Identity Crisis - Summary and Speculation



Identity Crisis is the biggest comic book event going on right now in the DC Universe. It’s a seven issue mini-series that was hyped by promising big deaths and big revelations. The first six issues have come out and it’s delivered on both of those, helped by clever writing from Brad Metzger and strong art from Rags Morales. I’ve got some speculations about what will happen in the last issue (out some time in December), so allow me to summarize the series up to present. Major spoilers follow.



The plot kicks off with the murder of Sue Dibny, the wife of Ralph Dibny (The Elongated Man). It appears she was burned to death after a struggle. The murderer somehow entered and left the Dibny apartment without setting off the apartment’s security system, a formidable combination of alien technologies designed specifically to protect the families of heroes who are or have been members of the Justice League. After Sue’s funeral the various heroes follow up leads in the murder, concentrating mostly on super villains who can teleport. One group of former Justice Leaguers (including Green Arrow, Black Canary, Hawkman, The Atom, and Zatarra) secretly vow to find the man they are sure committed the murder – Dr. Light. What no one else knows is that years ago Dr. Light raped Sue Dibny, and even after the League captured him he vowed he’d kill her, pointing out that even the League can’t protect someone 24/7. A vote was taken among the League for what to do about Light, and in the end the sharply divided League used Zatarra’s magical powers to essentially lobotomize the bad guy. From that point on, Light was always more of a buffoon than a serious threat.

Somehow Dr. Light gets wind that these former Leaguers are after him so he hires Deathstroke (Slade Wilson) to protect him. The Leaguers (with the Flash and Green Lantern in tow) find Light, but Deathstroke is ready for them. In the ensuing fracas Deathstroke nearly lays all the heroes low, though a desperate (and brutal) action by Green Arrow turns the tide. It still doesn’t end well for the heroes though, because in the course of the battle Dr. Light regains his memories and previous personality and escapes.



With the situation clearly getting out of control Green Arrow explains to Flash and Green Lantern (both younger men who replaced heroes currently dead) that Dr. Light wasn’t the only villain that his league tinkered with, just the only one whose personality they changed. In fact, the League had been using Zatarra’s powers to erase bad guy’s memories for years. In a world with magicians and telepaths and magic artifacts that could swap people’s minds around, this magical amnesia was the only way to keep heroes’ secret identities secret.



To some extent this is a bit of satire on the entire idea of secret identities. The masks and such that super heroes use to disguise themselves are woefully inadequate, unless you believe the old joke about having to see the bridge of the nose to recognize someone. Revisionist takes on the origin of Superman (Man of Steel, Superman: Birthright) have taken great pains to explain that Clark Kent changes his demeanor so totally as Superman that people don’t recognize him, but that’s always going to seem like a stretch. It’s also probably not a coincidence that this whole speech is given by Green Arrow, who somehow protects his secret identity as businessman Oliver Queen with nothing more than a tiny domino mask, despite his ludicrously distinctive facial hair. Under these circumstances magical amnesia is more logical than believing that everyone in the DC Universe is that stupid and unobservant.



The mysterious killer isn’t done yet. His next victim is Jean Loring, ex-wife of Ray Palmer, better known as size-changing hero Atom. The killer attempts to hang Jean in her own apartment, but the Atom arrives (via telephone, one of his favorite tricks) in time to save her. The killer managed to outwit all the security systems in her apartment, and she didn’t get a good look at him. The incident actually causes the two former lovers to reconcile to some degree. Meanwhile the autopsy has found that Sue Dibny was dead before she was burned, which seems to exonerate Dr. Light. All the heroes are getting on edge, especially when Lois Lane receives a note revealing that the author knows Superman’s secret identity.



Meanwhile the washed-up Flash villain Captain Boomerang has been trying to get back in the game, begging for help from Calculator, a lame villain who has reinvented himself as a super villain equivalent of Oracle (Barbara Gordon, who was formerly Batgirl and now provides information support to Batman and other heroes), except Calculator wants to paid for his information. Calculator has lead Boomerang to the illegitimate teenage son he’s never known because the child was put up for adoption. Boomerang gets to spend some time with his son, who shows a certain natural ability at throwing stuff… and the very unnatural ability to move at supersonic speeds. “Golden Glider isn’t my mother, is she?” asks the son, referring to the tabloid newspaper story that informed him of his heritage. “No.” replies Boomerang.



Calculator gets a chance to help Boomerang by setting him up with a job, paid for anonymously. The job is to kill Jack Drake, who just happens to be father of Tim Drake, the current Robin. As Boomerang clumsily breaks into Drake’s mansion (he’s Bruce Wayne’s neighbor) Drake finds a package and note. The note says “Jack Drake - Protect yourself” (with an ‘r’ circled to make it look like the Robin insignia) and the package contains a gun. When Boomerang attacks that’s exactly what Drake does, and both men end up dead. Tim Drake joins Batman and the two previous Robins as an orphan.

The heroes are left to conclude that Captain Boomerang killed Sue Dibny and attacked Jean Loring. The Flash has one more question for Green Arrow about the night Dr. Light was lobotomized. Flash has reason to believe Batman was there, but Green Arrow didn’t mention him participating in the vote. As it turns out Batman showed up after the magical procedure was started and was so enraged that the League had to erase his memory! Finally, the autopsy finds the cause of death in Sue Dibny’s murder. She was killed by a tiny brain injury, and extreme magnification reveals that the wound is in the shape of tiny footprints. Meanwhile Ray Palmer is preparing to get into bed with Jean Loring…



That brings us up the end of issue six. What’s going on here? Is Ray Palmer really a cold blooded killer? We’ll get to that in a minute. But first I’d like to talk about Captain Boomerang’s son.

