Why is there all this hate for Identity Crisis?

[The Cool Thatguy]

Not exactly - Dick, Donna, Roy, Raven, Kori, and Vic are not "nebulously" adult - they are adults in that series. Fully and completely, by time Terra comes around (Dick and Wally went college - the others didn't even do that and many had no parental figures in daily life - Raven, Vic, Kori, and even Donna acted as those that had moved fully out of the childhood home/life). Those listed are all 18+ from day one of that series, and that they weren't kids anymore that was important. Gar was not an adult. He was growing up and starting to become one (and him growing up and towards adulthood is one of the character arcs), but was not treated as a nebulous adult, because he wasn't one. Had to go to school/be home schooled. Had some inferiority issues for not being as old as them, etc. Said all sorts of stupid, immature things, with response occasionally specifically targeting his youth. And Terra was his age, not their age.

So, for me most weren't "nebulously" adult - they were completely (young) adult. But Gar wasn't. Which sort of made him the odd man out, and was a story-point at times.

As I've said, my biggest issue isn't Terra being evil. Children can be evil, especially in fiction. They can be tried for their crime. I happen to think they should be tried as children instead of adults, because they aren't adults. But they can be held criminally responsible. I don't even blame Slade for what she did, since the story indicates she'd been doing that sort thing since before she met him, as I recall.

My issues come with slut-shaming and using makeup, sex, and cigarettes to indicate evilness. My issues come from the idea that specific thing - a teenage girl in a sexual relationship with a 50-year-old - is meant to reflect poorly on her. And absolute biggest issue is pretending Slade "a good man," with him not being held responsible for his actions. With completely ignoring that he was paid assassin for a couple decades. And so forth and so on. I don't mind that Terra is treated as evil - I do mind that Slade isn't.

Agreed on all of this.

[TheCape]

The good thing is that since Johns TT, Slade has been treated as a piece s@#$ for pretty much everyone in the hero side of things.

[The Cool Thatguy]

The good thing is that since Johns TT, Slade has been treated as a piece s@#$ for pretty much everyone in the hero side of things.

Eh, depends. Priest pulled back on the villain bit, but canon is wobbly at DC

[Tzigone]

Eh, depends. Priest pulled back on the villain bit, but canon is wobbly at DC

"Wobbly" is definitely an understatement. When 5G was going to line-wide thing, Identity Crisis was going to be back in continuity (and Sue presumably dead again). I was unhappy about that. But now I have no idea what's going to happen there.

[Flash Gordon]

There's something perverse and unwarranted about retroactively sticking a violent sexual assault into the Justice League's satelite era. A time of great imagination and fun stories for children.

There's also the lobotomy of Batman, which is an insane story beat- a story beat that should have just been "Hawkman returns and buries his mace in Dr. Light's skull."

Also, I mean it's just not a well told story.

[Tzigone]

There's something perverse and unwarranted about retroactively sticking a violent sexual assault into the Justice League's satelite era. A time of great imagination and fun stories for children.

Well, this is fairly late, or at lest middling, in the bronze age, so stories had "grown up" somewhat by then. It's weird how so much of the discussion of this talks about the fun of the silver age, when Justice League of America, at least, had moved away from the type of stories I associate with that.

A big problem (not the only one) is that this event should have deeply affected all the people involved (excluding Batman, as he doesn't consciously remember anything) and of course it didn't effect them at all because it wasn't written until much later. Rebooting the universe in between just muddies things. It's an issue with partial reboots, especially as time goes on and the continuities bleed more into each other. But event without universe bleeding, it's an issue that arises when large, life-shaping or defining events are retconned into a character's history, and even more so when they are inserted into a time period when we were reading the character (and opposed to inserted years before we met them).

Also, I mean it's just not a well told story.

Too true.

[Güicho]

Curious if anyone wants to compare how much (or not at all) the Oh!pinions / Arrrhguments / and discussion has "grown" / evolved or been "dead-horse beat" -
15 Years later - https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post4211322
14 Years later - https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post3926302
Original Was it worth buying - https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post3394547

[The no face guy]

I remember being really excited about it because Brad Meltzer had just finished a great run on Green Arrow, which was one of DC's top selling comics at the time.

