#71 - Heroes in Crisis (Part 1)

I was originally gonna wait on this one, but with my schedule originally there wasn’t gonna be another Rage Review until at least December, so I’m rectifying that now. Heroes in Crisis is the worst comic story I’ve ever read. I’ll make no bones about that, it’s worse than the stupid Mr Freeze retcons, worse than the revamped origins written by Scott Lobdell, worse than Felicia D Henderson’s Teen Titans rune, worse than Cry for Justice and its follow-up mini-series and worse than Secret Empire.

To understand exactly why this story p*sses me off, we need to examine a couple of mental health related issues, so trigger warning. This review, and the onecs that follow will discuss death and suicides in relation to mental health and how this story does all of it a complete disservice. Also, I’m not a doctor, most of my analysis is based on common sense and minor bits of research. If I make a mistake, please point it out to me, I do not want to be giving out inaccurate information.

                                                                                        

Before we begin we must also look at the story of Wally West, so many spoilers to follow. 

He was originally introduced as the sidekick to Barry Allen, The Flash as Kid Flash but after Barry sacrificed his life during the Crisis on Infinite Earths event in 1985, Wally took up the mantle. It was a bumpy ride for Wally but he had a steady fanbase.

In the 2000s, writer Geoff Johns took over the Flash Book, marrying Wally to long-time girlfriend Linda Park and they’d go on to have 2 children, Jai and Iris. They’d have a quick burst of growth and yield powers of their own. The family were the focus of the Flash book until its cancellation but I happened to get a copy of the Mark Waid story ‘The Wild Wests,’ which was pretty good. Linda and Jai and Iris have a particular relationship to Wally, they serve as anchors and Wally can use his powers to bring them to him or to head to them.

Then came Final Crisis, which took the interesting step of bringing back Barry Allen. I really don’t understand why, aside from thematically, they did this, but it was the beginning of the end for Wally. See, why do you need two Flashes? They had 2 Batmans around this time too but Batman was a sales juggernaut that spanned multiple books. The Flash wasn’t. Wally became more of a background character, his wife and kids even more so, especially after Titans became about Deathstroke’s team of mercenaries for some reason.

So, when the New 52 came around, Wally was removed from continuity entirely. They later introduced a Wallace West in the Pages of the Flash but he was bi-racial and shared no traits in common with pre-New52 counterpart. Next step for Wally was a tie-in to Convergence, a DC event that came with some truly brilliant tie-in mini-series… DC were changing offices and this was basically a filler event featuring past continuities.

I guess the success of this particular tie-in convinced the higher ups at DC, who were already seeing the failures of the New 52 after less than 4 years, to bring Wally back. Enter Geoff Johns and DC Universe: Rebirth, which brought Wally back and retconned Wallace to be his cousin, it’s a little contrived but what can you do? The only problem is that Linda doesn’t remember him, and his two kids are gone. The other thing you should know as that return of Wally was symbolic for the return of hope to the DCU.

This is something that would eat away at him both through his journey in Titans and through the Flash Book. And they were back to solving that age-old problem, what do you do with Wally now Barry is the Flash? There’s no easy answer to that, especially since Wally doesn’t have a solo series or a distinct identity. They gave him a pulse-maker, something left over from pre-crisis continuity but making him ineffectual in a team book like Titans was never gonna last so that got dropped pretty quickly.

Next story I know of with Wally was Flash War, which picked up on the lingering issues with Linda and the kids. He was convinced going fast enough to break the Speed Force was the only way to save his kids, and it turned out to be a trap. It was not long after this he was shipped off to Sanctuary, in a way that's kinda hilarious what we find out about it later. 

In comes writer Tom King, who at this point had been doing a pretty lengthy run on Batman which despite some hiccups, his story with Booster Gold was dreadful, had been decent up to this point, the point where Nightwing was shot in the head. This act, and the decisions that followed concerning the direction for Dick, sorry, Ric Grayson, pretty much convinced me to drop Nightwing. And his next shock moment convinced me to drop Batman as well. 

Yeah, side note, what is with DC and screwing over Dick Grayson? He was raped, he was nearly killed in Infinite Crisis, his home city got nuked, he became Batman, he went back to Nightwing, then got outed to the world, became a super-spy, and then just as he was assuming his secret identity in his now non-nuked city again, he gets shot in the head. F*ck you, Dan Didio.

