I got a terrific e-mail from one Nevin Steindam regarding the hubbub over Identity Crisis, and Nevin was kind enough to allow me to post it here. Nevin has some really interesting thoughts on the controversy:
Please pardon this long letter, but after reading your blog, I thought you could help me understand why Identity Crisis has people so upset. I’ve given a lot of thought to it, and am just not as bothered by it as everyone else seems to be.
First, maybe I should explain that most of my comics experience comes from reading my father’s Silver Age DC collection when I was a kid. I’ve only started reading modern comics over the past few months. (Well, I started borrowing a lot of graphic novels from my library last year. But I was afraid of wading into continuity-heavy stories, and didn’t actually start reading standard superhero stories until early July. I’d started reading a few comic-related blogs and websites before then, so in some ways I have a pretty good background on modern comics. In other ways, I’m still just a neophyte who remembers a lot of old Superman and Batman stories.)
One day when I was younger, I remember seeing an old ad for a comic in which Lois walks in on Clark as he’s changing to Superman. My dad said he vaguely remembered that issue, but had since lost it. I asked him how Superman had gotten out of that problem, and my dad guessed that Superman just used his Super-Hypnotism to make Lois forget.
Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that would have made a boring story. Superman probably designed a much more complicated scheme to convince Lois that his “good friend Clark” was helping out with a case. But the important thing is that I, as someone exposed only to Silver Age comics. had no trouble with the idea that Superman would change someone’s memories to protect his identity. The cavalier attitude DC took towards hypnotism and the general workings of the mind, combined with the way superheros represented absolutely trustworthy authority figures (such as the time Superboy declared Bizarro “not a living creature” and killed him) meant that something like that was no big deal. Though it may not have happened in that issue, I’d bet serious money that there was at least one time during the Silver Age in which a DC hero manipulated someone’s mind to keep them from knowing something.
So when the big shocker of ID Crisis 3 turned out to be that the JLA had made people forget about secret identities in the past, I wasn’t at all shocked. True, I think it was a big deal when, in the previous issue, the heros admitted that they had once changed someone’s personality. THAT was something that probably wouldn’t have shown up in a Silver Age story. But I was fine with the way the story presented it: Changing personalities wasn’t something they did all the time. The central idea of ID Crisis is that _one time_, the JLA was faced with a no-win situation whose resolution haunts them to this day.
If the heroes had revealed that they changed personalities as often as they changed memories, I’d have a serious problem with it. Or if they weren’t still haunted with guilt from the event, I’d be disappointed. But this was a one-time event, and the heros kept their laws of morality intact since. When I read the first two issues, I felt that they were doing an excellent job of balancing between a “more mature” story and the idealism required for the DC Universe. Compared to titles like Bloodhound or Manhunter, I don’t see how people can point to ID Crisis as the story that’s making DC comics too dark. (Ok, I realize that this is partly because Bloodhound and Manhunter are new characters without a Silver Age history to uphold. But that doesn’t ring true for me. Those titles are still set in the DC Universe, and they act as if it’s perfectly fine for vigilantes to play the role of judge, jury, and executioner. ID Crisis, in contrast, points out that stepping over the line one time, even in extenuating circumstances, is a traumatic and questionable event. I know which story I’d rather associate with my childhood comics.)
I do agree that the comics I’ve read recently are often darker than they need to be, and that they should be able to tell good stories that appeal to adults and children. But if comics are going to be cleaned up, I’d suggest starting with the sickening crap like Manhunter, not Identity Crisis. (On the other hand, I don’t think that there’s any reason for all comics to be child-friendly. I’m enjoying Bloodhound so far. I just think that the authors should show enough restraint to only make comics “edgy” when it helps the story. And under that guideline, I suppose ID Crisis is debatable, but isn’t absurdly dark.)
It’s not just Bloodhound and Manhunter that have surprised me with their cavalier attitude towards violence and people’s rights. When I read last month’s issue of She-Hulk (The Big Picture, part 1), I was shocked by the fact that a superhero would capture a villain and say that the police “can send her to Abu Gharib for all I care”. I practically put the comic down right then. That a “hero” would casually wish that on anybody (especially a minor!) conveyed to me a much more fundamental disregard for Silver Age idealism than the single lapse that is causing so many repercussions for the JLA.
I’ve gone through the other complaints people have about Identity Crisis, and none of them seem right for me, either. I suppose the fact that long-running characters are getting killed off could be upsetting people. But it’s not like that’s an unusual event in comics. This is minor compared to events like Crisis On Infinite Earths. Then there was the second Robin’s death, Barbara Gordon being shot and paralyzed, Hal Jordan killing all the Guardians, and so on. It’s important for comics to find a balance in which good usually wins, but the people who perpetually put their lives at risk do face consequences. I don’t see how ID Crisis breaks with the past 20 years in this sense.
It’s sexist? Well, comics have been horribly sexist for decades. I’m not saying that flippantly — it’s a serious problem, and I think it’s a shame that the market can’t support a non-sex-object female character even today. But in the few months I’ve been reading these stories, I’ve seen much worse examples of sexism than this. (Specifically, I read through the back issues of Superman/Batman, and was shocked at how Power Girl’s only “power”, as far as I could tell, was that everyone around her talked about how sexy she was. Another comic I tried was Spectacular Spider-Man #17, whose main plot was about the fact that Mary-Jane couldn’t forgive Peter for letting another woman kiss him, even though he’d fought against the woman (who had kidnapped him) until she physically beat him. A writer who serious cared about gender issues would have addressed the fact that Peter had just been through an attempted rape. Instead, we’re treated to shrewish “girl-talk” about how Peter deserves death for “cheating”.) On the other hand, Meltzer is writing about how superheros without a secret identity are putting their loved ones in danger. To make his point, he’s restrained by the characters that have already been established in the DC Universe. Admittedly, this could be my lack of knowledge, but I don’t know of any male loved ones who would apply. The Elongated Man and The Atom are the only two DC heros I know of with a public identity, and unless The Atom has a son or a gay lover that I don’t know about, Meltzer had no choice. (Though if a child got killed in his ex-wife’s place, I don’t think that would calm down the critics who say this story is too dark.) The only part of the story that struck me as sexist at all is Ralph’s conversation in the first issue, in which he puts on a hard-boiled detective persona to tell the story of meeting Sue. The Ralph I remember was a lot more sensitive. But that’s a fairly minor complaint compared to Superman ordering Power Girl to use her body to control a 14-year-old boy.
I could go on, but I’ve already written more than I expected to. If you’ve actually read through this whole thing, I’m grateful. And if you could explain to me what it is about Identity Crisis that is outraging the community (preferably, it should be a fault that other currently-running series aren’t getting away with), I’d be even more grateful.