The Heroes in Crisis Murder Mystery *SPOILERS AHOY*

[married guy]

I don't see how anyone can argue this was a murder mystery story.
If it hadn't been leaked in advance, would ANYONE have picked Wally as the murderer??
Where were the breadcrumbs?
Where was the hint that Wally West would act like a psychotic super villian and somehow manipulate everything via time travel?
Which, was JUST explained in the Flash books as NO LONGER POSSIBLE for speedsters.
This book is a mess - with more logic leaps and plot holes than Identity Crisis ever had.
If you found this book an enjoyable read, more power to you - I found it to be, probably the worst thing I've ever read from DC.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

When the story is done, we can judge how good or bad of a murder mystery it was until we see how King sticks the landing.

[Talon1load]

I’m sorry but that’s a cop out. When 8 out of 9 issues are out and no ground work has been laid out, it is fair to say there was no mystery. Just because a writer has an issue to go where they can try to weave some sort of connect that was not previous there doesn’t mean that they constructed a good mystery. This was a poorly executed story in terms of both dealing with the mystery and trauma. I get wanting to defend a writer you like, I feel that way about Geoff Johns, but this was just poorly done and you don’t have to wait until the whole thing is out to declare that.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

If you didn't like the first 8 issues, then obviously the last isn't going to matter because this story wasn't for you. That's fine. Other people felt differently, and telling them the story is crap repeatedly in various ways isn't going to change their minds. I have enjoyed most of what I've read, but the final issue will be decisive in whether or not it was worth all the trouble.

If coming into this thread over and over and over again to tell us, yet again, that this story was terrible and bad and not even a murder mystery was making a difference, you would have heard about it by now. Nobody on this thread has miraculously changed their feelings about Heroes in Crisis because of the many, many, many negative comments about it.

We get it guys, you do not like this story, as a murder mystery or otherwise. Thank you for you thoughts. You have been heard. Loudly and clearly.

The people who like this story still like it. The people who hate this story still hate it. We don't really need any more hate added to the fire. This Fanboy Bonfire is warm enough already. Thanks. If the final issue comes out and doesn't provide a satisfactory conclusion for me, I will also voice my dislike of what it's done to Wally West and you can have the satisfaction of knowing you were right all along.

In the meantime. Give it a &^%ing rest already. In this thread at least. Respectfully, I don't think that's much to ask.

This isn't directed at anyone specifically. Just a general request for the hard-core HiC haters out there who keep chiming in with the exact same comments over and over again. We've heard you. You don't like Heroes in Crisis for the same reasons. Got it.

Thanks.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Just a helpful re-post from the original post of this thread in case anyone is still confused about who this thread is for.

If you aren't enjoying Heroes in Crisis, that's perfectly valid, but this thread isn't for you. You are free to complain about it on any of the other Heroes in Crisis-related threads. Thank you for your understanding.

[Clark_Kent]

If you didn't like the first 8 issues, then obviously the last isn't going to matter because this story wasn't for you. That's fine. Other people felt differently, and telling them the story is crap repeatedly in various ways isn't going to change their minds. I have enjoyed most of what I've read, but the final issue will be decisive in whether or not it was worth all the trouble.

If coming into this thread over and over and over again to tell us, yet again, that this story was terrible and bad and not even a murder mystery was making a difference, you would have heard about it by now. Nobody on this thread has miraculously changed their feelings about Heroes in Crisis because of the many, many, many negative comments about it.

We get it guys, you do not like this story, as a murder mystery or otherwise. Thank you for you thoughts. You have been heard. Loudly and clearly.

The people who like this story still like it. The people who hate this story still hate it. We don't really need any more hate added to the fire. This Fanboy Bonfire is warm enough already. Thanks. If the final issue comes out and doesn't provide a satisfactory conclusion for me, I will also voice my dislike of what it's done to Wally West and you can have the satisfaction of knowing you were right all along.

In the meantime. Give it a &^%ing rest already. In this thread at least. Respectfully, I don't think that's much to ask.