Yeah, this story reeks of editorial mandate. Apparently, King came up with the concepts behind the story but DC Editorial told him the characters to put into it. This explains a lot, and not just the bizarre choice of characters for this story but problems I’ll get to in the review itself. You have to wonder whether stuff like the arc with the Champions in Secret Empire was an editorial mandate too.

Before we even get into the first issue, I should explain what the promotional material was advertising. The Sanctuary is a trauma facility for superheroes, generally dealing the with the effects of PTSD. Now, on paper, this is a fantastic idea. Superheroes go through traumatic events all the time, and not just in their origin stories. Exploring this issue, and other similar mental health issues is a great hook for this to be a comic that’s not only an entertaining read but a deep character piece that could have a positive impact on others going through similar situations.

Let’s start with the cover which is a massive group shot of tons of DC Heroes all in mourning. Which immediately raises some red flags about the content of this comic, I'll get into that later. But I have some questions.Why is Power Girl there? She’s trapped in an inter-dimensional void. Where’s John Stuart? He was on Earth at this point. Hell, you got Hal and Guy, where’s Kyle, where’s Simon or Jessica? You got Starfire on the cover and she was off-planet at this point. Why is Superman holding a mask? And who’s bright idea was it to make it look like the Psycho Pirate’s. It’s not as if Tom King has no idea who he is, he was literally one of the villains in King’s first Batman story and an important player in his current story. Why does Blue Jay have wings? He’s only supposed to gain them when he shrinks.

We open at a Diner with… oh god, Booster Gold. Look, I don’t have the time or knowledge to go into his backstory, just know that he’s a time-traveller from the future and fights with Future tech. Also, I refer you to my previous statement regarding Tom King and Booster Gold. He drinks a coffee as Harley Quinn walks in, the waitress asks if there’s gonna be a fight, which Booster says there is

We then get an absolutely necessary 2 page spread of Superman flying over some fields. We then get the confessionals that’ll be wasting our time the entire way through this story. This is of Harley who says she doesn’t believe in trauma. Harley Quinn doesn’t believe in… She’s a psychologist! Crazy maybe, and she begins acting that way before covering her face in shame. Yeah, if I was spouting nonsense like ‘I don’t believe in trauma’ I’d be covering my face too.

Back at the Diner, Harley orders some peach pie and coffee, she later confesses to Booster that

‘I hate pudding.’ Cute. She eats the pie and says it ‘Tastes like America’ ok does that mean she hates America? OK… Also, isn’t Apple pie usually associated with tasting like America. We see some birds digesting Blue Jay, who’d shrunk.

We then get a confessional from Blue Jay, he has the ability to shrink but thanks to an arrow from Silver Sorceress, he’s lost the ability to control his size alteration. OK, this is referencing obscure continuity, even for me. I have found nothing about this in my research. Also, not a complaint but this strikes me as odd, this confirms his ability to be meta-human powers, whereas he’s based on Yellowjacket from Marvel, who use science and technology. Incidentally, the Silver Sorceress was a hero, why didn’t she help him there and then? He says at night he shrinks and feels like he’s drowning and sometimes he welcomes it. Poor guy, I hope he gets through this traumatic and difficult period in his… Oh wait, he’s dead!

Harley finishes her pie and picks up the knife and begins stabbing Booster with it, this absolutely needed to last 3 f*cking pages. Also, this should be a foregone conclusion. Booster has force-fields, Harley has a table knife. We see Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman all en-route to the sanctuary and everyone there is dead. We can see clearly 4 dead, Lagoon Boy, Sergeant Steel, Hotspot and a woman wearing a similar cloak to those on the cover, but charmingly lifted up so we can see her ass, charming. We also see a Green Lantern ring and given that he hasn’t shown up since, I’m led to believe that the ring belongs to Simon Baz. This is going to raise some questions later on.

And there we have it, that was where Heroes and Crisis went off the rails, 14 pages into the first issue of this 9-issue event. I’ve already mentioned the problem of us having to care about the emotional struggles of people who are already dead. The only time this has ever worked, maybe, is with 13 Reasons Why? But the reason there is the focus is on interaction in the past that brought the future to bear and the reactions of the people she interacted with insights into that context. Here, they’re all talking in front of a camera, and you don’t care because there’s no reason to, there’s no future for them, they’re dead.

