YMMV / Identity Crisis (2004)

• Ass Pull: Jean Loring being the murderer when pretty much all of the evidence beforehand suggested somebody else. Rather impossible in some degrees, since there is a panel where someone else's hands tie the knot on which she fakes her own hanging, which is dropped when the murderer is revealed.
• Bile Fascination: About the only reason anyone reads this comic nowadays is to see why it is widely credited with starting DC's infamous Audience-Alienating Era.
• Broken Base:
  • The Deathstroke vs. Justice League fight. For all that is holy, never bring it up in any Versus Discussion, lest you want the thread to be completely derailed.
  • Notably, the book occupies many extremes simultaneously. Jean Loring claims not to have wanted Sue's death, but brought along a flamethrower anyway, perhaps as a baby shower present. It also retconned Dr. Light into being a rapist, which ended up painting him as a more loathsome and uncomfortable character than it was intended, leading to DC later killing him off. On the other hand, Calculator's upgrade and the rarity of a Crisis Crossover focused more on a personal level than on an apocalypse were both critically lauded elements. Not to mention it led to Ralph's epic storyline in 52.
• Complete Monster: This is the series that landed Dr. Light his spot on DC's list. See that page for details.
• Condemned by History: Identity Crisis was a top seller in its time that won no small amount of acclaim, being one of DC's most successful events in years and having many declaring it the herald of a new age. However, as it turned out, its effects on the wider universe ended up being largely negative, with many an Audience-Alienating Era being able to trace itself back to Identity Crisis. What was more, its vision of the DCU as a darkened version of the Bronze Age became increasingly discredited with time, due to the many stories that copied that idea and failed to shock. Identity Crisis itself fell under far greater scrutiny as a result, being criticized for weak plotting, implausible elements, Gratuitous Rape, and the murder mystery at its core being a complete mess. The nail in the coffin likely came with its Spiritual Successor Heroes in Crisis, which was hated even upon release and caused many to look back on such stories with a far more critical eye. Consequently, it went from being regarded as one of DC's best stories to one of its worst. Even those still positive about the book will admit to its shortcomings and the longterm damage it's done.
• Creator's Pet: The writer is an admitted Deathstroke fanboy who wanted to establish his favorite character as a badass. And he did so in the most fanboyish way possible: clumsily. Deathstroke's victory over a Justice League of America team can only be described as a complete and total Ass Pull. Sure, the team of heroes he fought didn't include Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman (two of whom would barely notice Deathstroke if he attacked them, and the third, Batman, would be ready for him if he did), but it did include the Flash and Green Lantern, neither of whom was portrayed as actually knowing how their own frigging powers worked during the fight. Key pieces are being somehow faster than the prototypical Super-Speed superhero and overpowering Green Lantern's ring by developing stronger willpower (a facet that would be a reason for him to have the ring to begin with, not to mention not being how the ring works at all). It also included a direct reversal in how the Atom's powers normally work (the Atom does normally retain full mass when he shrinks) for no reason that was ever stated, and a complete and arbitrary nerfing of Black Canary's superpowers (she's easily able to rip through several feet of steel-reinforced concrete with her Canary Cry, but apparently, penetrating a single layer of burlap over her mouth is beyond her abilities if it's Deathstroke's burlap sack). Even Deathstroke fans are often critical of the scene; by having him calmly and easily walk through the suddenly impotent and incompetent heroes with little effort, it doesn't show off Deathstroke's fiendish intellect or Combat Parkour, and so doesn't capture much of what makes Deathstroke appealing as a villain in the first place.
• Epileptic Trees: While the series was being published, DC Direct cancelled a planned Kyle Rayner action figure and solicited a Black Hand figure for order. This, coupled with DC editorial remaining mum about whether or not Kyle would continue to be a Green Lantern in the wake of the then-upcoming Green Lantern: Rebirth mini-series, gave rise to a theory that Kyle was Sue's killer, and that Identity Crisis would end with him becoming the new Black Hand so that the Green Lantern identity would be freed up for the resurrected Hal Jordan to use.
• Fight Scene Failure: The fight with Deathstroke is infamous. Deathstroke has only mild superpowers, mostly Fights Like a Normal, and usually pulls out clever strategies or Combat Parkour, but here he effortlessly dishes out a Curb-Stomp Battle on the Justice League while barely moving or showing any effort. Special mention for how he holds out his sword and the Flash runs into it, and Green Lantern runs up in his face rather than attacking him from a distance.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Many fans feel this story and its extremely dark tone permanently changed DC for the worse. Identity Crisis was a come-from-behind sensation at the time, and as a result, many of DC's other books took cues from it—in particular, its success meant it was now "okay" for superhero comics to depict sex and violence in more graphic ways. The trend ultimately led to much more unanimously hated stories like Amazons Attack!, Countdown to Final Crisis, and Justice League: Cry for Justice, before DC felt the need to hard reboot their entire comics universe because things had gotten so bad. But the problem persisted there as well, with The New 52 universe being frequently accused of being just as needlessly dark. There were several soft reboot attempts in the New 52, as soon as a year into the reboot, but the darkness persisted. It reached its lowest point with Heroes in Crisis, which repeated many of the same mistakes as Identity Crisis but was met with negative reception right out of the gate.