This isn't directed at anyone specifically. Just a general request for the hard-core HiC haters out there who keep chiming in with the exact same comments over and over again. We've heard you. You don't like Heroes in Crisis for the same reasons. Got it.

Thanks.

Where is my clapping emoji? Thank you Bored! Wonderfully spot-on post! I've stayed away from here because of the negativity that crept in.

I've been enthralled with this story since day 1. We get stories like this pretty rarely, but they are always up my alley (Identity Crisis is one of my favorite stories). I love seeing the heroes face personal and tragic stakes like this...there are a thousand other books out there to read if a story like this doesn't appeal to the reader, so the hate reading always confuses me.

The supposedly definitive reveal of Wally in issue 8 came as no surprise, and since this is comics (where very little sticks forever and characters rarely stay dead) I'm actually very much okay with Wally accidentally killing everyone. What I didn't like was the staging of bodies (Wally shoved teeth down Steel's throat? Yikes, man!) to frame 2 innocent people, but for right now I'm keeping my pitchfork in the closet. As you said, we have 1 issue to go...an issue that appears to be longer, and an issue that may or may not have a tie to Doomsday Clock...the story isn't over. It's comics, where most of our favorite stories get wrapped up with bows in the final issue, so I can't wait to see what happens.

[upupandagay]

The biggest mystery of Heroes in Crisis is why so many people would rather spend their time on the internet trolling with negativity instead of... I don't know... reading something else? Walking in nature? Congratulations. You've outsmarted a comic book mystery. Here's a cookie.

As far as the topic of this thread...
I feel like this story is a mystery by way of Twin Peaks/ David Lynch style. Unlike Sherlock Holmes-style stories where clues might let the reader solve the mystery ahead of the reveal, David Lynch uses mystery as a state-of-being or aura around the story that propels the narrative and characters into action. In this case, Tom King has given a sort of answer to the mystery which satisfies the curiosity, but what's more important is how that mystery affected characters.

I'm really looking forward to the finale. The Trinities reaction to all this will be very telling of the future status quo for these characters. I'm also very much looking forward to the Ivy element. there's been much speculation of her being a new Avatar for the Green (which seems to be teased in Justice League Dark). I love this "rebirth" of her character. I love her being more plant than human.

I'm not reading Doomsday Clock (yet) but might have to catch up if this plot ends up strongly dovetailing into that story.

[bob.schoonover]

The main mystery is either straightforward (issue 8 is exactly what happened) or entirely un-guessable based on the evidence we have at hand (e.g. Wally has been brainwashed or Wally is telling a half-truth to hide the real culprit, etc.). I lean towards the latter because of the mission(?) Booster, Harley, Barbara and Ted are on. As far as the narrative is concerned with them at this point, both pairs have had basically the same plot: suspect experiences an unknown-to-them virtual experience of the massacre, flees, fights the other suspect, escapes custody, teams up with a hero, meets up with the other pair. Now they're all going . . . somewhere.

Are they going to whatever mission Wally has been on in his hidden five days? Did Barbara solve the mystery w/o needing to see the confession? Is their quest purely a psychological one (e.g. one in which they return to Sanctuary and gain some sort of closure)? Are they going into hiding? With issue 8's revelation that neither did it, their story seems somewhat empty* unless they are going to be involved in some 11th hour revelation.

*Their actions haven't helped clear their names, either intentionally or inadvertently, nor have they been shown to be close to solving their case. Harley and Booster both gained some measure of connected-ness to their respective heroes to help overcome the trauma that happened in this series, but not necessarily the deeper scars either have.

[G-Man27]

They're going to "save" Wally. They know thanks to Booster Gold that the Wally who died was five days older so they think that Wally might be on the run from the killer and think that they can prevent his death from happening.

[theoneandonly]

I wonder when this story ends how will it be classified as a murder mystery. as it stands it seems a poor example of a whodunnit or even a procedural mystery. the clues have been lacking and the investigative aspect less than brilliant.

