Readers in Crisis

An examination of the critical response to DC’s Heroes in Crisis mini-series and an alternative reading.

TLDR:

The critical reception to Heroes in Crisis furthers the harmful perceptions that the mentally ill version of someone is unacceptable and risks further isolating the readers that were meant to be brought together and supported by the story itself.

Part 1: The Plot

Heroes in Crisis is a 9 issue mini-series from DC Comics written by Tom King and illustrated by Clay Mann. It occurs after the DC Universe’s “Rebirth” arcs where the entire canon was rebooted. A key part of Rebirth was the re-introduction of Wally West as one of the main speedster heroes. Wally plays a major role in Heroes in Crisis as the highest-profile victim (Spoilers) and the revealed culprit (Spoilers) of a massacre at Sanctuary, a superhero therapy center created by Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman (The Trinity).

Sanctuary was built as a top secret facility where superheroes were able to process the trauma from their exploits completely anonymously and without fear of privacy breaches. All data that was captured by Sanctuary to aid in the process of therapy was supposed to be completely destroyed and the remains scattered far and wide so as to never be reconstructable. The inciting incident of Heroes in Crisis is an apparent massacre at Sanctuary. The initial suspects are the only two survivors of the massacre, Booster Gold and Harley Quinn, who both present accounts to the Trinity of witnessing the other murdering Wally West and then fleeing the premises. Crime scene analysis by Barry Allen (another Flash) and Batman reach conflicting conclusions.

While the whodunit is underway, Lois Lane begins receiving leaked recordings from Sanctuary. She shares this information with Superman before writing an expose for the newspaper revealing Sanctuary and its purpose to the wider world. This necessitates a press conference response from Superman, with only Wonder Woman at his side because “Batman doesn’t do press,” where he admits to the facility’s existence and the struggle supers face. He implores people to not be afraid because their heroes are fallible and struggling, but to be inspired to hope knowing that in spite of all the pain the heroes still step forward time and again.

Readers are able to follow along with Harley and Booster as they both find allies in their attempts to prove their innocence. Batgirl finds Harley and attempts to protect her from Batman’s prejudgment of guilt and Blue Beetle breaks Booster out of captivity because he feels he owes it to his best friend to try and clear his name.

In the penultimate issue, readers get the confession of the true perpetrator, Wally West, who takes time to explain the depths of his suffering and how he chose to circumvent Sanctuary’s rules around anonymity of its patients. West is overwhelmed by the experience of seeing all of the other heroes’ treatment sessions and loses his control over the speed force, creating an explosion that caused the deaths of the heroes at the start of the story. We follow him covering up the crime and leaking the repaired Sanctuary tapes to Lane before attempting to essentially commit suicide by killing a future version of himself. He is stopped at the last second by Booster, Harley, Batgirl, and Blue Beetle, and the future Wally implores the time-traveling Wally to seek the support of those around him, and to have faith in a better future for himself. The series ends with Future Wally admitting to his crimes to the Trinity and accepting his imprisonment for manslaughter and the cover-up he enacted.

Part 2: The Response

In the words of the author, Tom King, at San Diego Comic-Con “People fucking hated it so much. I’d never written something everyone hated…” In the words of numerous podcasters, bloggers, and Twitter eggs: #NotMyWally.

After reading the story in a near vacuum, I was surprised to find such a negative consensus when I started exploring the critical analysis of this mini-series. I had thought, clearly mistakenly, that by now people would be familiar enough to recognize obvious symptoms of mental illness as portrayed by the writer in both the confessional interstitials and the storylines following Harley, Booster and crew. Instead, I found review after review about how the story was getting character X “wrong.” Even Superman’s speech went largely unremarked upon in how it colors the entirety of what takes place at Sanctuary during the series.

Perhaps it was because the series was pitched, necessarily due to the larger plot arc as a murder mystery. (In hindsight, should anyone actually have thought there was a murder rather than an accident? This was a place for heroes, by heroes, with no hints that a true villain had discovered Sanctuary’s location.) Perhaps it was the sensationalism of the art and the violence. Perhaps, by the end of the story, people were simply predisposed to disliking the “comicbooky” way that things wrapped up. Or perhaps, it’s because people still can’t handle the lived reality of so many of their fellow humans that endure mental illness.

In fact, the only positive reviews I’ve been able to find all come from people that have direct or very close indirect experience with mental illness. I believe those are the people that Tom King was writing to, but my fear is that with such aggressively negative feedback for the series, those readers won’t find this story and the salve it gives. Or worse, the feedback will further encourage the negative thought patterns that tell people that they are alone, people don’t understand, and people won’t accept them without their facade, which is the exact problem Wally deals with.

