Graphic Novel Review:

Identity Crisis by Brad Meltzer, Rag Morales & Michael Bair, DC Comics

ANOTHER LIFETIME ago, before the world of spin-doctors and low print-run bestselling books, we beheld the NEC DC; born of the phoenix-styled rise of The New Teen Titans by Wolfman & Perez, championed by Dick Giordano’s return to in-house editorial activity, pulling in hit & run mini-series, experimenting with paper stocks and taking us all the way up to a bunch of Brits taking the Yankee dollar. Did we taint that chalice? Or did America just prefer our dark side as opposed to our black humour? Either way, things changed, and forward looking expansion gave way to mean, grim and gritty; the anti-hero was in and swiftly ran to hide in the safety of relevance as cliché.

Thus as marketing tool we get “The death of...” – ‘Cos, gosh just like in real life,superheroes could die (until the lunch box manufacturer who licensed that character reminds AOL Time Warner Licensing enough’s enough)... So, there were many wary of the premise behind this book when it was first announced.

You see, in Identity Crisis, Sue Dibney, wife of Ralph Dibney, The Elongated Man, is murdered.

Never a major character in the great scheme of things, but much loved by those who were in the know: The guy stretched and twitched his nose when crime was afoot, solving clues like Holmes with Sue, his ever-loving bride pretty much playing his Watson when they weren’t making out. Love match. Innocent stuff. Even when he joined the Justice League of America (JLA).

So, why spoil the romance? Why drag those who don’t belong, kicking and screaming into an in-yer-face-arrogant ruck of a mini-series subsequently collected in this volume being reviewed? Aside from them being part of DC continuity and having to do what they’re told, I mean?

Well, there’s simply no good reason. At the tail end of the New DC when Alan Moore proposed a kind of similar take with a bunch of Charlton Comics characters DC had bought up, he was told to go make his own versions up with Dave Gibbons, and thus we had Watchmen.

Different times, different stakes, different players in town.

Fortunately the man wearing black to scribe this eulogy, Brad Meltzer, a respected crime fiction author by day, pens his tale with dignity and pushes the right buttons for those old JLA comic fans that followed the series prior to the New DC ever coming about.

See, with the New DC, the JLA were reborn in a great looking series drawn by Kevin Maguire, and well written by Keith Giffen and J.M DeMatteis, but those guys didn’t always take themselves seriously and there was a fair amount of humour. Not always what those who’d followed DC’s greatest heroes through thick and quite an awful lot of thin over 200 + issues wanted. Of course, newer regimes jettisoned the fun stuff for whatever was decided to be flavour of the next day (as is their right).

Reading this, if you’re a guy of a certain age you might find your memories come flooding back: a time when Dick Dillin was drawing literally every issue of the JLA month in, month out as writers like Len Wein; Mike Friedrich, Mary Pasko, Cary Bates, Gerry Conway and others gave us adventures about Batman and Black Canary, an argumentative Green Arrow and Hawkman, Earth 2 crossovers and Secret Society tie-ins... Little things hundreds of thousands of grown-up men might recall should you mention it to them, but few who will read this modern tale. But for those who do - old gits like me who still read comics - past and present will resonate in meaningful coincidence, as if those writers who had gone before had it all planned out, and it took Meltzer to come along and lift the lid on the whole darned thing.

Meltzer explains why the Arrow and the Hawk fought, how Zatanna probably has a darker moral side than that which the Vertigo imprint has tried to shoehorn her into now and again, and presenting a time for Wally West, the Kid Flash of New DC’s New Teen Titans, to see the wood for the trees while still maintaining the dignity to wear Barry Allen’s outfit in manhood. Why certain super-villains become a thing or ridicule and why it’s no laughing matter now...

The events that take place during the murder of Sue Dibney, although only intimated in caption form, are clear, and are the one thing that grate with me. I’m not prudish. But it feels too forced, though I’m sure most fans of the book would say all the other subplots involved would not resonate in the same way.

And she is not the only person who dies: costumed characters good and bad, and fathers who love their sons irrespective of what they wear. Some meaningful work comes into play there with redemption and revenge interweaving.

If there’s a source influence for this book, I’d actually say it was Sword of the Atom, a four issue mini-series by Jan Strnad and Gil Kane: the themes of that series are twisted, turned, romanced and then smashed hard against a brick wall as a long-drawn out detective story unfolds.

You want your action adventure? You’ve got that: Morales & Bair give it good! They also display a range of emotions for those talking head scenes which the kids probably flip by as they’re leafing through this, but it’s where the real guts of the story reside.

This is a superior kind of superhero read without wanting to be a film in a two dimensional medium (Thank all benevolent gods ever worshipped by our species!), though I don't think any of its themes were taken up by DC to any significant degree at the time. Indifferent costume designs and logos are the current order of the day at DC, according to the critics. Whatever, when the company put out this book – aside from being a gift horse to them in marketing terms – it was a job well done.