Perhaps it's better to classify this story as a suspense thriller rather than a "pure" murder mystery as there was more of a clock ticking aspect here and the action was the more prominent aspect although sometimes the pace was glacially slow. the suspense was depicted through the whole red herrings of Harley Quinn and Booster Gold being on the run with each believing the other to be the perpetrator of the crime and their efforts at discovering the why and wherefores. that the perpetrator of the crime allegedly turned out to be one of the murdered and had in effect killed himself in the future incorporates the elements of the locked room mystery and imbibes a paranormal/fantasy vibe literally to be expected when superhumans are involved.

ultimately it's not a murder mystery per se though it certainly does comes across as attempting to do so but rather a suspense thriller where attention is paid more to the stakes and action rather than the murder investigation with only superficial attempts made to denote that aspect which in turn signifies a rather tenuous link to a attempt to construct a murder mystery at all. the emphasis is on the depiction of a mass shooting involving superheroes and the heroes trying to make sense of the tragedy so perhaps it was to be expected that the traditional murder mystery investigation aspect would be secondary to the primary objective of exploring the unnerving issue but then they should have revealed the perpetrator at the beginning and then concentrated on its heartbreaking effects on the heroes and the general public in DCU instead of trying to make a halfassed attempt to mix genres which does neither one justice.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I wonder when this story ends how will it be classified as a murder mystery. as it stands it seems a poor example of a whodunnit or even a procedural mystery. the clues have been lacking and the investigative aspect less than brilliant.

Perhaps it's better to classify this story as a suspense thriller rather than a "pure" murder mystery as there was more of a clock ticking aspect here and the action was the more prominent aspect although sometimes the pace was glacially slow. the suspense was depicted through the whole red herrings of Harley Quinn and Booster Gold being on the run with each believing the other to be the perpetrator of the crime and their efforts at discovering the why and wherefores. that the perpetrator of the crime allegedly turned out to be one of the murdered and had in effect killed himself in the future incorporates the elements of the locked room mystery and imbibes a paranormal/fantasy vibe literally to be expected when superhumans are involved.

ultimately it's not a murder mystery per se though it certainly does comes across as attempting to do so but rather a suspense thriller where attention is paid more to the stakes and action rather than the murder investigation with only superficial attempts made to denote that aspect which in turn signifies a rather tenuous link to a attempt to construct a murder mystery at all. the emphasis is on the depiction of a mass shooting involving superheroes and the heroes trying to make sense of the tragedy so perhaps it was to be expected that the traditional murder mystery investigation aspect would be secondary to the primary objective of exploring the unnerving issue but then they should have revealed the perpetrator at the beginning and then concentrated on its heartbreaking effects on the heroes and the general public in DCU instead of trying to make a halfassed attempt to mix genres which does neither one justice.

In the end, you could very well be right that King's attempts to juggle too many different genres will be his undoing. Unless I am mistaken, it was King himself who billed it as a murder mystery, and he did so knowing full well that key elements of Wally West's plotline had already been leaked by Bleeding Cool. King's refusal to rewrite the story, despite the leaks, would be an indicator that there's more to the story than we currently know. It's possible that Bleeding Cool mixed up a bunch of details and got it wrong. Remember when Morrison & Sharp's The Green Lantern was going to be about Hal trying to save the Multiverse after the Source Wall was destroyed?

And now Bendis is also selling Event Leviathan as a whodunnit, so maybe this is just part of the marketing strategy DC is employing these days

We'll all know for certain in about two weeks, I guess. Once the dust has settled, I think we'll be in a better position to judge what this was all about.

[Dred]

It can't be a thriller. The most fundamental aspect of a thriller is building suspense as the narrative draws forward. This did the opposite of that, bouncing from depressing nadir to depressing nadir. It'd be like the opposite of a Thriller.

It was marketed and purveyed as a murder mystery and the story unfolded like it was building to a reveal of a murder mystery, it just fails in executing itself as a competent one in any way shape or form. For one, there was no explicit murder as it was all an accident. That kind of sweeps the whole murder aspect out of the murder mystery. It doesn't even really qualify for the thread's premise anymore.

