FAREWELL TO A FOULED-UP CONCEPT

Now and then, I enjoy a good mystery. Although it’s not usually my genre of choice—whether reading it, writing it, or watching it—every so often I’ll come across an intriguing, intelligent thriller that piques my curiosity enough to wade through all the deception, tension, and red herrings in order to arrive at the big payoff (intelligent meaning anything that doesn’t feature Ashley Judd in the lead).

It’s not often the comic-book world crosses paths with the mystery genre. Sure, hints of the basic elements pop up now and then in detective books such as Batman and Daredevil, but those plots are usually more involved than your typical Agatha Christie or Jessica Fletcher yarn. But this year a little comic book called Identity Crisis dared to mix up convention by showcasing a typical by-the-numbers murder mystery that promised to “shake up” the entire DC universe. If only the final product followed through on that promise…

Like any devoted DC fan, I jumped into this series with the highest of hopes, despite never having never read any of writer Brad Meltzer’s previous work (although from my stint as a bookstore clerk, I became somewhat familiar with his repertoire; as such, I have a strong feeling we’ll be seeing Ashley Judd starring in an endless string of Hollywood adaptations of Meltzer’s novels real soon). The teaser ads for Identity Crisis presented us with a sufficiently chilling picture—the entire Justice League mourning an unidentified casket. When I first saw that image, I knew this series was going to be a major event. Someone BIG was going to die, a death on the same par as Barry Allen or the pre-Crisis Supergirl. Imagine my astonished disappointment when the victim of Meltzer’s fluffy whodunit turned out to be…Sue Dibny.

A relatively minor character that the majority of Identity Crisis readers had never heard of before, Sue had always been more of an un-stretchable appendage to her husband, The Elongated Man (a gay man’s fantasy hero if there ever was one). Sue was nice enough, and the hell that the villain Dr. Light put her through elicited enough sympathy to make this pregnant woman’s violent murder painfully poignant. Throughout the next five issues, Meltzer steered the reader onto enough off-ramps to convince us that everyone from Bat-Lash to Kamandi could’ve been the culprit. Imagine my disappointed astonishment when Sue’s true murderer turned out to be…Jean Loring.

Now, I’d pretty much given up on Identity Crisis the moment Meltzer left us all hanging in the penultimate issue with the possibility that the humble and wholesome hero, The Atom, offed the wife of one of his best friends. (Maybe he was still miffed about being turned back into a teenager during Zero Hour and decided to seek a sadistic form of revenge?) By the time this drawn-out mystery finally poked to its conclusion, I really couldn’t care less who was the real killer. It could’ve turned out to be Ma Kent and her nuclear apple pie and I wouldn’t have given a super-rat’s ass. But Jean Loring??

The whole “I-committed-a-heinous-crime-so-a-man-will-notice-me” motive couldn’t be more tired. It’s a twist taken right out of a soap opera, something “Melrose Place’s” possessive Kimberly or any number of characters on “Days of Our One Life to Live” would do. Ms. Loring’s neurotic obsession with the dashing Ray Palmer is understandable, though; the man is handsome, smart, professional, and he can alter his size (which would make for some fun cold winter nights). But this is comics, not the latest cookie cutter sudser from Spelling Entertainment. Shallow, chintzy twists do not belong in this medium, especially in a series that started out with such revolutionary promise.

Revealing someone as minor as Jean Loring to be a cold-blooded psycho killer of a minor character like Sue Dibny was bad enough, but Meltzer had to stoop even lower and throw a kink into the Justice League mythos by revealing that the heroes we’ve come to love and trust had secretly played total recall with the minds of a few pesky villains—not to mention the mind of one of their own. To a lifelong League fan such as me, this dark element goes against the team’s very foundation.

Justice League of America is one the very first comics I remember reading, and I’ve collected every single issue for the past 25 years. Even though the team has gone through a variety of changes in that time, the one thing that has stayed consistent is its virtuous integrity. But in seven simple issues, Meltzer has smeared a major taint on two-and-a-half decades of wonder and joy. I can understand how the heroes would be tempted to “cleanse” such ruthless scoundrels as Dr. Light and The Top (yet another gay man’s four-color fantasy), but to have them actually act upon those impulses belies everything super-heroes stand for. Even though a villain may rape, torture, and murder to his heart’s content, true heroes of virtue would never resort to committing an act that places them on almost the same level as the lowlifes they’re trying to “reform.”

But who am I to gripe? It’s too late to rectify the mess Meltzer’s made, and considering the massive sales Identity Crisis has brought to DC, I don’t see them ignoring the story anytime soon. Maybe in the future some brilliant storyteller will figure out a way to cleanse this series from the minds of its readers, but for now I’ll just have to learn to deal with it. Naturally, I’ll continue to read anything JLA-related—I simply can’t bring myself to break a 25-year-old tradition—but I’ll be reading with reservation. The team just won’t be the same. But at least I can be thankful I have the Justice League cartoons to fall back on.

Edward Beekman-Myers is the author of several short stories and two novels, all of which contain a heaping helping of sci-fi/fantasy and a smidgen of ironic wit. He currently lives in Springfield, IL, where he is finishing his Master's degree in English, but his ultimate master plan is to move to New York City and take over DC Comics (a plan which is proving quite difficult to achieve, despite numerous attempts at proffering various forms of sexual gratification to the DC editorial staff).

All images and characters TM and © 2004 DC Comics, Inc. Review © 2004 Edward Beekman-Myers.

Prism Comics promotes the works of the LGBT community in comics. It does not implicitly endorse any other material or products associated with those works. Any opinions expressed are those of the author(s).