Identity Crisis

Fysh

So out of boredom at the weekend I looked over the Identity Crisis thing, because it's caused a lot of discussion and I was vaguely serious to see what had happened to lead into Countdown To Infinite Crisis...

Firstly, I should say that since I'd heard mostly negative criticisms of it, I didn't think it was that bad. True, the villain's motivations were a bit rubbish and there were a couple of things that seemed a bit too convenient, but....and stop me if you've heard me say this before....we're talking pervsuit books here. Not just that, but mainstream continuity pervsuits. Utter realism isn't ever going to be provided, nor would it feel natural if it did.

Secondly, the storyline itself. Perhaps this is just me, with my lack of understanding of what continuity reboots have done to the DC universe, but....this is the first time this idea has been addressed seriously in terms of the whole universe? I'm guessing it kind of must be, since otherwise there would have to have been references to it. So, since roughly 1938 there's been DC superheroes, and it takes until 2004 for someone to start a passable story dealing with the universe-wide implications of having your secret identity known. (Yes, I know the Marvel universe has dealt with this kind of thing before. But then again, the Marvel universe can go suck out my farts for all the times it's flirted with a fantastic character and idea and then decided to screw it all up again in favour of some rubbish to appease idiot basement-dwellers).

Thirdly....the whole post-superhero self-awareness/irony thing. Why? It doesn't work. It's all very well to mock what seemed like a good idea in the seventies (back when apparently everyone, babies and small children included, were on some sort of narcotic and therefore incapable of proper judgement as to what constituted a good idea) but, you know, Mr Calculator may have changed from being an idiot in a suit with giant buttons on it to an expensive but reliable infomation source - but he's still selling information to people who run around in spandex fighting crime. (Or would-be tyrants. Or sinister forces from beyond the normal realm of human experience. Or galactic invaders. Or whatever. I don't care, it's all the same, really).

Which brings me to my main point, really. Not only does this strike me as a bland miniseries, more than anything (while it deals with a vaguely interesting idea, it doesn't go into enough depth or explore certain "inconsistencies" that should have been glaringly obvious) - but it strikes me as a signal to what's wrong with mainstream comics, at least in my opinion.

The whole series has a dark tone (to be expected, when it deals with an apparent serial killer) and features a few moments of otherwise-ridiculous supervillains actually appearing to be human beings, but then it falls away and returns to the normal sub-standard rubbish I've come to expect from this kind of comic. It makes use of the "idiot ball" technique a bit too much (the final revelation as to the killer's means is a bit crap to say the least), and fails to address in any interesting or meaningful way why it seems to be the first time in the DC continuity history that the issue of secret identities and the dangers they carry with them has been addressed across the whole universe. But that's the specifics - the overall problem, as far as I can see, is that the universe involves a wide array of improbable characters with colourful costumes and equally colourful abilities and inclinations, but people are starting to get tired of it. So the way the writers try to make it more interesting is to make it a darker or more "realistic" universe (I'm reminded of the Pain Of The Gods miniseries last year too, which was guilty of the exact same thing). For all the grim serial killers, considerations of real-life implications or continuity repercussions, we're still talking about a large cast of characters all gifted with unlikely powers, borne of a penchant to run out in a lycra suit and fight crime/injustice/aliens/whatever, and burdened by improbable and often frankly stupid histories which, if jettisoned, would allow the writers to actually create the darker, more real world they appear to want to create.

Instead, by sticking to the original character histories and trying to make them fit into different stories which they probably aren't suited to overall, we get comics which don't please me (as more of an independent comics fan) or the mainstream fans (from what I hear on several websites, although given the way DC are re-offering the whole miniseries in the lead-up to Infinite Crisis, I think the fans' reaction may be rather more positive than how it has been painted on certain sites).

Anyway, thought I'd throw up something a little different to what I normally post and see if I can get a bit of discussion going. Ideally I'd really like someone who hated Identity Crisis and someone who loved it to post up, to try and get a handle on what bits of it people liked or didn't like. Given I generally avoid pervsuit books, I don't really know what the fans are into, but in this case I'm curious.

(And no, I'm not about to go and read the whole sorry Avengers Discombobulated rubbish that Marvel fobbed off on people last year. I refuse to give Marvel any more money or brain time, unless it's a character I particularly like being written by a writer whose other work I enjoy. Which, so far, has meant Iron Man with Warren Ellis and that's about it....)

Fysh

Amusingly, Warren Ellis sent out something on a vaguely similar note to the Bad Signal mailing list yesterday and I only got around to reading it this morning.

For the interested :

"bad signal
WARREN ELLIS


I think maybe I did this already -- God, maybe that's a
sign to stop with the Signal -- but since it keeps coming
up in email:

I kind of worry about the collective mental age and/or
sheltered nature of a field where people think IDENTITY
ARSERAPE FUNNIES, COUNTDOWN TO INFINITE
BUMTHREAT and AVENGERS DISSECTED are somehow
"dark," and any character with a hint of disaffection is
somehow "cynical". People have forgotten what these words
mean, and are terrified that someone's going to rape their
overextended childhoods.

It's all cycles anyway. And the current cycle of superhero
work out of Marvel and DC is a pretty vanilla version of the
"serious superhero" comics. An actual full-dose version of
the "dark" superhero comic would probably send some
people blind, these days.

I remember after I wrote RUINS, a black-comedy take on Busiek
and Ross' MARVELS, someone wrote to me saying that they
found the book so disgusting that they took it back to the shop
rather than have it even in the bin in their house. I asked him
if we could use that as a back-cover quote on the then-planned
trade collection. Sadly, I never heard from him again.

And that book was just FUNNY.

So no. This stuff ain't Dark Spandex, and I feel no affinity
with it at all.

...

Oh God. Everyone forget that I said "Dark Spandex", in
case it suddenly becomes a buzzterm."