DC's Identity Crisis Ongoing Thread (Open Spoilers)

Cafe Society
181

I’ll stand by my “Jean Loring” theory.

  1. IMO, it’s out of character for the “Classic” Amazo (who mainly wants to snuff the JLA so he can be turned off)-why would he be trying to snuff loved ones? And bad-guy loved ones too? On the other hand, there was an awesome issue of JLA where the Atom defeated Amazo single-handedly so there’s a motive. Hmm…

  2. If it’s Atom, I’m gonna be very pissed. He’d be boring as a bad-guy, and I like him. His “rehabilitation” as a useful character in the JLAs in the 20s (the one with Amos Fortune/Julian September and the Mark Millar one a few issues later with Amazo (#27?) ) were great and he’s become a great character again. As a bad guy? Eh.

  3. The Jean Loring one fits best, and it makes for a creepy new character.
    [ul]
    [li]She’s a recovering batshit-crazy murdering(?) psychopath. She was nuts from like 1966-1974 real time with (maybe) one relapse. That said, Atom went slightly nuts once (the SWORD OF THE ATOM stuff–but his style of “nuts” involved (IIRC) him running off and and becoming a nature-worshipper. Even at his most ruthless, the worst he’d ever done was shrink a couple of murderers down to 1/4" tall and strand them at that size). Amazo? Certainly nuts, but going after loved ones seems too indirect for him. [/li][li]The “Who’s tossing Sue around” thing? Amazo certainly fits, but so does either Jean or Ray with their density increased a lot.[/li][li]If it was Ray, what was up with the earlier attack on Jean? How’d she get out of the noose to make the call and then back in? (the phone was across the room)[/li][/ul]

Finally, it could be a couple of other people. Martian Manhunter can shape-change–that includes shrinking (The answer to the question “Where does the extra mass go, then” is answered by "This is DC–it doesn’t matter. If it were Marvel, we’d get a 3 page explaination about parallel sidereal non-Einsteinian universes! :D) It would be lame as hell, mind you, but it could fit and it would explain Bat’s “J’onn, get out of my head” comment. It wouldn’t give him a motive though.

It could be Shrinking Violet from Legion, but A) that would be uber-lame, B) out of character and C) out of left field.

One thing that disappoints me is that I thought that Elongated Man would get more play. He hasn’t done anything.

182

Fenris. As you know, I suspected the Martian Manhunter even before the mini series began-- based mostly on his exclusion from the cover of #1 and the fact that mindwiping should come easiest to him, not Zatanna, and he could conceivably disable the alarms at the Dibnys’.

That said, I’ve been looking for a motive and I haven’t seen anything yet that explains why J’onn would suddenly start killing. I’d also been looking for a Surprise!-This-is-the-ultimate-birthday-mystery! turn from Sue Dibny – but everything we’ve seen, from her funeral to her autopsy, suggests that would be waaaaaay inconsistent with what’s been shown behind the scenes.

Amazo makes some sense, as it would account for the disparate powers the killer has just as easily as J’onn. I prefer that to the “psycho spouse Jean Loring theory,” anyway.

I still haven’t seen issue #6 but a mindwiped Batman makes sense. I’m really interested in seeing how this all comes together next month.

183

**
Plus, it would have been waaaaay out of character for Sue. Mysteries? Yeah. Deliberate cruelty? No.

I prefer the psycho-spouse theory m’self, (and the last few pages make it seem VERY likely that it’s either Ray or Jean) but I have to admit the big sticking point is how did Jean get a white-dwarf suit? (Granted there was that whole “I’ve got your patents” thing in issue one, and the two clues–her shrinking through the phone and the noose/cell-phone thing help, but still, if it turns out to be her, he’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.)

184

Amazo, Jean, and Ray all look good as suspects; J’onn less so. It’d be strange for her to have done it, but Rita Farr (Elasti-Girl) of the new Doom Patrol demonstrated shrinking abilities as well.

I’m with Wally on his reaction to the League’s mindwiping Bats - You don’t mess with Batman.

There are still undefined variables here, a lot of interconnections - yeah, the Atom helped take down Amazo in his most recent defeat. I was doing some research for a potential Satellite-Era League Roleplaying Campaign, and looking at the DCUniverse RPG’s JLA book… primarily to try and find Firestorm’s powers, and how they were modelled - when I stumbled on the Atom’s entry.

