stingermck

Please see Doomsday Clock #12 when it is released 2 years from now.

fujishig

From the synopsis I read, this isn't exactly a story that is sympathetic to people with mental health issues. It's about as subtle as something like Identity Crisis.

PhantomStranger

Heroes In Crisis has been a complete abomination. Tom King's reign of terror on the DC universe continues. Dan DiDio is the guy that has never liked Wally West. Mental health issues seem to be the latest fad DC is pushing. The new Justice League Vs. The Fatal Five movie is all about mental health issues as well.

Dan DiDio and Jim Lee are running DC creatively now. Geoff Johns has basically left for Hollywood work, but you can thank him for getting his buddy Bendis over to DC.

fujishig

I guess I'll come back when the next thread reads:
DC Comics to relaunch everything with #1s in June 2020

Oh hey, they added five years later LoSH to DC Universe, I guess I'll go re-read that.

PhantomStranger

It's widely assumed DC will reboot very soon. A logical endpoint would be the planned end of King's Batman run at issue 100, when some think he'll finally marry Batman and Catwoman. Batman married? Time to reboot everything.

brayzie

Man, was Identity Crisis awful.

So what's this with mental health issue in DC Comics? Wally West killed a bunch of people and the story attributes it to mental illness?

Red Hood

It's funny that you say this,because I wouldn't be surprised if it happens for real. Issue #10 just got delayed another week. Now is supposed to arrive the last week of May, with issue #11 in August

Red Hood

I think Tom King is a good writer, but he has certainly missed the mark with Heroes in Crisis. Comparing it to Identity Crisis is pretty spot on. And his Batman run ends on issue #106. There were 6 issues in this run that were done by other writers as they were part of crossovers.


The whole premise of Heroes in Crisis comes from something that was mentioned in the first story arc of Batman: Rebirth, in which there's a place called Sanctuary, were heroes are taken to deal with the effects of being a hero. By this, it's basically a place created by Batman, with consent of Wonder Woman and Superman, where heroes go to decompress. The problem with the whole premise is that it has been done half-assed. For example, Sanctuary sounds and feels like another Batman OMAC project. A place where heroes go and record themselves in front of a computer that is supposed to keep all details about the decompression and confessions by deleting the information immediately after the sitdown. Well, this is not how therapy is done in real life. What we get as a reader/viewer is confessionals from all types of B-list and C-list heroes (with the exception of A-lister Harley Quinn). These heroes talk about their struggles in life, with their powers, adjusting to reality, etc. At no point, there's anyone telling or guiding them through these therapy sessions, something that it's critically important in real life. There's no feedback to their confessions, so it's hard to see how these heroes are going to improve their mental health in the Sanctuary, which by the way, is located in the middle of nowhere in Kansas (similar to Kingdom Come rehab place for villains).

Well, things go to shit in the Sanctuary when all these heroes, including Wally West, are found dead in the first issue and the main suspects for the killings are Harley Quinn and Booster Gold. From there on, the series becomes a mix of whodunnit and "mental health awareness". Today's release of issue #8 explains the real person behind the deaths and their motives. I won't spoil it, you can look at the link I posted this morning for answers. The overall reaction to this though has been negative. I have tons of friends in the industry that are not only mad at the way DC has fucked up Wally West, but they are incredibly pissed at how Tom King has botched the mental health aspect of the story. Remember, this industry is full of people who have tons of mental health issues. Just go on Twitter and you'll see their honest posts about their daily struggles. And I'm talking here from industry writers/artists to people behind the scenes. These are people who have had suicidal thoughts/attempts, nervous breakdowns, panic attacks, insecurities. You name it, and someone in the industry has it. Because of this, people have found King's theme disrespectful in the way he has managed it and in the way DC has allowed it. A good and realistic way of handling this topic was shown with the JL vs Fatal Five movie. Heroes in Crisis is the complete opposite.

The Valeyard

Don't forget - DC's Year of the Villain starts next week.

brayzie

First off Red Hood, thanks for explaining the story to me.
That sounds like an incredibly bad and stupid idea.
In real life everyone and their mom knows about identity theft, hacking, and mass-surveillance. I can't imagine heroes with secret identities going along with this.
Didn't the Batcave get hacked by Ra's Al Ghul or someone else, and they disabled the entire JLA with Batman's plans?


I just googled some more of it. Is "Sanctuary" staffed with AI robots? And if so do they talk back or just listen?

I've read as much from many indie writers and artists.

