why not? I guess the "you killed everyone in this universe to do it" is a fair argument, but if they all come back it seems kind of like fair play. The "Hal isn't god" argument is a bit stronger for me, but it also depends on how he's doing it. If he's picking and choosing universes, then that's not good. If he's making 'Infinite Earths', to strike a phrase, then why not? He wouldn't have this thumb on the scale. Overall, I would say I'm unimpressed with this reboot. It seems like you're enjoying the crossover issues, so maybe they make it more worthwhile. For me, this main series wasn't very satisfying. But the DC universe is rebooted now, which was the main goal, so in terms of fulfilling company edict I suppose it could have been worse. |
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| Last night I read DarkStars, Legionnaires, Valor, Superboy, Superman, and Hawkman, which brings me up to Zero Hour 3 This batch was a bit tougher to follow. Unlike the previous issues which mostly dealt with events that had previously been set up in Zero Hour, a lot of these issues were coming at the end of their own separate storylines. I’m not very familiar with DCs Cosmic setting or characters plus the villains had their own cosmic and reality-manipulating powers so it was a bit confusing not knowing if it was the Zero Hour time anomalies at play or if it was the villain du jour. The Trapper did make an appearance, telling his story to another character how he had manipulated time and erased his past and how he kept trying to remake it but always failing. Classic Superboy, aka young Clark Kent, appears in the 30th century to rally the Legionnaires to victory but then is phased back into present day Smallville. The Smallville portion was more interesting because young Clark is trying to come to terms with his own future. He throws a bit of a fit and the modern Superboy has to try to reign him in. As he’s essentially fighting Superman, modern Superboy is handily outmatched until Clark realizes his presence is causing more anomalies and lets himself fade into the time stream. The Superman story was interesting as Superman takes a quick detour from meeting the heroes he summoned to answer a worried call from his parents, in what is probably the most dramatic dropped call ever  Due to a time anomaly Krypton was not destroyed and Superman’s Kryptonian parents have come to Earth to retrieve him. They show him what has happened on Krypton since he left and it failed to explode. They had another son who grew up, became regent of Krypton, and had children of his own. Clark realizes they’re from another timestream and tells them he can’t go back with them but that he would like to visit Krypton one day. As his Kryptonian parents leave, his mother kisses him goodbye. Unfortunately the unstable atmosphere and twisting time streams combine and the ship explodes forcing Superman to lose his parents again. I liked this issue except that sometimes Jurgens’ facial expressions for Superman were a little too dramatic and series when a softer tone would’ve matched the dialogue better and better conveyed that feeling of Superman being reunited with his parents and knowing that he has more family out there. The Hawkman issue is another one coming at the end of its own major storyline. Some sort of Hawk God is wrecking havoc, having possessed the previous Hawkman. Eventually another Hawkman and Hawkgirl are brought in by the time stream and using their powers combined free the spirit powering the Hawk God and they merge into a new Hawkman (leading into the Hawkman 0) So yeah, some issues are more critical to the Zero Hour plot than others and some are side stories. I think Jurgens, as he is writing Zero Hour as well as the Superman issues was better able to position his stories to coincide with the event while others are coming of big 3 or 4 part stories and are very hard to follow when you start at the last issue and the story is barreling toward its conclusion without the time to recap the story for people just jumping in |
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| I didn’t read all the tie-ins after issue 3 and just stuck to the mini-series. The mini-series definitely suffers from feeling too rushed and also a bit directionless or at least not directed enough. Four of the five issues are essentially “Time is being destroyed and Extant is doing it for reasons.” The main mini-series suffered from the same issues you see in a lot of big events in that the main mini-series feels like little more than an outline while any character moments take place in tie-ins leaving the mini-series itself feeling rather empty. It did get me thinking, however that there is essentially a different version of the event for everyone reading it at the time. It seems unlikely that someone would read no comics and just jump in foe the five issue mini-series. They would probably be reading one or more characters’ books in addition to the mini-series so their version of the event would focus more of their characters of choice where they would hopefully have some satisfying character moments in their tie-ins. Personally, I definitely feel that an event should be a satisfying read on it’s own and the tie-ins should add to that not make up for a lack of that. This is one thing where I think Crisis on Infinite Earths excelled. It ebbed and flowed and had moving moments for the characters. While it had a large