  • The core concept of the book, using mind control to force people to forget about heroes' secret identities, had been part of comics for decades prior. Fans complained about how this series ruined Zatanna, but never seemed to remember that Zatanna really did mindwipe people in the '70s.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • All those stories from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s in which the heroes use super-hypnosis and magic rings and so on to alter the villains' minds or remove knowledge of their secret identities from others read very differently given the revelations of this series. So does Doctor Light's time as an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
  • Justice League of America volume 1, #122 gets hit especially hard: it's a story that explains how the Leaguers decided to reveal their identities to one another, after Doctor Light uses "Amnesium" to scramble their knowledge of their alter egos, learn their secrets, and nearly kill them all. In the end, Light is mindwiped with the Amnesium to remove his ill-gotten knowledge. The story's title? "The Great Identity Crisis."
  • An earlier event, the more nostalgic Silver Age series of "skip week" specials, also has a group of villains learning the Justice Leaguers' secrets... and in the end, Hawkman uses some Thanagarian technology to remove this knowledge from their minds, with the sanction of Superman and Batman. The whole thing is played as a Reset Button style happy ending. The Silver Age: Justice League chapter also contains a scene in which Doctor Light rejects Catwoman's advances, stating that he "has always been more interested in test tubes and Bunsen burners than the fairer sex."
  • The whole reveal that Dr. Light raped Sue, given that Jeremy Piven, who voiced the Elongated Man in Justice League Unlimited, has been accused of sexual assault. To add salt on the wound, Hartley Sawyer, the actor who would play Elongated Man in The Flash (2014), would also be rocked by scandal as some old tweets resurfaced of him casually talking about assaulting women in very disturbing ways.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Rags Morales admitted to basing Elongated Man on Danny Kaye. Granted, he was already on hand to replace Miguel Ferrer as Vandal Savage, but Young Justice (2010) did cast a man with a similar name as Ralph.
• It Was His Sled: Dr. Light once raped Sue Dibney, the Elongated Man's wife, after discovering her defenseless in a way that made her connection to the Elongated Man plain, and when the other heroes tried to not only erase his memories of the Dibney's secret identities but rewrite his mind altogether to make him less of a threat, Batman walked in and they had to mind-wipe him too when he attacked them over it. A shocking twist in the mystery that has since become about the most famous (and infamous) thing in the comic.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The series inspired a fad on the Something Awful forums of user avatars showing their Wild Mass Guesses about the identity of Sue Dibny's murderer. The response to the series played a role in the formation of the "Batman's Shameful Secret" forum for comic book discussion on the site.
  • Jean's flame thrower.
  • "IT WAS A LOVE LETTER TO THE SILVER AGE!!"
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Crossed when they used Zatanna to alter Dr. Light's personality, which led to them using Zatanna to wipe Batman's memory. Even Ralph is shocked to learn of it, of all people.
  • Not to mention Dr. Light and him raping Sue Dibny.
  • Or when Jean Loring killed Sue.
• Narm:
  • In issue two, Ray Palmer gives his wife a weapon to defend herself. The silly thing, however, is the fact that the weapon he gives her is an antique crossbow as opposed to something more practical like a pistol or laser.
    • Even worse, the crossbow is already drawn and cocked, bolt included, when he gives it to her. The way he talks, it seems like it was drawn all the time since he got it from Hawkman. Which means that the string was taught for a very long time, which would damage it pretty quickly. It'll probably snap after a shot or two.
  • After Ray figures out Jean is behind Sue's murder and the death of Tim's dad, he calls her insane and she asks what he's going to do. After all, he couldn't possible have his ex-wife locked up, could he? Gilligan Cut to Arkham Asylum.
• Never Live It Down: This comic forever tainted the image of Dr. Light (at least in the comics) in the eyes of comic book fans as that of a creepy Serial Rapist. It's even got to the point that fans joke that his actual superpower is rape and not his light powers. It could be argued that this completely destroyed any semblance of popularity he still had, to the point where he has been far less prominent ever since.
• One-Scene Wonder: A quieter one: Sue's funeral is the last physical appearance of Jack Knight (he's next to Stargirl).
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Even people that haven't read it know it as "that superhero comic with a rape scene."
• The Scrappy: Dr. Light's storyline was intended to reverse his Villain Decay and make him a more threatening and popular villain. It catastrophically backfired, and Dr. Light became one of the most despised and mocked villains in DC Comics as a result of it cementing rape as his main villain gimmick over anything else he had, even his light powers. Ultimately, fans were left so disgusted and repulsed by his new characterization that they just wanted him to go away for good, and DC obliged, killing him off shortly afterwards.
• Signature Scene: If people bring it up and aren't discussing all the controversy surrounding the story or it's effects on the DCU, they're likely talking about Deathstroke effortlessly defeating the entire JL, minus the trinity, in seconds. A close second would probably be the arguably-more infamous rape scene which turns out to be a Red Herring entirely incidental to the actual murder mystery.

---