Heroes in Crisis: When Even Superheroes Need Friends
Heroes in Crisis has been analyzed to death by every comics journalist and Reddit wannabe across the internet for better or for worse. Tom King’s Crisis was one of the heart, a crisis of conscience, rather than one of multiversal proportions. Instead of red skies and hell on earth, King brought our heroes to their emotional knees, finding the breaking point of its three central characters: Wally West, Harley Quinn and Booster Gold. He reminds us that behind the mask, these are real people, with lives and faults and complications and mistakes, and proceeds to show us that heroes can be broken by circumstance too. Wally West, The Flash, has an emotional breakdown, resulting in a loss of control and the murder of several heroes taking up residence at Sanctuary, a sort of halfway house for heroes dealing with the consequences of, well, being a hero. Harley and Booster are framed for the murders, and go through their own crisis of the heart after witnessing the tragedy firsthand. However, what stops them from breaking like Wally, is the support of their friends. Through the emotional acts of support provided by Batgirl and Blue Beetle respectively, Harley Quinn and Booster Gold are able to find solace, encouragement, and acquittal in the face of a life-altering tragedy.
After seemingly witnessing Booster kill the residents of Sanctuary, Harley falls back into old habits, back to the character she used to be. In the diner with Booster, her mood swings on a dime, and there’s a bloodlust in her that feels straight out of the Arkham video games. She is NOT the character we’ve come to understand over the last several years. She dresses up in her old costume and waits for the Trinity to come and find her, showing just how far she’s fallen since the events at Sanctuary. Batgirl tracks her down, and they fight, but Barbara Gordon isn’t there to arrest her, she’s there to help Harley power through the trauma. Sometimes, in order to be there for a person in pain, you have to let them get it all out in their own way, and in this instance, that means fighting until you can’t fight anymore.
Batgirl understands Harley’s struggle and can relate; getting shot by the Joker in The Killing Joke is one of the most iconic traumatic events in DC history, and it defined her for decades after. Babs reminds Harley that she isn’t alone, helping her find the type of catharsis that pushes her forward. Throughout the rest of the series Batgirl makes a point to hold Harley’s more violent impulses in check, keeping her on the straight and narrow so that she doesn’t lose herself again on the road to solving this mystery. By the end, she’s able to appropriately address Wally in a way that’s understanding, yet maintains the righteous rage she feels towards him. Harley can only come to that personal resolution with Barbara’s emotional support.
Booster Gold’s best bud Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle, is the ultimate “guy”. In his own confessional at Sanctuary, he talks about Booster being the guy, for him, that’s always there, and that everybody needs a guy, you know? That’s the exact kind of support that he brings Booster while his best bud is on the verge of a complete emotional breakdown. He takes the opposite approach of Batgirl, rather than allowing Booster to express his pain, he completely shoulders the load for Booster. He busts him out of prison, even if it might get him in trouble with the higher ups in the League, because “bros before heroes.” Beetle lets him crash on his couch, orders pizza and buys beer, and they just bro out for the night.
Any guy who’s been through a breakup knows this move. You get so completely lost in the reality of your situation, and your “guy”, as Beetle calls it, goes the extra mile when he knows you can’t. It’s an unspoken support, one that doesn’t need to be addressed or identified or analyzed, but one that is understood and accepted without ever having to say what you need. Without that support, someone to keep him focused in a time of need, Booster wouldn’t have been able to function in a manner that’s conducive to acquitting himself of the murders. Beetle brings Booster back to Earth, and it’s what allows him to give his “Bros before Heroes” speech at the end of the series, effectively telling Flash that sometimes, we have to put ourselves, the people behind the mask, before the hero work.
Without this type of support, feeling as if he lost every version of that he ever had, Wally West had an uncharacteristic moment of weakness that resulted in the loss of innocent lives. We as readers tend to forget that there are human beings behind the masks and costumes. Even the best of us has points in our lives where we experience an emotional crisis of some kind, where the weight of what we’ve lost is too much to bear alone. Heroes in Crisis shows us that it’s not only okay to get help and rely on others when we can’t handle our lives alone, but that, without that sort of support network, we all have the power to damage not only ourselves but the world around us. Harley and Booster were able to overcome their traumas in order to come together to solve the mystery, but would not have been able to find the strength necessary to push through without the aid of Batgirl and Blue Beetle.