cast I think it focused more on a certain few to really lead us through the story with other characters appearing in their orbit. Zero Hour felt like it tried to give too many characters something to do and as a result very few felt essential. I agree that the mini-series was somewhat disappointing but I don’t think I can say that the event as a whole was bad. While I may not like important and meaningful character moments relegated apart from the main event book, I also can’t ignore that they are there (from what I read and what I skimmed). Now, I also can’t say that there was nothing good about the mini-series itself. I personally thought the last issue was by far the most focused and contained some very effective character moments. I am very sad that the issue was a conclusion and not the premise of the entire mini-series. What if instead of four issues of heroes mindlessly flinging powers at white rifts and Extant stomping around menacingly the series began with temporal anomalies bringing back dead or tragically harmed loved ones and heroes. The fantasy of that reality attracting the heroes to the side of whoever’s doing it. Maybe when they tried appealing to Green Arrow it doesn’t work because of the unique relationship he has with the person behind it, Hal Jordan. Green Arrow then alerts others and they try stopping the anomalies only to find themselves facing familiar faces fighting for the opportunity to exist or for their loved ones to exist. As they try to stop the collapse of time they fight with Hal Jordan in different eras, in some of them Green Arrow is there trying to reason with with him but failing each time. When we reach the end it comes down to Green Arrow again to settle things with Hal. Maybe he thinks Hal is too far gone and take the shot like we saw. Pretty much all those elements were in that final issue and only in that final issue but it feels like that where all the genuine emotional material was: Green Lantern seeing his close friend fall so far, Barbara existing as Batgirl again, and of course Hal, a good person trying to do something good but by heinous means. It almost reminded me of Ozymandias from Watchmen. |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite I'm probably going to experience a version of this soon. I decided to pick back up on my CW watching on Netflix because I only have one season of Arrow left. So I'm watching all of that but when I get to the Infinite Crisis crossover I'm going to watch the other shows' episodes as well. So I'll be all caught up on Arrow but not know what's happening in the other shows (aside from Legends of Tomorrow, which started their season with the Crisis episode). I'll see how it lands. I agree the last issue felt more together. It wasn't a great routine overall but they stuck the landing. |
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| Identity Crisis 1 The issue sets up a pretty foreboding tone. Even the first vignette, with Ralph and Firehawk, has the internal monologue about funerals and keeping people safe. Superman and his folks has a reference to Batman's parents, which I assume (?) is incidental by Martha but hits home for Clark. Then we have grave visits and communicators going off and it's just a question of what bad thing happened. I'm not very familiar with Elongated Man, and most of what I know is from the Flash TV show where he isn't the main character and Sue isn't a character (in as much as I've seen anyway). I think the issue does a good job of establishing the importance of their relationship. I knew that the story revolves around Sue's death but it does add to the emotion. I'll reserve some judgment until further into the reading, but the added touch of her pregnancy seems to be unnecessary insult to injury. The Women in Refrigerators website had already existed for five years; throwing a pregnancy into the mix seems a bit much. The issue ends on what I think is an interesting move. It seems like it's going to be a mystery story, with Ralph being fundamentally involved and all the info about the lack of clues. But the part at the end with Green Arrow and the group after the funeral seems to throw all that out the window and reveal that it was Dr. Light. So I guess now the mystery is what happened that makes it seem so obvious to them that it was Light? |
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| Issue 2 adds to the ugliness by revealing that Dr. Light, at some point in the past, raped Sue Dibny on the JL satellite and then the team decided to try to magically change his personality. From reading Dr. Light's wikipedia page I guess the shift somewhat explains a change in the character in the comics. The JL team at the time make something of a snap decision that falls much more on the pragmatic end of vigilantism. It's hard to imagine the same thing happening if Superman or Batman had been there. As it is, Barry Allen gets thrown under the bus a bit. I've read some of DC Injustice and Flash gets similar treatment there, going along with the fascist Superman group even when he knows better. In this case his grief takes the blame. We do get something of a return to the mystery, as an autopsy suggests that Dr. Light was not the killer. Although I guess I'd have to say, why couldn't he? Just because Sue was dead before she was burned doesn't mean that Light couldn't have done that. |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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| Issue 