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A review by justinlikescomicbooks
Heroes in Crisis by Tom King
1.5
Wow--this was terrible! The closest thing I've ever read to trash TV, just pure hatewatch energy. I couldn't look away, but I found very little of the entire exercise worthwhile.
A mental health center for superheroes...I'm not even going to say it's a good idea, but it could've been something. Instead, this has to tie into some large, overarching "DC Rebirth" narrative (one that, we should not forget, somehow involves the WATCHMEN), so you've gotta have all the heroes solving the problem like it's an alien invasion. It's really, really, really dumb. (I can't believe this guy wrote 100+ issues of Batman--when you have such a singular voice, how could you deal with publisher demands over that long a period. That's a big undertaking but I do want to read it some day, even just out of morbid curiosity).
This just made me want to watch M. Night Shyamalan's Glass, which actually makes something of the idea. There's a whole page of Batman being silent and then crying about all the Robins that have died--again, I understand the idea, but divorced from the narrative, what the hell does it add up to? Just a bunch of spaghetti thrown at the wall, playing around with the idea of a real-life issue, but only seldom taking it seriously.
Adding on top of this, the only moments that work are the momentary jokes! Divorced from context, each Robin saying that all the other Robins have their own unique features but they feel like they're the odd man out is hilarious and revealing. There are also other moments where it's like Tom King is given leeway to have the characters say out loud what he actually thinks about the character--it's pretty cool, and pretty fun. And then you remember this is a story about murder/suicide.
The fun adventure, and the little quips, only detract from the main story. And the main story sucks.
I think that, deep down, Tom King is trying to grapple with his own inner demons in this story, and in some ways when you see flashes of that, it's quite moving. I think a lot of people misread his career as leveraging his CIA background for personal gain, when it's often quite deeper--an immense, overwhelming sense of guilt, and a need to make something of his past that doesn't just hurt people.
A huge swing, a huge miss, but an interesting one nevertheless.
A mental health center for superheroes...I'm not even going to say it's a good idea, but it could've been something. Instead, this has to tie into some large, overarching "DC Rebirth" narrative (one that, we should not forget, somehow involves the WATCHMEN), so you've gotta have all the heroes solving the problem like it's an alien invasion. It's really, really, really dumb. (I can't believe this guy wrote 100+ issues of Batman--when you have such a singular voice, how could you deal with publisher demands over that long a period. That's a big undertaking but I do want to read it some day, even just out of morbid curiosity).
This just made me want to watch M. Night Shyamalan's Glass, which actually makes something of the idea. There's a whole page of Batman being silent and then crying about all the Robins that have died--again, I understand the idea, but divorced from the narrative, what the hell does it add up to? Just a bunch of spaghetti thrown at the wall, playing around with the idea of a real-life issue, but only seldom taking it seriously.
Adding on top of this, the only moments that work are the momentary jokes! Divorced from context, each Robin saying that all the other Robins have their own unique features but they feel like they're the odd man out is hilarious and revealing. There are also other moments where it's like Tom King is given leeway to have the characters say out loud what he actually thinks about the character--it's pretty cool, and pretty fun. And then you remember this is a story about murder/suicide.
The fun adventure, and the little quips, only detract from the main story. And the main story sucks.
I think that, deep down, Tom King is trying to grapple with his own inner demons in this story, and in some ways when you see flashes of that, it's quite moving. I think a lot of people misread his career as leveraging his CIA background for personal gain, when it's often quite deeper--an immense, overwhelming sense of guilt, and a need to make something of his past that doesn't just hurt people.
A huge swing, a huge miss, but an interesting one nevertheless.