It seems, while I was reading more popular titles, Mr. Atom went off and manipulated a substitute-Atom into joining the Suicide Squad. Apparently, this was to throw some bad guys (whom he had shrunk and left tiny as a punishment) off his trail. Unfortunately, the sub (and most of the bad guys pursuing) was killed.

It provides an interesting link to the Squad in the Atom’s past, though.

Here’s a link to a site listing the complete Suicide Squad Roster.

185

At this point I’ve got to go with Jean. The main reason being her spoken thought in bed at the end, “why Captain Boomerang?” I interpret that as a vocalized question meaning “why did the Calculator give the job to CB after I contacted him, instead of somebody else?” Ray wouldn’t take it that way, of course, but given the Calculator’s earlier statement that the contract didn’t specify who he should hire, it makes sense to me.

I refuse to even consider J’onn or Ray. The only explanation I can come up with for why it might be Ray is all that size changing over the years affected him psychologically, but murder is too far out of character for him. Jean, on the other hand, hasn’t been a frequently used character in the last decade or so; her character can be altered without being too inconsistent. Plus, her status as ex-wife of a publicly known hero and the idea that she may be jealous and angry that she’s better known as “the Atom’s ex,” than as “Jean Loring, Attorney” could be behind all of this.

186

Just got the issue.

I like how the Top got a mention. So at least these Identity Crisis tie-ins aren’t completely ignored by the main story. Too bad it didn’t provide any further clues to young Boomerang’s origin.

There’s only one issue left so the Atom Family thing might not be a red herring, but is there any other character who could be responsible for microscopic footprints, like a Green Lantern?

187

They’re playing by the rules so far, so look for the killer to be someone who has put in appearances from the first two issues on (like Monocle or someone). I’m still liking Mirror Master.

188

Mirror Master? Huh. I don’t see it, really.

I saw an offhand reference online to The Ray having shrunk down once to recover The Atom - which means he could have possibly made the footprints. Of course, this also implies that Dr. Light could’ve pulled the same stunt.

A Green Lantern would be really iffy, and we don’t have any unstable ones at the moment to point the finger at.

One of the interesting things to me, in retrospect, is Chronos’s appearances early in the book. He was always an Atom villain.

The burning question in my mind is - Why Jack Drake? Amazo, Jean, and Ray all have little to no contact with the current Robin. And if one’s lashing out at the Bat-family, far better to take out Robin himself; that’d put Batman over the edge for sure.

Jean’s looking better and better as the prime orchestrator of this. Here’s my theoretical chain of the crime - Jean kills Sue because she’s envious of Sue’s happy marriage, her adventures with the Justice League - basically, Sue’s existence as a perfect Superhero spouse who wasn’t totally eclipsed by her husband. She arranges to fake an attack on herself to make double-certain they don’t suspect her. Then she gets Calc to hire the cheapest hitman he can find and send him up against Jack Drake - sending Jack a pistol and a warning to better ensure that hitman’s demise, so as to throw the Justice League a red herring.

Problems : The note to Lois. Could’ve been written off as an opportunist taking advantage of the paranoia - an opportunist who knows Superman’s identity, mind you - except that Jack received a similar note. Interestingly, Sue didn’t; nor did Jean. Possibly, the notes to Lois and Jack were both sent by a second party; this would presume that someone wants to terrify Lois, then go on to cover up for Sue’s killer’s actions by implicating Boomerang, though. Those motivations seem a bit contradictory. Then there’s the burning of Sue’s body. Well, it didn’t cover up the evidence, and was easily detectable via autopsy. This leads me to conclude that, either our murderer really wasn’t very experienced in such things and simply didn’t realize that the lungs would put the lie to the burning death, or our murderer wanted someone to discover the tiny footprints and implicate the Atom.

Of course, for something very surreal, the Murderer and the person who burned the body might be different people. The Burner - somehow knowing about the Murder and realizing it will seem like natural causes, goes in to force the investigation to look deeper. Really farfetched, though. (Especially since the way we were shon events in IC #1 may contradict this view - can’t recall)

Interestingly, the Suicide Squadders in IC #6 mention Luthor by name…

189

I think that the note to Lois was meant to be a warning. After all, the note to Jack Drake was written in the same style, and it appears to have been a warning as well.

I sincerely hope that the Batman doesn’t think that Ray Palmer did it. If so, then I’ll be severely disappointed in his detective skills. I’d like to think that the World’s Greatest Detective™ wouldn’t just to conclusions so quickly based on the scanty evidence at hand. (Remember, as of now, he does not yet know about the microscopic footprints.)