3 starts with an opportunity to put on my psychologist hat and tell you that everyone uses virtually all of their brain all the time. That 10% thing is garbage. Slade using 90% of his brain (whatever that might mean depending on how you interpret it) would make him dumber than everyone else and give him brain damage, as neurons die off if they don't fire. On the science side, I'm also not sure why a laser pointer would knock the Atom around. Electrons and protons do have mass, but wouldn't Atom deal with that all the time when he's tiny? Having to move around in air and whatnot? Plus, light is made of photons, not protons and electrons. I've seen the Deathstroke fight before. On Quora there's a lot of discussion of feats to determine who would beat who in a "real" fight or generally to discuss how dangerous or powerful a character is. Deathstroke dismantling this JL group comes up in establishing his bona fides. But the screenshots usually end with Dinah being bagged. I guess that makes sense because I have no idea what happens with the Green Lantern part. If people could just break his fingers, wouldn't that happen all the time? I thought the ring made him stronger than that. And was Slade trying to use the ring? Maybe that's the theory he's testing but I thought you had to be wearing the ring, besides any other safeguards there might be to stop someone from just picking one up. There is a bit of a nice Easter egg when Dr. Light remembers. The team tackling Slade looks just like the panel in #2 of the team tackling Light, so I thought the middle panel with Light in it was kind of a waste. We just read it last issue, and Light is saying he remembers, so why? But Batman is in the middle panel. Batman was not in the story that Green Arrow told. Hmmmmmm. As far as the unpleasantness of superhero mind wipes goes, saying that they needed to do it all the time to protect secret identities is a reasonable one. I don't know that it makes it right, and Arrow and Hawkman's disagreement says I'm not the only one, but it opens the door to mental manipulation. |
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| Issue 4 is more of a plot issue but it seems full of red herrings. An interrogation of Slipknot comes up empty and things point to the Suicide Squad but no one seems to believe it. Atom's ex-wife is attacked and Lois is threatened, so the heat is ramping up, but we haven't learned much more this issue. I will take the opportunity to fill a post by saying that I'm enjoying the Green Arrow point of view for the series. I haven't read much of his comics but it fits with what I would expect. I'm also enjoying (as far as it goes; it isn't a fun story per se) this more than Zero Hour so far. The artwork is good even if there isn't something I can point to as being great. |
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| I really enjoyed the first episode and I saw some immediate contrasts with Zero Hour. The pacing fees a lot more deliberate. While Zero Hour rushes through loads of material in mere pages, Identity Crisis takes its time, builds tension and gives the main characters time to react and comment on events. Sure some characters are barely given a page but the story doesn’t expect us to be emotionally invested in them. I think Wally West got about as much time as Nightwing did here before he was killed in Zero Hour. From the first issue it also fees like Identity Crisis is more built around a theme where Zero Hour felt very plot-driven. From the very start of Identity Crisis there is a strong focus on death. The open monologue focuses on death, Nightwing is remembering the death of his parents, Tim Drake’s father worries about his son’s safety, and Elongated Man worries about his wife’s. Even Ma Kent’s seemingly innocent joke inadvertently touches on death. I agree that the turn from being a whodunnit was surprising but it also reveals what I think will be another major theme and that is trust. We learn that within the Justice League there are a select few privy to secrets unknown even to the likes of Batman and Superman. Whatever the secret is, it’s enough that these members will send a dozen other members on wild goose hunts while they focus on their own machinations. It certainly feels like a major conflict will end up being between those in the know and those who are not. I am also not terribly familiar with Elongated Man but again, I think the story provides the relevant information to the reader. I certainly imagine someone more familiar with the characters might get more out of the story but I don’t feel a reader that isn’t couldn’t follow the story. In Zero Hour by contrast the reader is expected to be familiar with characters like WaveRider without really telling us his background or even his powers. We can glean some from what he does over the course of the story but we aren’t given a baseline to set and play with expectations. So something that came up a few times back when we were reading Marvels was the likeness of many of the characters. Now, I haven’t gone ahead and read your subsequent posts but I was wondering if you’ve picked up on any of the actors artist Rags Morales used as reference for the characters? |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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xkonk private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite I have not! I'll have to take a flip back through before I move on to the rest of the series. |
