A better explaination for Boomerang, I think, is exactly what happened - hire someone to get killed so the League thinks it’s all over.
The personality of a 45 year old fictional character written by an ongoing committee of writers is a lot more malleble and inconsistent than the ones we see in real life. The company that OWNS this character has had a lot of its older creations ‘break character.’ To wit;
Hal Jordan is a fearless and peerless policeman of intergalactic power who cracks, goes insane and embarks on a genocidal rampage that wipes out the organization he’s sworn alliegance to as well as his host city.
Superman famously doesn’t kill, but he’s executed three Phantom Zone criminals in another dimension as well as the villain Doomsday. Superman famously fights a neverending battle against crime, yet the whole point of KINGDOM COME is that he turns is back on humanity.
Batman is a driven fanatic who never wants to see anyone die, who can plan the defeat of anyone and anything, yet allows his most unpredictable enemy, the Joker, to remain an active threat.
The possibility of a homicidal and potentially insane Martian Manhunter doesn’t seem too out of line given the above scenarios. Recall also Alan Moore’s TWILIGHT OF THE SUPERHEROES proposal that sets up J’onn as an identity usurping killer who betrays the Earth for a multi-faceted alien invasion. Or Moore’s own JLA analogue in TOP TEN that sets up the entire group as a pedophile ring, of which the Martain Manhunter analogue is a serial killing predator.
Not saying I’m absolutely right, just that it’s not as out of the question as you imply it is.
That said, holmes, you have printed a couple of really god scenarios yourself, an I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find them a damn sight more satisfying than my speculations. Almost a pity this has to be over next month, eh?
Sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s good writing. Hell I can make a Captain America a a trans-sexual Nazi sleeper agent…but once that’s done the character’s broken. Now that may be a good thing, but if it’s only done because I can’t think of anything else to do with the character, or to create the story of the year with multiple cross-overs; then that’s a lack of creativity and respect for my readers.
Guy Gardner, John Stewart or even Killowog would have been better canidates for the scenario that Hal Jordan went through and you wouldn’t had to kill Jordan, bring him back, kill him again, bring him back…put Guy Gardner in Jordan’s place and you have a better storyline and an actual conclusion and one that makes sense. They need Jordan, so it would have made more sense to have Jordan walk away from the ring when the Guardians refused to help restore Coast city, as opposed to having him snap…you don’t break characters you need…you put them in another dimension.
Superman had no choice with those three, they had killed everyone on earth, were mostly likely going to kill him and if they got past him; *universal genocide. * As the last Kyptonian, he had a responsiblity to stop them and he was the only one who could. Also he paid for that act, first a ‘split’ personality, then an exile in space. The whole point of Kingdom Come is not that Superman turns his back on humanity, but that the Meta-Humans considered themselves above Humans and needed to treat Humans as equals; not treat humanity as children.
That’s the whole point. In order to stop the Joker, Batman will have to kill him. He can’t do that, so he’s trapped in circle of crime and punishment. Sure it would make sense to have Batman drop him off a roof, but again once that’s done; that’s done. Batman is ruined; toss the character away.
Again, anyone can write anything, can make a fictional character become anything, do anything. I’m not disputing that. The question is WHY. Is it believable? Does it follow the established history or is because the writer lacks the creativity to envison the character in a new way, without having to have the character kill a busload of nuns and puppies?
You take Moore’s Dark Knight returns. He revivalized Batman, yet changed nothing in the character’s core personality. That’s good writing and didn’t have to break the character or make him a sex offender.
Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, but other than that, great post Holmes
:: Unabashed applause ::
holmes. I agree with you on one point: it takes extraordinarily good writing to confound expectations of how a character is supposed to behave and yet deliver a compelling storyline. I cited examples of storylines that worked and storylines that ultimately didn’t.
When I say I can’t figure out a motive for J’onn, it’s exactly what you’re saying when you ask, “Why would he kill Sue?” My answer is: beats me. I just wasn’t letting a piddily thing like a lack of motive stop me from pointing fingers at someone with opportunity and the technical expertise to bypass blended Krypto-Martian-Apokolips security tech, is a skilled telepath, controls his appearance and mass, and knows, or could find out, all the secret IDs of the people involved so far.
Sure it could have been him. But given how the Identity Crisis storyline has unfolded so far, it’s somewhat unlikely J’onn J’onzz is the killer, but I was having fun with the idea for awhile.
On to your other points.
In KINGDOM COME, Superman abandoned his never ending battle in a fit of pique over humanity preferring Magog over him. It was extremely out of character for him to do so-- it led to the ubermensch mentality of the younger metahumans. Had Superman not left, the other heroes of his generation would not have taken their cues from him and left as well. That was the key point of KINGDOM COME. The irresponsibility of the younger heroes was a direct result of the older generation’s abandonment of their responsibilities (save for Batman and his crew.)