And of course, there’s the elephant in the room. This is an allegory for a mass shooting, King said so himself. This is grotesque and distasteful and the last thing you want in a story that covers mental health. You cannot start with the extremes; you need to build to them. There’s a reason Hannah wasn’t raped in episode 1.  

Beyond that, there’s the deaths themselves. Hotspot had recently been in an issue of Sideways, Lagoon Boy was in Young Justice, which was making a comeback. There was no reason to kill off these characters aside from kick-starting the mystery, and it only gets worse.

OK, so confessional from Hotspot. He has a catchphrase to help him overcome his fears ‘I’m just warming up?’ What is Hotspot doing in Sanctuary again? Anyway, he says it’s something for people to remember him by so naturally Superman doesn’t remember it. Oh, the irony, the palpable irony… Wait, I just remembered, I don’t care.

We cut back to Harley and Booster’s fight and for some reason Harley is getting some hits in. What is the diner giving steak knives for pie now? That knife shouldn’t be sharp enough to draw blood. Despite Booster being pinned down in one panel, in the next he’s got Harley pinned by the neck. He grabs her and takes her into the air.

Superman enters the Sanctuary and *sigh* finds the bodies of Roy Harper and Wally West. Just what this event truly needed, more death. And of two characters who do have followings, anyone who’s followed the Titans or the Flash solo book where Wally had apparently been prominent, will now be p*ssed off.

This book reminds a lot of Identity Crisis. Identity Crisis, had a lot of faults but at its centre was an engaging murder mystery that showed off the scope and scale of the DCU, included some interesting character bits and forever altered the direction of the DCU, and it all started with the Death of Sue Dibny. Identity Crisis, for all its faults was critically lauded, I wonder if the mentality is one death was good, so many is better. That’s not how it works.

This does remind me of Identity Crisis, but in the worst possible ways. A murder mystery that (as we’ll see later) makes no sense, resulting in shock deaths that aren’t necessary, and generally darkens the universe going forward. Right, now that’s out of my system, ready to have some more of your time wasted? We get a confessional from Roy Harper.

Being a non-powered human, he got hurt in the game, it started with prescription meds and slowly moved into hardcore drugs, like China Cat, right Roy? This is obviously a reference to the drug storyline from Green Arrow, something that bubbled to the surface during rise of Arsenal and was brewing around the time I dropped the Titans book. Some of this dialogue is so f*cking stupid though.

“So you go to a needle. To save your kidneys. And maybe some money. But really, isn’t that what superheroes do, save things?”

This is the level of dialogue this comic has, it’s bad, it’s really bad

Back to Booster and Harley, both prove to be absolute brain trusts as Harley stabs Booster 1000ft in the air. They both fall but sadly they’ll survive. Back at the Sanctuary, the androids that run the facility are destroyed, leaving blue splotches all over the wall. Also carved into the wall ‘The Puddlers are dead’ Superman shows more emotion over this than the bodies of Arsenal and Wally at the front door.

Wonder Woman explains that ‘puddlers’ are a team for metalworkers who removed impurities from metals to make them stronger. They conclude that someone from the sanctuary committed these murders

“Our hope for redemption is now just another hunt for vengeance”

F*ck off with this melodramatic sh*t you call dialogue.

Booster and Harley land on a farm. Booster is soaking his injuries in water. He says he was a coward and ran, but he saw Harley Quinn killing everyone. Harley denies this, says she didn’t save them, but she didn’t kill them, Booster did.

We finish with a confessional from Booster and some much-needed exposition about the Sanctuary that really this issue should’ve been about. It’s a facility created by the trinity using Kryptonian tech and, I quote

“Infused with the will of Batman and the compassion of Wonder Woman and of course: The Honour of Superman”

How you do that to a f*cking building is not explained, but you get the lowdown that it’s a place for heroes who’s been through too much to go. He needs help

Jesus Christ, thank god that’s finally over. The failure to set up Sanctuary before throwing us into a murder mystery is a gigantic failing of this event. Beyond that the dialogue is atrocious, melodramatic at times and bland the rest of the time, the exploration into trauma is surface level at best and my god the pacing. This issue wastes so much of our time, nothing of consequence has happened yet outside of the initial premise of the series, and it takes to midway through the issue before that’s even established. The talking head confessionals are boring, and I reiterate that it’s impossible to care about someone’s struggles when we already know that they’re dead!

OK, this was a tough read and I need a break, we’ll come back to this next week with #2-5