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| Post 26 • IP flag post | ||
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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xkonk private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Flipping through, Clark Kent looks a little familiar but I can't generate a name. Interestingly, his face changes when he's Superman (in issue 1 on the page where he gets the alert, compare the middle right panel to the bottom right panel). Same with Batman in issue 3 when his mask is off; looks familiar but I can't place him. Otherwise I can't say anyone jumps out at me. I do appreciate that the characters look distinctive though; there isn't a commonality to them that a lot of artists have. So I did some googling and found this rundown: https://www.cbr.com/comic-book-easter-eggs-the-many-faces-of-identity-crisis/ . I can see some of them with photos next to each other, but I don't think Rags' work is photorealistic enough to really bring those faces through. And that's fine with me; I don't need comic book characters to look like actual people. Occasional Easter eggs are fun but when characters look like actors it can take me out of things a bit. As a side note, going back through, one thing I thought but didn't write in was how I enjoy Superman's casual displays of speed. In issue 1 he gets the alert and is suddenly in costume, and in issue 4 he's on the video call from Smallville and then suddenly in the room (again getting changed along the way). It's a nice touch. |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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xkonk private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Issue 5 has things I like and things I don't like. The emotion and the tension in Drake's attack is very well done. Batman's expressions are also good. I think the art is doing great work. On the flip side, I'm not as sure about the story. Firestorm dies in essentially a page, for no big payoff. They were far enough down the roster that I didn't know the other heroes or villains there except for Shazam. And we don't see any other villains except for the shadow person; Shazam is powerful enough to handle some heavy hitters. Who were they fighting that all we see if Firestorm go out poorly? I'm also not sure about Captain Boomerang's move. Why would he decide to kill a hero's family member? And why Tim Drake's? Granted, about the only thing I know about Boomerang is that he's a Flash villain and kind of deplorable, but it seems like a drastic move. Is he trying to impress his son? Seems like a weird way to do it. |
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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xkonk private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Issue 6 does a few things. One is it makes some changes to the status quo, making it similar to the other Crisis events. Captain Boomerang is now his son and has super speed. Tim Drake is another orphaned Robin. It's happening 'naturally' instead of because of a universe-wiping reset, but still making some changes. It gives us the big reveal about Batman's memories also being wiped. Keeping heroes' secret identities a secret is apparently a very dirty business. And we get the reveal that someone very tiny killed Sue. Assumptions seem to jump to the Atom, but why would he attack his ex-wife and then save her? Just to throw suspicion away from him? Why would he want all these other people dead? |
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| Post 29 • IP flag post | ||
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If the viagra is working you should be well over a 9.8.
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xkonk private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Issue 7 wraps up the mystery. Atom's ex-wife, Jean, killed Sue in a bid for attention. She pleads innocence and a lack of intention, but she tried to cover her tracks and put a hit out on Tim's dad. Off she goes to Arkham. Overall I'll say that I liked this better than Zero Hour. It was more holistic and understandable, I liked the art better, and I wanted to know what was happening next whereas I wasn't invested in any part of Zero Hour. So it has that going for it. That said, there's a lot of things I don't like in the series. I don't think the "who benefits" part works, aside from if you don't think about it too hard. I don't think the lack of clues works. While Jean getting in and the murder itself would certainly be hard to find traces of, she must have left something behind when she grew back to normal size. A smell or something that one of all those heroes would have picked up on. Trying to understand the logic of the criminally insane is silly, but I don't understand why Jean put out the hit on Drake. She had already faked the attack on herself and had Ray's attention; why not stop there? The story is also ugly, content-wise. Deaths are a part of superhero stories, of course, but not typically like this and by someone in the family. Add in the pregnancy and rape and the mind-wipes and personality changes and no one really comes off well. I wonder if this story would have been released the way it did (as a big event, in continuity) if Black Label existed at the time. |
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