Every summer DC Comics has a major publishing event, which usually ties together heroes from across their line of publications. Most years there’s a lot of razzle/dazzle, but the results don’t live up to the hype.
This year is different.
If you have even the faintest interest in comics, even if you haven’t read one in years, GO BUY A COPY OF IDENTITY CRISIS #1.
I just finished reading the issue (which is still on the stands), and it is the best written comic that I’ve read in ages–even better than J. Michael Straczynski’s wonderful stuff on Spiderman.
It is powerful.
It will rip your heart out and stomp it into the ground.
Identity Crisis is a seven-issue limited series which is set in motion when someone who has been around for a loooong time in the DC universe is brutally murdered. This event forces to light a dark secret that several members of the Justice League have been keeping for years, even lying to fellow League-members to protect it.
The art is gorgeous, but for me the writing is what really makes or breaks a comic book. A few pages into IC #1, I was thinking “This is really well written.” And there’s a reason for that. It is penned by Brad Meltzer, who is a bestselling author whose “books have a total of almost six million copies in print, have spent over eight months on the bestseller lists, and have been translated into over a dozen languages, from Hebrew to Bulgarian.” You can read an interview with him about Identity Crisis here. After reading Identity Crisis, I’m going to be checking out his other works.
Deaths of long-established characters have been done before, and long-buried secrets have been unearthed before in comics, but this may well be the best it’s ever been done (even topping when Captain Marvel died of cancer). It certainly breaks new ground in terms of how the heroes deal with the situation.
This also is not a meaningless superhero death that will be undone in the course of time. This change is permanent. When you read it, you will know why.
This series starts even more powerfully than Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns. If forthcoming issues can keep up the standard set in this one, it will become more of a classic than they are.
I can’t tell you how powerful this comic is. There will be a lot of people reading it who will be choking back tears.
There will also be a lot who won’t bother choking them back.
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been on vacation. I was gone for twelve days, and in that time I traversed the continent and back.
I’m off to the 