The dialogue I quoted about his mother not being Golden Glider is key. Obviously we’re supposed to assume that the son (his name is never stated) got his speed powers from his mother. But who would that mother be? There aren’t many female speedsters in the DC Universe. There’s Jesse Quick and Lady Flash, both of whom are too young. But what if the speed powers came from his father… not Captain Boomerang, but his real biological father… Barry Allen, the second Flash!. There is a resemblance. My theory is that one of those times when the villains switched bodies with the heroes, Captain Boomerang, in his arch-enemy’s body, got busy with a Flash groupie. If there’s any doubt that Barry had groupies, I point out that in issue one Ralph describes being around in Barry Allen in Central City as being “like competing with Sinatra.” And it certainly isn’t out of character for Boomerang, who is described by one super villain as “a letch… even by our standards.” The resulting child was put up for adoption, and it appears that Boomerang had a crisis of conscience recently and had Calculator place the tabloid story to help him introduce himself to his own son.



With this major subplot so dependent on the mind-swapping stories of comics Silver Age, I suspect that the same is true of the main murder mystery. The evidence that The Atom killed Sue Dibny does look conclusive. It’s established that Sue was on the phone right before the murderer appeared (The Atom can ride telephone signals) and Ray Palmer’s first appearance in the first issue is an hour after the murder, and he’s “more than an hour late” for a meeting. Palmer isn’t the best suspect for the other crimes, however. Obviously we’re supposed to think he faked the attack on his ex-wife to force a reconciliation with her, but when he saves her there is narration from his perspective that indicates real fear for Jean, and whoever attacked Jean appears to be really good with knots, as far as I know not a specialty of the Atom. The only other possibility I see is that Ray has some sort of super-multiple personality disorder (a different kind of identity crisis?), perhaps brought about by the period of time in recent years when he was regressed to the age of a teenager. Even so, I’m inclined to assume that someone else was in Ray Palmer’s body when Sue was killed, possibly attacked Jean himself, and (maybe) arranged for the hit on Jack Drake.

What I don’t have is the slightest idea who the real killer is. If he (or she) is switching bodies with Atom that might indicate he’s one of Atom’s rogue gallery, but I have no idea who Atom has fought on a regular basis. I assume that in keeping with the rules of good mystery writing the villain is some character that’s been introduced in the series already, as opposed to a mind-jumper that hasn’t been mentioned (Jericho, for example, the non-corporeal son of Deathstroke who recently fought the Titans) or something out of left field (the ghost of the second Robin, Jason Todd, has been mentioned as a suspect on some message boards).

Perhaps the biggest red herring is the idea that the killer knows superhero secret identities. That may not be the case. Sue and Jean were publicly known as superhero wives, so finding them wouldn’t be a problem, though how the killer broke into Jean’s apartment remains a mystery. The only person associated with a truly secret identity who has died is Jack Drake, and there is no real evidence that the hit on him was arranged by the same person who attacked Sue and Jean. The same is true of the notes Lois Lane and Jack Drake received. Perhaps those notes have nothing to do with the mind-jumping killer. Perhaps the note writer is really benevolent. He (or, again, she) may have warned Lois Lane as a way to make her be more careful, and he did provide Jack Drake a gun to defend himself. The whole note writer subplot also puts me in the mind of someone who can see the future (a superpower that’s represented in the series by Chronos, a villain from the future) and is taking actions with effects are not clear in the present.

There are also other hints of unseen character(s) operating, who may or may not be related to the killer. Some examples:

- Dr. Light is tipped off that Green Arrow et al. are coming for him and flees to the Injustice Gang satellite just before the heroes arrive to find a bodyguard. It’s possible that The Calculator warned Light (upon arriving at the satellite Lights says “Calculator sent me…”), but I’m not sure where the profit for Calculator would be in that.

- Right before Jack Drake is killed we see someone observing him from outside and talking on a cell phone. Perhaps it’s Captain Boomerang, perhaps not. Even if it is, who is he talking to?

- We aren’t sure who arranged for the murder of Jack Drake. We’re supposed to think it’s the same person who killed Sue, but it may not be for reasons I stated above.

- Someone outfits Boomerang’s son to be the new Captain Boomerang. We don’t see who.



One last observation. The first scene of Identity Crisis has Ralph Dibny and Firehawk staking out two thugs preparing to sell a crate. The transaction goes badly, and the contents of the crate is revealed to be the green “Pre-Crisis” armor Lex Luthor used to use to fight Superman back in early 1980s. The armor has been re-introduced to the DC Universe a few times post-Crisis, usually as a LexCorp product worn by Luthor flunkies, rather than Luthor himself. The recent Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, however, ended with Luthor donning a new version of the armor, apparently provided by Darkseid, and fighting Superman and Batman directly. After being defeated and avoiding capture the last time we saw the injured Luthor his last words were “There will be a reckoning… a crisis...”  I’m not sure if that thruway bit was supposed to tie Luthor into the upcoming Identity Crisis however tangentially, or if Superman/Batman writer Jeph Loeb was foreshadowing something that will happen in his own title.

Posted: Thu - December 2, 2004 at      

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