Identity Crisis/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

* Many held that voting for the mindwipe was massive Character Derailment for everyone involved. Especially for Green Arrow, given that one of his defining character traits was his hardcore libertarian/liberal ideals as regards the rights of the individual. For that matter, it would have been more in-character for Hawkman to solve the 'What if Dr. Light comes back after our families?' problem by simply smashing his head in than it was for him to vote for double mindwipe. Not to mention that many fans were confused about Batman's attempted intervention of the mindwipe, with people thinking he was objecting to the actual mindwipe as opposed to him trying to stop the personality change (which would be more in character, but it isn't really clear, dammit Meltzer...).

** Hawkman going with the vote for the double mindwipes is actually easy to explain: Since Batman was there and fought Light, if Light was just straight out killed on the satellite, then Batman would still know that Light was there earlier. And even if they got the Atom to help with a cover up, there's still the fact that Batman was still there. "What happened to Light?" "Oh, he's in jail and incidentally went straight and we'll never see him again." And of course, killing Batman was straight out never going to happen; killing a hero for trying to stop a Mind Rape, a prominent hero at that? The cabal didn't even decide to mindwipe Batman until after Zatanna prevented Light's mindwipe from being stopped and Hawkman pointed out that mindwiping Batman was the only realistic alternative possible.

*** As for Green Arrow's support for the plan, if you remember, he was against the initial brain butchering. Flash had to be the tie-breaker. As for when they voted to make Batman forget, well, as Ollie said, "Some things are bigger than Batman".

* There was also a lot of objection to the scene where Deathstroke supposedly defeated an entire Justice League lineup singlehanded, in a fight sequence that could have been designed to showcase the common pitfalls of Popularity Power. Superpowers suddenly failing to work consistently for no reason? (The Atom can and often does retain full mass when he shrinks, especially when he's going for a charging attack). Sudden outbreaks of Faux Action Girl? (Black Canary having a bag stuffed over her head after having stood still, doing absolutely nothing, for a span of time sufficient for Deathstroke beating up half the team before even getting around to her. Let us recall that Dinah has the reaction time of one of the top six martial artists in the world, and can at least temporarily incapacitate Deathstroke simply by opening her mouth and screaming.) Inexplicable outbreaks of Plot Induced Stupidity? Green Lantern, wearing one of the most powerful ranged weapons in the universe, instead chose to go hand-to-hand against one of the DCU's finest melee combatants.

*** In the narration Green Arrow says that the arrow in the eye socket made Deathstroke lose his cool. He went from being a calm and badass strategist to a slightly stronger than Badass Normal and outnumbered psycho.

*** This really bugged me. Especially Dinah not being able to use her scream because of a bag on her head (I've seen her plow through steel with that birdcall, but burlap is too much), and Kyle being taken down because Slade grabbed his arm and put it in a kind of lock. (Note that it takes truly epic overuse of the [[Idiot Ball]] for Kyle to ''go within reach of Deathstroke at all'', seeing as how Deathstroke is one of the DCU's ''melee'' combatants, and Green Lantern is a flying energy blaster!) Get the sense reading it that the former comes from all the women in this book being useless or crazy (see below) and Kyle not having been from the Silver Age and thus not allowed to be awesome.

*** And let's not forget what happened to the Flash. One of two things happened in that fight: either Deathstroke was able to swing a sword around faster than the Flash could react (which would require his hands to be moving at FTL velocities), or else Wally ran his chest directly onto the point of what to him would be a stationary object. Neither of these possibilities makes the remotest bit of sense. And before someone reminds us that Deathstroke tripped Wally while he was running during the Teen Titans era, two points: one, Wally was notably slower then, and two, it didn't make any damn sense back then either.

*** I thought Dinah went to help Ralph who got blown up.

* And most annoyingly, the retool of Dr. Light. Making him re-Take A Level In Badass who could fight the entire Teen Titans roster was fine, but DC managed to make more of a joke than he already was. Nearly every single appearance of him since Identity Crisis has him mention rape in every sentence he says. Wanting to point out the Justice League mindwiped him? "They raped my mind." Wanting to point out how good power is? "It's like rape?" Dr. Light has become such a joke in this manner, Plastic Man even mentioned, "It's like his superpower now." It's gotten to a point where he could just be named Dr. Rape or Rapeman or Rape Ape.

** To be fair to the story, Meltzer isn't responsible for other writers portraying Dr. Light in this manner after he wrote the story. Although, "Let's make him a rapist" is also a pretty bad and cheap way to make him threatening again.

* So we have a civilian as the ''only'' person on the Watchtower? Um, who the heck thought this was a good idea? First off, these heroes basically protect the entire planet, right? Natural disasters don't wait for the standard working hours of Metropolis (or whatever timezone the Watchtower is set to). It's always daytime somewhere, so there should be a minimum compliment of heroes up there at all times, or at least someone to keep the civilian away from the dangerous stuff!

** Superman/Flash/GL can get to anywhere from anywhere faster than you can stand up. Having to use a teleporter to anywhere on Earth would slow them down.

* This has more to do with the fallout from the premises and retcons ''Identity Crisis'' set up, but: after the revelation that a group within the League had been engaging in mindwipes on a regular basis when villains discovered their secret identities and such, other DC series(es?) revealed in turn that seemingly-reformed villains like Flash's old-school Rogues and Catwoman were actually brainwashed by Zatanna into goodness (or, in the case of the Rogues, she brainwashed one who then attacked the rest). But in the meantime, while she was neutralizing burglars and bank robbers, menaces like [[The Joker]] who actually killed and maimed people were still running around apparently unaffected. Zatanna's priorities might need a little work.

* Why is this story called Identity Crisis anyways? It has nothing to do with heroes identities being at stake.

 

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[[Category:Identity Crisis]]

[[Category:Headscratchers]]

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