Comic Review: Heroes in Crisis #9

Heroes in Crisis #9

DC Comics

Writer: Tom King

Artist: Clay Mann

Despite my grievances with this event, Heroes in Crisis #9 was not a disastrous conclusion. I wouldn’t call it “good” by any stretch though. After building up a morbid mystery, writer Tom King offers an ending so subdued that it’s best described as anticlimactic. It feels like Heroes in Crisis drops its central plotlines instead of resolving them. That’s partially because Batman and Barry Allen’s investigation disappeared from the book two issues ago. But that would be easier to overlook without the last minute twist Heroes in Crisis added to its mystery plotline. This issue essentially undoes a major component of the plot and accidentally compromises its own staying power in the process.

In a very bizarre turn of events, Heroes in Crisis tries to partially reverse its monstrous take on Wally West. The sudden and convoluted turn of events that entails is little more than a copout. This book’s absolutely eleventh-hour “redemption” of Wally is just as contrived as his fall from grace. This ending felt like a concession that Heroes in Crisis was a poor use of the character. All of this carries a hopeful note or at the very least tries to convince you that something has changed. I will concede that something definitely has changed but not for the better.

Close to half of Heroes in Crisis #9 is taken up by the interview segments the book has been so fixated on. Laid out in nine-panel grids, it condenses what were previously page long affairs into a single image. In a lot of ways, it epitomizes the worst aspects of this event. The interviews present well-established characters as vapid tortured souls. It’s all very melodramatic and mistakes real depth for something a lot meaner. It’s interesting to compare Jim Corrigan recounting how God burst into tears when asked why humans suffer from the far more mature explorations of faith and punishment that defined John Ostrander’s run of the Spectre.

But that’s preferable to the demeaning, sitcom-like insecurities of the Robins. Catwoman simply uttering “Meeoww” might be one of the most pointless individual panels I’ve seen in a book this year. In Heroes in Crisis’ defense, the interviews that aren’t out of character or downright absurd are fairly effective. Cassandra Cain silently leering at the camera and Guy Gardner asking why he wasn’t the first pick for Earth’s Green Lantern are perfect. But all of the interviews, whether they be good, bad, or insulting, suffer the same problem. Clay Mann’s art manages to make these heroes baring their deepest fears and darkest desires look like they’re getting headshots done at the DMV. Even at the very end, his renditions of the heroes lack a real sense of warmth.

Heroes in Crisis #9 does try to rediscover its origins as a hard-hitting look at mental health in America. But as with the rest of the series, it gets lost in the usual nonsense that accompanies events like this. Reading this issue, I expected some kind of acknowledgment that Sanctuary was a horrible, immoral idea. The story happens because the Trinity trusted the mental wellbeing of their friends, families, and even themselves to a computer without even the semblance of oversight. Heroes in Crisis completely fails to present Sanctuary as a place of healing but instead delivers the reader a house of horrors where old favorites are tortured, humiliated, or killed. Heroes in Crisis ends with a clear message that we need to confront our inner trauma in a healthy way but nothing in the series actually supports this vital lesson. The book only ever uses the complexities of mental health to push an overwrought, gratuitous narrative.