"Crisis" stories have been bad in my opinion since Identity, Infinite, Final, and now Heroes In...
JL vs Fatal Five sounds interesting.
The only comic I can remember that dealt directly with the topic of mental illness was an old Ann Noccenti Spider-man story titled, "Life in the Mad Dog Ward." It seem to deal more with rights of the mentally ill and mental patients than actual mental illness but still good nonetheless.

fujishig

I thought the original storyline about Sentry did a decent job (or as decent as you're going to get with superhero comics) of dealing with mental illness/depression.

Of course, that all gets mucked up as soon as multiple writers come on board. Even for Identity Crisis, say there was someone out there who thought Jean Loring's mental breakdown was depicted fine in that story; that's all ruined when they bring her back and turn her into Eclipso.

Red Hood

This may be an unpopular take, but I feel that Barry Allen and Hal Jordan shouldn't have been brought back at all and both should have stayed dead. I've always felt that Flash, Green Lantern and Blue Beetle are generational characters. By this I mean that each generation should have their own version of the character. The Golden Age had Jay Garrick, Alan Scott and Dan Garrett. The Silver Age had Barry, Hal and Ted Kord and the modern age had Wally, Kyle Rayner/John Stewart and Ted since he joined DC comics in 1986. The current generation should have had Bart Allen, Jessica Cruz/Simon Baz and Jaime Reyes as their Flash/Green Lantern/Blue Beetle. This change in generations has worked great in Robin with Dick, Jason, Tim and Damien. One of the reasons DC got stuck storyline-wise is because Geoff Johns wasn't able to get them past the modern age to the current age. I like Rebirth and the celebration of old characters but Wally, Bart, and Kyle went to top players in the company to forgotten ones and a lot of people who followed them saw this as their stop in reading comics.

fujishig

I will say this: I give Johns a pass on GL rebirth. He clearly loved Hal Jordan dearly, and Hal was clearly done wrong by Marz and company just to usher in a successor. Like the greatest GL of all time goes nuts and murders the entire corps? Johns redeemed him, and Kyle went off to do other things (mainly because there are lots of GLs.)

Barry Allen is a different story. They had resisted for decades bringing him back. He died a heroic death in Crisis, a meaningful one, and by the time of Flash rebirth there were basically no fans calling for Barry's return over Wally. Wally grew into the role, he was the chosen successor, the sidekick forced into the mainline role, and he had incredible runs by Waid and, ironically enough, Johns among others. Wally was the Flash. To make it worse, because his look was so close to Barry, they sidelined him hard. Then they pulled all kinds of crap to make Barry relevant... they de-aged Iris (which I still have no explanation for), they killed off Bart, they gave Barry more of a personality than anyone remembered he had. Then he became the central figure in Flashpoint... if you think about it he screwed up even more than Wally did in this stupid story.

I feel the same way about Supergirl and how they "brought her back" as some Superman-killing maniac, but at least it was a completely different character. It sidelined Matrix, but Peter David had basically told her story so that was ok.

Let me also bring up that pre-new 52, they tried to do a legacy Justice League... but it was fraught with editorial interference and James Robinson writing. If you look back at that series, they basically had all the legacy characters: Dick Grayson as Batman, Supergirl (and before that, Mon-el) instead of Superman, Donna Troy instead of Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Jade and Obsidian, Jesse Quick, etc. It was basically Teen Titans crossed with Infinity Inc. taking up the mantle. The the New 52 came in and shortened the timeline, basically eliminating or altering all the legacy heroes except the Robins and shunting the JSA into Earth 2 (where they were inexplicably made newbie heroes that came after the silver age heroes).

Red Hood

I somewhat disagree with you on the way Marz handled Hal. I read the story again last week and it still makes sense. The guardians, who have pulled all kinds of shits throughout the years and aren't saints themselves, were telling Hal that he was being selfish for trying to rebuild Coast City with the ring power. I remember that months before, another new GL named Jack T Chance questioned the same bullshit as the GL were supposed to be a space police yet the Guardians wanted them to be more of a peace corp. Hal Jordan turning bad wasn't much of a surprised as he had been written as arrogant and rebellious before, so turning to Parallax to make things right made sense then. It was a fall from grace story, something that DC really never did with any of their superheroes. It was much different than any other storyline from the company.

I talked to Mark Bagley about that Justice League run and he basically told me that's the reason he had such a short tenure with the company as they had promised him and James Robinson one thing and did a 180 once they got started. He didn't have kind words for the editorial people there. That Legacy JL had promised but never could get off the ground due to editorial and the upcoming New 52 stuff.