There was a lot of fanfare and buzz around it at first, the idea that a super villain had discovered the identity of the superheroes and was killing their loved ones was quite exciting, as watching the paranoi that set in amongst the superheroes, and the different reactions on how to deal with it, (Feud between Green Arrow & Hawkman if I recall correctly...been a while) and the controversy with the mind wipe.

In the end, I remember being really disappointed with the outcome, and that's when the blowback began....the word misogamy started to get thrown around to describe the series, and I personally thought that the story would have been a whole lot better, if it did turn out to be a supervillain instead of a jealous ex lover, which came off as cheesy.

[DrNewGod]

There's something perverse and unwarranted about retroactively sticking a violent sexual assault into the Justice League's satelite era. A time of great imagination and fun stories for children.

There's also the lobotomy of Batman, which is an insane story beat- a story beat that should have just been "Hawkman returns and buries his mace in Dr. Light's skull."...

Well, this is fairly late, or at lest middling, in the bronze age, so stories had "grown up" somewhat by then. It's weird how so much of the discussion of this talks about the fun of the silver age, when Justice League of America, at least, had moved away from the type of stories I associate with that.

A big problem (not the only one) is that this event should have deeply affected all the people involved (excluding Batman, as he doesn't consciously remember anything) and of course it didn't effect them at all because it wasn't written until much later. Rebooting the universe in between just muddies things. It's an issue with partial reboots, especially as time goes on and the continuities bleed more into each other. But event without universe bleeding, it's an issue that arises when large, life-shaping or defining events are retconned into a character's history, and even more so when they are inserted into a time period when we were reading the character (and opposed to inserted years before we met them)...

Yeah, but, the Satellite League's stories hadn't gone that far by the early 1980s. NTT was getting into drug use, cults, and sexual manipulation at that point, but the League kept its tone pretty steady up until the Legends broke down the Detroit League. So, I think the notion among fans of the era that IDC was way out of tone for the JL of the time it depicted is understandable.

Now, I get it: The writer was trying to say to us "The League wasn't really that sugar-coated playful alliance of heroes the way you thought it was. Let me tell you what was really going on." In theory, that's not a bad take for an Elseworlds, but it pushes the characters too far off their heroic moral centers for an ongoing. There's no way some of those relationships should have been recoverable. Ever. Further, even if it had been an out-of-continuity story, as others have noted, the execution was poor.

[The Cool Thatguy]

I remember being really excited about it because Brad Meltzer had just finished a great run on Green Arrow, which was one of DC's top selling comics at the time.

There was a lot of fanfare and buzz around it at first, the idea that a super villain had discovered the identity of the superheroes and was killing their loved ones was quite exciting, as watching the paranoi that set in amongst the superheroes, and the different reactions on how to deal with it, (Feud between Green Arrow & Hawkman if I recall correctly...been a while) and the controversy with the mind wipe.

In the end, I remember being really disappointed with the outcome, and that's when the blowback began....the word misogamy started to get thrown around to describe the series, and I personally thought that the story would have been a whole lot better, if it did turn out to be a supervillain instead of a jealous ex lover, which came off as cheesy.

Same.

It might have worked as a horror story, but labeling it and treating it as a mystery invited scrutiny the plotting simply couldn't handle. Not helped by the poor treatment of women in general

[ChangingStation]

Eh, depends. Priest pulled back on the villain bit, but canon is wobbly at DC

Priest also called Slade out for the Terra thing so I guess it's all complicated. (Granted in Rebirth it's implied he simply kissed her, which is still Creepy as hell, but less so than the alternative).

[Comic-Reader Lad]

In general, I liked Identity Crisis. I like mystery stories, and I liked how previous continuity was used to set the story in a specific era of the past that I remembered.

However, I wasn't crazy about the resolution to the mystery, which of course is essential to how one would subsequently view the story overall.