When Superman killed those other-universe Kryptonians he had already stripped them of their powers permanently using gold kryptonite and had them trapped in a giant cube on the surface of a desolate war-ravaged world. Despite their boasting they could restore their powers, I have a hard time believing that they could possibly do so. It was mostly the way Superman killed them, standing there and watching using green kryptonite that I had a problem with, not necessarily the decision to kill itself-- and that points mostly to John Byrne’s inadequate script than anything.
Batman could take out the Joker without killing him. Here’s a dozen ways how: Quadriplegic paralysis. Quadriplegic amputation. Permanent arm and leg restraints cybernetically wired to magnetically lock his limbs and electrically shock the Joker into unconsciousness using a psychic trigger. Plain old surgical lobotomy. Personality implants. Deliberately induced coma. A Batman designed-Joker-escape proof cell, paid for and installed by the Wayne Foundation and donated to Arkham. A Wayne backed-legislation to put the Joker in cryogenic freeze until such time medical science can cure his insanity. Step outside the law and stick the Joker in the Phantom Zone indefinitely. Lifetime solitary confinement at the bottom of a closely monitored deep pit in the Batcave. Stop the Joker from coming into being using time travel. Get the Joker hooked on opium and let him self destruct.
Whether any of these off-the-cuff ideas is any good or actually succeeds is almost beside the point. What would hopefully be compelling is seeing how Batman struggling with the decision to stop the Joker once and for all and try to implement these extraordinary steps, and the Joker’s equally willful and inventive attempts to confound them.
Batman was finally provoked into killing the Joker in THE NAIL… and while the character was definitely crushed for awhile it didn’t ruin him and he wasn’t thrown away.
I didn’t read that way. I read it as, Superman was punishing humanity, the same way a divorced parent would punish a child if he chose the other parent, by withholding support…“you want Magog, you got him and all that comes with making that choice. I moving to my single’s pad.”
We agree on Bryne.
Again no disagreement.
I’m going by memory, but I don’t think Batman meant to kill Joker (I may be mistaken) I thought the ‘breakdown’ was caused by witnessing Batgirl and Robin getting butchered. Even so, The Nail is Elseworlds and doesn’t count, the whole purpose of Elseworlds is to try different things and are self-contained universes.
If you look at the last of the Batman/Vampire stories, the last thing he does before becoming completely evil, is kill all of the villians; rather than leave Gotham unprotected. Then he ends his own life BEFORE he becomes a threat… which follows his personality, it makes sense.
Look to the Killing Joke for Batman/Joker dynamic…even Commissioner Gordon who’s been forced to watch pictures/films of his daughter naked, bleeding and dying; demands that Batman brings the Joker in alive…to “show him that our way works!” That’s in continuity, follows established patterns and makes sense and Indentity Crisis needs to follow that suit or it becomes an Elseworlds.
Sure the Manhunter could have done it…a better choice would be a hidden White Martian, whose identity Sue discovered…that makes more sense, than having the Manhunter do it.
Motive and abilities be damned. There is no way The Manhunter is going to beat up Sue, murder her, then burn up her body. There is no way that Ray Palmer is going to be a rapist or a killer and to use “mind controlled” as an excuse, for making either of those character do such a thing would be lame. Just make an evil twin and be done with it.
The answer to"why" has to outweigh the 30-40 years of established character traits, I don’t think saying, “because he could” is good enough for an author to say if he’s re-creating a character.
YMMV.
You can’t really say “motives and abilities be damned” if those and other facts lead you to a likely suspect. Now, that suspect could have a solid alibi, or no opportunity, or physical evidence that doesn’t match, or a better suspect emerges. But you go where the facts go, and you acknowledge dead ends and move on.
Also… I think an “evil twin” would be horrendously bad writing that would end up having this series panned by fanboys over the internet for years. I might actually buy a “mind controlled” J’onn or Atom if it was presented factually enough, with a not too far left field mastermind, by uncovering more evidence or looking at the facts so far from a different perspective, armed with new information.
We’ll see nexrt month.
I disagree. I despise Alan Davis for that little twist - I felt it totally subverted Batman’s character. As I recall, in a later interview on the subject, Davis described writing that as personal ‘wish fulfillment’ - cheapening it further for me.
CandidGamera. Yeah, but that’s an Elseworlds. There’s no alternate reality you can conceive of where Batman’s character would snap and kill the Joker?
But I can see how that could bother you. Creating comics with wish fulfilling fanboy/creator moments cuts both ways. When it works it’s terrific (Captain Marvel’s reinterpretation as an unstable badass in KINGDOM COME), and when it doesn’t you get pissed at the creators (Frank Miller turned Dick Grayson into a self-loathing homosexual shapeshifting serial killer in DK2. WTF???).
