IDENTITY CRISIS #7.
© DC Comics

Mania Grade: B
Issue: 7
Authors: Brad Meltzer, Rags Morales, M.R. Blair
Publisher: DC Comics
Price: $3.95

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IDENTITY CRISIS #7 (of 7)

Stop reading right now if you haven't read this issue yet or don't want to know the answer. I know it's all over the net now, but I don't want to spoil it for the few that might not know yet.

Last chance, fanboy. You can still walk away.

It was Jean Loring, ex-wife-wife-turned-lover of Ray Palmer, the Atom. She did it because she thought the crisis would bring Ray back to her so they could resume their relationship. She's also nuttier than squirrel crap, as should be blindingly obvious by now. I know the book has been out for a week now, so most of you are probably either thrilled or infuriated. As always, I find myself somewhere in the middle.

To be absolutely blunt, I thought the revelation was botched. Ray only finds out because Jean mentions something about the note Jack Drake found in the package in issue #5 with the handgun ("Protect yourself"). It turns out that the note wasn't mentioned in the newspaper, because the Batman grabbed it before the police could. That slip causes Jean's entire lie to unravel and she breaks down about her discovery of the Atom's costume, murdering of Sue Dibny (accident, as it turns out, but burned crispy to cover up the evidence), and the staged attempt on her own life to avoid blame. The reader isn't walked carefully through the solution. Meltzer throws it out on the table like an angry waiter it is what it is, and you can take it or leave it.

First, what I didn't like about this: my gut feeling is that Jean wasn't originally intended to be the killer and that this ending was "tacked on" for some reason (then again, Jean's erroneous mention of her hangman's brown work shoes in issue #4 may mean I'm very wrong). As such, it feels like Meltzer picked a character that didn't contradict any of the prior clues, but also didn't answer a lot of the questions raised in the series. The mind-wiping issue was only addressed offhandedly and now seems like only a peripheral revelation, rather than the shock it was initially. It only works because Jean's mind was (obviously) never manipulated, so it was logical that she knew the JLA's identities. And yet, Dr. Light recalled that the JLA took his mind in the middle of the series. If he could remember that much, what about all the other villains whose minds they manipulated? What about the decision to manipulate Batman's mind after he tried to stop the original seven from warping Dr. Light? Also, the fact that Bolt was trying to buy Lex Luthor's armor in issue #1 ended up being of no consequence. If former-president Lex Luthor was somehow involved, wouldn't the ramifications for the DCU be that much greater? If that isn't a letdown, I don't know what is.

This whole series started with the promise of ramifications the likes of those felt afterCRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, but the bottom line is that, most of the JLA's family members are peripheral characters and their deaths probably won't impact readers much in the long run. I'm not saying these events won't be mentioned ever again, but the broader notion that readers have of Robin or Elongated Man or the Atom is probably going to be minimally impacted by the death or institutionalization of these family members. If DC really wanted to play with fire and shake things up this way, kill Lois Lane or Alfred or someone whose death would be felt for years to come. Remember when Jason Todd died? After the first issue of this series, a resounding "Who the hell is Sue Dibny?" could be heard throughout Internet message boards. Meltzer did an admirable job of making the reader feel the devastation of her death in a single issue, but Elongated Man is a second-tier character at best. Having a peripheral relation of a second-tier hero die is sort of inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. The same applies to making Jean the murderer, as well. Though, to be fair, Jack Drake's death caught me off guard, and I think it may resonate throughout the Batman books for a while. I think IDENTITY CRISIS might've worked better if Jack's murder was the focus of the series.

All right, now that I'm done complaining, here's what I did like. Part of the intention of this series seems to be to humanize (Marvelize?) the DC Universe. In that regard, having the Atom's ex-wife be the killer makes a bit more sense, though the initial impact is far more subtle. It serves to alert readers that things like crazy ex-wives killing your friends can happen in the spit-polished DCU. It's a smaller, more personal ending, but it's closer to the kind of crises real people often have to deal with in their families drug addiction, mental illness, financial burden, brushes with the law, and sometimes heinous acts of violence, like in IDENTITY CRISIS. In that regard, the ending works very well and is a bit more painful for anyone who has ever been witness to anything similar. Ultimately, the effectiveness of this ending rests on whether or not this sets the tone for the DCU for the foreseeable future.

All of my earlier complaints about IDENTITY CRISIS hinge on my estimation that these events won't really have much of an effect on the DCU. I think the decision to have relatively inconsequential characters killed by another relatively inconsequential character has the potential to have very minimal impact. However, it can be as important as the writers and editorial staff at DC decide to make it in the coming years. However, given the relative insignificance of the characters that died, it makes one wonder if DC wasn't trying to leave the back door open for them to forget this whole thing ever happened if it didn't go over well with the readers. Given the tendency to disregard continuity at both DC and Marvel, I can't help but wonder if IDENTITY CRISIS will just be remembered as this year's event book, similar to all the ones that came before.