But moving beyond that it's not even that, the mystery behind it was solved by King making stuff up about the universe and about the comic he was writing to suit a twist that could not be forseen. No one in the world besides the people involved with the comic could know that the Speed Force can accidentally kill people when a user of it is mentally unhinged or loses control because it was made up just for this. Heretofore unknowable information sprung in the 11th hour before the epilogue is not just bad mystery writing, it's actually antithetical to the idea of a mystery story. He did the same thing with Wally's ability to hack the AI: Again, this is not something Wally can or ever could do. Being able to move super fast does not allow you to know how to program a computer, much less hack one, much less know how to reassemble deleted data, much less blah blah you get my point. This is created for the 11th hour climax of the story and thus terribly executed from a mystery standpoint. If anyone here can tell me where they could predict Wally's powers actually being super dangerous and lethal to those around him when he loses control in the last 40 years of publication then my hat's off to you. I could maybe give you a single example of Wally being tech savvy in a one off from 2000 written by Augustyn and that's about it. Even that fell into his ability to memorize instructions and forget them -- there were no instructions on how to hack and operate a super AI. The explanation for all these events is literally just Tom King waiving around the term Speed Force like all terrible Flash writers before him. A long list of poor writing attempts falling into a trap of an easy McGuffin that can explain away any part of the story you want if you bastardize it enough.

Whatever mystery was here was a poor one. Not just because the red herrings were so obviously and unbelievably not responsible as to undermine their purpose as red herrings in the first place. Not just because the entire twist at the end relies on a bunch of things made up by Tom King to suit his story that none of us could've figured out or known without clairvoyance. It's because we all knew who the killer was, and have known, for months. We all knew Booster and Harley were not the killers and we all knew Wally was. The only other guess I ever saw was that it was the AI, usually prefaced with "I don't want it to be Wally, maybe the AI killed everyone." That's a bad premise and a bad execution of a mystery when there is no mystery and people are coming up with alternatives to the answer they all knew was true going in.

I have bigger, personal issues that I've largely left out of the post in an attempt to dissect what I struggle to refer to as a murder mystery as this thread entails. I'd like to see what people actually think instead of plain opinions and people getting onto others for stating opinions.

[theoneandonly]

well whether this story can or cannot be called a suspense thriller is open to interpretation but then the opinion that posters express are also subjective and when one may find this story the "nadir" of depression and deconstructive type of story telling and certainly it can be argued that Tom king is fast turning into a one pony trick sort of writer other readers not familiar with the characters involved and the tropes in general will find the narrative full of suspense. indeed some may even also find it a brilliantly constructed murder mystery showing ultimately tastes and interpretations will differ.

[Dred]

I don't see how it meets the qualifications of a thriller. It's not, like, subjective. The story was not constructed in a way to build suspense. It's often times even less suspenseful than your average comic arc because those frequently build to cliffhangers from issue to issue as hooks, whereas HiC frequently did not do that. I suppose it becomes what your definition of a thriller is, but the classical and genre established definition wouldn't qualify it as one.

[theoneandonly]

In the end, you could very well be right that King's attempts to juggle too many different genres will be his undoing. Unless I am mistaken, it was King himself who billed it as a murder mystery, and he did so knowing full well that key elements of Wally West's plotline had already been leaked by Bleeding Cool. King's refusal to rewrite the story, despite the leaks, would be an indicator that there's more to the story than we currently know. It's possible that Bleeding Cool mixed up a bunch of details and got it wrong. Remember when Morrison & Sharp's The Green Lantern was going to be about Hal trying to save the Multiverse after the Source Wall was destroyed?

And now Bendis is also selling Event Leviathan as a whodunnit, so maybe this is just part of the marketing strategy DC is employing these days

We'll all know for certain in about two weeks, I guess. Once the dust has settled, I think we'll be in a better position to judge what this was all about.

it does look like king should have handled the narrative with a lot more nuance and care than he has so far shown especially with the sensitive and controversial issue he chose to depict as the story presently comes across too much like identity crisis lite and not a sincere exploration of the issue.