190

[spoiler]
I’d swear I read in a Diamond Previews a few months back, some Superman solicitation that started “While dealing with the aftermath of Lois’s shooting…”

I didn’t read any further, but…[/spoiler]

191

I think that might refer to another issue I browsed at the book store that had Lois getting shot by revolutionaries while covering a story in another country.

192

Could Dr. Light be somehow responsible for the appearance of the tiny footprints? He seems inordinately pleased about whatever he’s contemplating in that one super-creepy page in #6, and Dr. Mid-nite appears to be using a light microscope when he discovers the evidence. Do Dr. Light’s powers these days enable him to manipulate light images from a distance and at various scales? Perhaps the footprints are a red herring intended to draw the heroes away so that the killer can strike somewhere else?

[sudden Lost Skeleton of Cadavra-inspired intuitive leap]

Hmm…Dr. Light…Dr.* Mid-nite*…I wonder…

…Oh, well.

[/sLSoC-iil]

193

A subtle thing I like throughout IC and noticed again having just re-read IC #6 is how the Calculator sees everything. In #6 alone, we see he’s monitoring Green Arrow and Wally’s conversation (presumably he can’t hear anything, else he’d know everyone’s secret identities), Dr. Light, wherever he is (perhaps worth noting is the fact that in his monitor we see Light making some kind of flashy thing), and Batman. I don’t think this really means anything other than that the Calculator is really cool, but… hey, that’s something.

Good point about how Chronos has pretty much vanished, CandidGamera. Earlier on I was sure that his “We’ll still win” statements meant something, but I’d totally forgotten about him lately.

Also, I wonder if Phobia and Dr. Moon will show up again. So far, almost every villain they made a significant mention of on the satellite has been important in some way or at least shown up again (Merlyn, Monocle, Boomerang, Deathstroke, Mirror Master, Black Spider). The only exceptions are those two and Chronos (and whoever that lady is talking to Mirror Master and Deadshot about Troia, I guess).

I’m also in agreement with Fenris over the fact that Ralph hasn’t gotten to do enough in this story. Ideally, he’ll be the one to solve the mystery at the end (c’mon, he deserves to upstage Batman), but I’d like to know what he thinks about the whole Dr. Light lobotomy, too.

194

I had some similar thoughts. People are assuming – quite naturally – that the footprints were caused by the pitter-patter of microscopic feet. I suspect that they’re wrong.

I’m not convinced that Dr. Light is the one responsible; indeed, I don’t have any detailed theories yet on who could have done it. Still, this does look suspiciously like a case of massive misdirection.

195

Hmm…plus one of Dr. Light’s earliest gimmicks was to make solid light duplicates of people.

196

He would’ve had to travel a few days back in time.

With Chronos.

Who’s also a suspect. God I hate time loops!

197

The only things that’s rung false so far is the heroes assumption that just because Boomerang killed Jack Drake, he was the one behind everything. The very fact of Jack’s little present should be enough to disprove it. Why would Boomerang give Jack a weapon to defend himself?

198

As far as we know, only Batman knows about the note to Drake.

199

Okay, I have a new suspect.

Though this hinges on something that he did pre-Crisis, and I can’t remember if it was him, or someone else, post-Crisis.

Who has shrinking technology that we haven’t mentioned? Brainiac.

His motivations for going after Sue, or Jean are fuzzy, though.

But a Brainiac-Luthor team, on the other hand, might be acting on a generalized superhero vendetta. The last time we saw Brainiac was in a recent Birds of PRey arc, where he’d founded a cult in his own name, kidnapped some metahumans, etc.

He could potentially bypass the massive security at Sue and Ralph’s place - or duplicate Ray’s phone-surfing trick.

Sue was on the phone right before she died - with “Alfred”. Now, there’s only one DC Alfred I know - might not be him, but if it was, it’s conceivable Brainiac rode in on the call from Wayne Manor.

Don’t know. Something to consider, though. (The reason I think it’s a good possibility is because we’ve seen how well DC foreshadowed and set up this arc in other titles - tying in the recent Kandor-based Godfall arc in Superman and the Brainiac arc in Birds of Prey would just make things all the richer.)

200

This doesn’t really mean much and I’m sure someone has mentioned it before, but I was just looking through the Robin: A Hero Reborn TPB and noticed that the story arc in which Tim Drake becomes Robin is called “Identity Crisis.” Trivia!