What bothers me and other Flash fans about Barry is that johns decided to give him a cliched tragic backstory. To me that was bullshit and his backstory should have been left untouched. Barry's motivation on being a hero and one of the best of them was that he's a good person, not that his mother was killed by Thawne. He was a good, intelligent, respected human being with a family and friends. Adding the tragic backstory was unnecessary and didn't add any dimensions to the character other than making him a cliche a la "women in refrigerators" type of character.

fujishig

I'm ok with Hal going insane, but killing the Corps members (and leaving the rest without power) was a bit much.

brayzie

I kind of disagree.
I don't have a problem with legacy characters, but I don't think every generation of readers needs their own. I started reading The Flash with the "Return of Barry Allen" story. From that point on I was hooked, and Mark Waid really built the Flash mythos up. Impulse was one of my favorite characters growing up, but I didn't like that he became the new Flash. Wally West IS the Flash.

And yet, I grew up with the Kyle Rayner version of Green Lantern, and even I'll agree that Johns' GL: Rebirth was the right thing to do. It was one retcon after another, but it ended up working nicely, and we got some of the best GL stories ever. But considering how the GL ring works, it does make sense, story-wise to have Hal hang it up and the ring to choose a new successor. I haven't read about Jessica Cruz or Simon Baz, but maybe their good characters.

The did Ted Kord dirty.

And strangely enough, I would have been okay with Dick Grayson being Batman permanently. Bruce Wayne/Batman is one of the greatest characters, but the former Robin operating as Batman and having Bruce Wayne's son as his sidekick and the new Robin was a great idea. Morrison and Quitely were great on that series.

I think the biggest problem is when they do the legacy thing as an editorial mandate, and not as a natural progression of the the story.



I was in middle school at the time and even then I knew it didn't make sense story-wise, and that DC was just trying to recreate the "Death of Superman" craze with Batman and GL. [/QUOTE]


In hindsight I'm kind of surprised that Johns went the WIR route. I wonder what Gail Simone said about it at the time. And yeah, it was stupid, but Barry was criticized for being too boring, so this made him edgy to the young crowd...maybe. I would have liked a more science-fiction styled hook for Barry Allen: Rebirth, as opposed to a revenge angle.

PhantomStranger

It's a shame that DC doesn't think the market will support two Flash books at once. If the Flash sold like Batman, I'm pretty sure that Wally gets spun off into his own book and sticks around. The world is big enough for two Flash books. Sure, Wally would have adapt to another identity than simply Flash.

I would have actually sent Wally to live in the future when Barry first came back. Give Wally his own team book set in a distant future, and call it Legion of Speed or something.

Hokeyboy

I've been a DC fan since I could read -- when I was 5 I received the hardcover "Superman: From the 30s to the 70s" as a Christmas present. And I was hooked since.

Until Nu52, which pissed on everything.

Rebirth seemed to erase many of those mistakes, but I had already moved on. By the sound of things, I'm glad I did. DC has no interest in a bright, hopeful universe.

Bronkster

Okay, so as I'm searching around for the Rebirth Superman stuff, I get that the numbering restarted at #1 (again). But now I'm seeing another #1 series with Bendis?? Why?? WHY??!!!

PhantomStranger

Bendis is currently writing the Superman comics. He started just last year and his run has been met with derision by fans of the previous Rebirth Superman arcs, since he basically tossed out most of their developments for his own ideas.

Once you read Rebirth Superman, dip into Super Sons. Super Sons has a lot of that positive vibe and energy specifically made for long-time Superman fans.

https://www.dccomics.com/comics/supe...7/super-sons-1

Trevor

I’ve heard mostly good things about Bendis’ Superman work, but have barely started it myself.

The Valeyard

I'm pleasantly surprised to find that I am enjoying Bendis' run on Superman and Action. Action more than Supes. I pretty much found that everything Bendis was doing at Marvel since maybe 2008 was just terrible. There were a few occasional stand outs but generally, I was not a fan. I gave Man of Steel a chance, expecting to hate it but ended up enjoying it. As much as I dislike the idea of aging Jon, it's working with the story. I'm really happy that he's continuing the Rebirth Jor-El stuff.

Young Justice has been fun too. Naomi is probably the most Bendis book he's done at DC so far. Lot of typical Bendis-style dialogue.

Nothing beats Tomasi on Superman tho. Super Sons is just magic. I'm sad we're at the end of their story.

Red Hood

Heroes in Crisis finished today and all I can say is that the whole series was fucking horrible and everyone involved should be ashamed.

B5Erik

I'm taking over as Editor In Chief/Publisher at D.C. next month.

Why? How??

Because I pitched the idea that every comic is issue #1 for that series. It gets rebooted every month! Every issue is an instant collector's item!

fujishig

Any particular spoilers you want to post (since I'm unlikely to read it anyway)? I stopped after the Wally West spoilers, how can it get worse than that?