How was it demonstrated he was homosexual? Don’t recall that at all.
–His declaration of love for Batman
–His resentment of Carrie for replacing him
–Batman’s numerous digs at him using derogatory terms for homosexuals
It’s pretty unmistakable. Go back and reread the last issue.
Actually, Robin’s homosexuality was less of a shock than Batman’s blistering hatred of him for it. Not Frank Miller’s finest hour, IMO.
Re-reading Frank Miller’s output over the years, his homophobia and characterizations of black men as effeminate wimps and untrustworthy narcissitic brutes are two things you can count on no matter what the storyline. His one strong black male character I can recall is Robbie Robertson in Daredevil: Born Again. Which is odd, considering his black women characters, Cassie McKenna and Martha Washington, are so strong, sexy and confident. Compare them to his characterizations of Manute in SIN CITY, Power Man and Turk in DAREDEVIL, Xerses in 300 and the villainous thugs of Cabrini Green in GIVE ME LIBERTY.
Well, with the new issue of Flash, I see that my hypothesis about the Top being inside Lil Boomer is all wrong.
Hell, the killer probably was Gleek.
Some fun/interesting IC speculation/thoughts from the Usenet–plus some comments from me.
I’m paraphrasing everything…
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Someone suggested Zatanna mind-wiped Dr. Light and he became a moron. She also mindwiped Batman and now we understand the bulk of the post-Crisis Batman stories!
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Someone else suggested: Seriously, what if the mindwipe is the reason that Bats would (completely out of character, IMO–Fenris) come up with the “How to torture/snuff the JLA” plans?
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Someone said: Also, if a young, inexperienced Zatanna could freeze a pissed off Batman, why couldn’t she, years later and more experienced, do the same thing to a loser like Deathstroke?
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Some evil person said: What if Sue becomes the new Spectre–the prenancy thing being the big driving force behind the need for vengance? Ick. (And before you laugh too hard at this one, remember that the “Hal as Spectre” thing showed up on the Usenet as a joke at least two years before DC actually did it. :eek: --Fenris)
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I said: Remember a few pages back I was saying “It’s Dr. Light”? Oops. Someone on the Usenet destroyed this theory-- Bah! It can’t be Light…Light has no motive until he remembers what happened and Dr. Light didn’t remember what happened ( and presumably didn’t stop being a blithering idiot) until after Sue was murdered. I’m goin’ back to the “Psycho-Jean” theory.
Fenris
There was one story, albeit pre-crisis, where Zatanna was seriously reduced in power. However, even after that story, she still seemed to have whatever power the story called for.
But it could be an explanation.
Well, that’s explained during the fight. Zatanna tries to do the same thing to Deathstroke, but he’s so fast that he punches her (or whatever) before she can finish the word and she spends the rest of the fight vomitting. And that’s probably the most plausible thing about the Deathstroke fight.
Now that would be beautiful.
I’m guessing something is gonna happen with Dr. Light, just because we got an entire page of him last ish. Unless he gets Chronos to bring him back in time to kill Sue, though, it can’t be him, as you said.
I’m also wondering if something will be done with the fact that Zatanna’s mindwipes apperantly aren’t that effective. Dr. Light was the most work she ever did on someone, and all it took for him to remember was seeing the JLA tackle Deathstroke.
The pre-Crisis story was in JL of A in the #190s. Gerry Conway hated Zatanna and only let her in the League because she won a “Vote to pick the next member of the JLA” contest
He did his damneds to get rid of her–she never appeared in her ‘real’ costume in his run (IIRC), he instantly changed her personality and tried to change her powers (in the issue you mentioned) to that of Crystal, from the Inhumans–an elementalist.
Luckily those issues have been consigned to the Graveyard of Bad Ideas. 
I covered this. 
IC #7 tomorrow, everyone! Can’t wait!
Newsarama has posted a one-page preview here that doesn’t tell us much we don’t already know, although Martian Manhunter certainly seems surprised by something.
I will, by the way, be dissapointed if it turns out that the whole mystery could have been solved in about three seconds by having J’onn just read someone’s mind. Given the oddness of the situation and the fact that superheroes turn evil or get possessed by bad guys somewhere in the neighborhood of twice a month, you’d think one of the first things they’d do would have been to have everyone get at least a cursory mind-read just to make sure that Lex Luthor didn’t take up residence in Hawkman’s brain or something.
On the plus side, it looks like it’s not J’onn himself behind the whole thing, so I’m entitled to a sigh of relief.
On another note, anyone been following all the chatter about this “Countdown” thing that everyone’s getting worked up over? Perhaps another thread is in order…