In this thread, it was mentioned how people viewed the story at the time. My recollection is that people really weren't all that put off by what happened with Jean and Sue. They were turned off by not finding the revelation to be credible. Jean being crazy wasn't an issue as she did have mental problems in the past -- going all the way back to an Atom story in the 1960s, which was referenced in a Super-Team Family story in the 1970s.

But the "I brought a flamethrower -- just in case" really made people's eyes roll at the time and did begin the process of people reassessing how much they liked what they read. First rule of a mystery story: you must stick the landing or else all is for naught.

I think this was the first big thing to come out of the Dan DiDio era of DC, and it has all of his hallmarks that his detractors have subsequently come to dislike about his tenure: rewriting the past, using this event to set up future events, having a "kill list" to get characters off the board that he didn't like, etc. People mentioned Heroes in Crisis -- another DiDio initiated mystery story that did much of the same that people ended up hating and which didn't stick the landing.

I've only read about half this thread, so I don't know if anyone else brought it up, but at the time, Joe Quesada, who was EIC of Marvel at the time, called IDC, the best book from DC in quite awhile. No wonder, because shortly after IDC began, Marvel began their Avengers: Disassembled storyline, which likewise featured a mystery with a female ally going crazy and committing multiple murders and using past continuity to explain it all. Fans of the Avengers and Scarlet Witch were similarly upset by the conclusion.

Again, I liked both stories, but definitely each story was created to bring darkness to their comics and relied on shock value to propel their stories -- but at the time, it did work because both stories were huge sellers.

[godisawesome]

In general, I liked Identity Crisis. I like mystery stories, and I liked how previous continuity was used to set the story in a specific era of the past that I remembered.

However, I wasn't crazy about the resolution to the mystery, which of course is essential to how one would subsequently view the story overall.

In this thread, it was mentioned how people viewed the story at the time. My recollection is that people really weren't all that put off by what happened with Jean and Sue. They were turned off by not finding the revelation to be credible. Jean being crazy wasn't an issue as she did have mental problems in the past -- going all the way back to an Atom story in the 1960s, which was referenced in a Super-Team Family story in the 1970s.

But the "I brought a flamethrower -- just in case" really made people's eyes roll at the time and did begin the process of people reassessing how much they liked what they read. First rule of a mystery story: you must stick the landing or else all is for naught.

I think this was the first big thing to come out of the Dan DiDio era of DC, and it has all of his hallmarks that his detractors have subsequently come to dislike about his tenure: rewriting the past, using this event to set up future events, having a "kill list" to get characters off the board that he didn't like, etc. People mentioned Heroes in Crisis -- another DiDio initiated mystery story that did much of the same that people ended up hating and which didn't stick the landing.

I've only read about half this thread, so I don't know if anyone else brought it up, but at the time, Joe Quesada, who was EIC of Marvel at the time, called IDC, the best book from DC in quite awhile. No wonder, because shortly after IDC began, Marvel began their Avengers: Disassembled storyline, which likewise featured a mystery with a female ally going crazy and committing multiple murders and using past continuity to explain it all. Fans of the Avengers and Scarlet Witch were similarly upset by the conclusion.

Again, I liked both stories, but definitely each story was created to bring darkness to their comics and relied on shock value to propel their stories -- but at the time, it did work because both stories were huge sellers.

I think that’s the most accurate way to look at it - it’s a subpar mystery connected to a mostly competently done “thriller” comic story, but it’s goals and vision of what comics “should be” has been losing what luster it had for decades now, and overstayed it’s welcome, and it ties in very much with the weaknesses people see in a “Dan Didio approved” story.

There’s very much a direct line between the philosophy behind Sue Disney’s violation and death, Jack Drake’s death, Jean Lorring’s madness, and the “reveal”/retcon of the mind-wipe conspiracy to the less savory, repetitive, and poorly plotted elements of Didio’s tenure overall.

I still think it’s reputation has worsened in part because it’s no longer a unique experience; it would possibly hold up better it it weren’t copied or one-upped by so many other DC “crises” over the years.