Part 3: My Blindspots

Now, I’m not even close to a dedicated comic book reader, let alone a superfan. I don’t have “My Flash” or “My Green Lantern” or “My Spider-Man.” I started reading comic books because Heroes in Crisis intrigued me. I’m currently dealing with my own mental health, or lack thereof, and at the time the series was announced I was in an even worse place than I am now. I’m lacking a decent amount of context to the stories, and many of the interstitial confessions make no sense to me at all. I can’t even begin to imagine what Commander Steel means about his leg (just his leg?) being used as a weapon in a fight at JLA HQ. I have a passing understanding of the Black Lantern gleaned from Reddit r/WhoWouldWin threads — in fact, most of my knowledge of the DC Universe comes from that subreddit and watching the Injustice video game series cut-scenes on Youtube.

Now, that might make me unqualified to write this, but in fact, I think that makes me extra qualified to write about this mini-series. Maybe I can’t comment on every depiction of mental abnormalities and how it connects to a hero’s overall story and timeline within current canon, but maybe I can show you how meaningful of story this is for someone suffering and that if you can learn its lessons, you might be able to save someone like me.

Part 4: Context doesn’t Apply

I am able to look at the series for what it is: an inner depiction of Supers revealing their truest selves, not their secret identities or their personas, just the people themselves living their life, dealing with their trauma, and trying to recover just enough to get back to the fray. Superman’s confessional is the best example of that. He’s openly reckoning with the paradox of his reality, the persona of Superman he constructed to live out his adoptive father’s ideals, and the secret identity of Clark Kent that he created to blend in with a society that doesn’t always accept him.

Neither of those people are the character that is giving the confessional, and as such we’re given an even rarer view that is nearly 4th wall breaking. Positioning that confessional so early in the series (issue 2), and in such a hammer role in its individual issue (the final page, the final of the trinity’s confessions) signals that all of these confessionals exist as a near context free examination of the characters within. These characters are dealing with their neuroses, their traumas, their identities, in a way that they never have before. These characters aren’t meant to be totally recognizable to their favorite readers.If anything, they’re supposed to put off their superfans because their superfans are intimately familiar with the facades the heroes construct.

While that may be confusing to some because there have surely been intimate portraits of heroes in various arcs and perhaps even deep self-reflection and analysis, none of that has been done in the context of a mental health crisis. There’s a difference between honesty and capital-H Honesty. If you’ve ever told someone you’re “fine” when you’re going through a personal crisis you don’t want to share, you’ve begun to scratch the surface of this conundrum, but even if you said “I’m doing pretty terrible, I lost my job, my girlfriend broke up with me, and I don’t know if I’m going to make rent,” at best you’ve reached Radical Candor. That’s some bullshit consultant-speak for not shining a turd of a situation before presenting it to your boss because you’re terrified of causing them to actually have to work hard. You’re an order of magnitude from Honesty in the context of a mental health crisis.

Part 5: Real Honesty

Real Honesty? That looks like but still isn’t quite this, “Every morning I wake up and wish I hadn’t, I take a shower with my head leaning against the wall because I’m too weak to stand up straight for the first half hour I’m awake, and then when I hear the subway coming I lean into its path debating if it’s worth inconveniencing my fellow 5:15am commuters with a body on the tracks in order to end the pain. When I lean away it’s not because I want to live, it’s because my suffering matters so much less than the inconvenience of causing the people around me to be late to work.” Why isn’t that Honesty? Because I thought that was a normal way to go about my life for over a year before finally getting help. I used that as a reason why I wasn’t depressed. Wally is quite candid during his first few confessionals, but we can see that it isn’t actually helping him.

Real Honesty? We see that from Wally twice in the series. Right before the explosion while he’s piecing back together all of the deleted and fractured data he says

“I was the crazy one. Everyone else was cool and I was messed up. I knew it in my heart as stupid as that is. I KNEW It. Everyone else was fine. Everyone else got better. And I was sick…I was alone.”

That’s a type of honesty that no one knows how to handle. Not the person making the statement, not the person receiving the statement, not the observer watching it all happen. Every possible response is defeated by the inherent illogic of the statement, and that is the experience of a mental health crisis. It’s intensely nihilistic and completely all consuming.

The other time we see real honesty? From the final issue when 5 days older Wally is talking to post-explosion Wally that just arrived to kill him, 5 days Wally says,

“The thing is, and it’s pretty much everything, and I swear it’s true. I swear, even if it sounds like a lie right now. Even if you feel in your heart it’s just made-up crap. And you just have to have dumb faith in dumb me being smarter than dumb you. Kid, you’re not alone.”

That’s another type of honesty that no one knows how to handle either, least of all the person that needs to hear it the most.

In my experience, those two types of Honesty lie at the core of most mental health crises, one that isolates and hurts one that integrates and heals. Blind optimism being at the near opposite pole of nihilism in terms of emotion is a good illustration of the chasm that needs to be crossed by people that are suffering from a mental health crisis and it also points out that simply saying that one needs to “have faith” falls so flat.

Part 6: Why Time Travel?

Now, to address another core gripe many readers had with the conclusion of the story. The time travel nonsense. Speed clone 5-day-older Wally to leave a body behind and close the loop without murder? Fooling Batman and Barry with the body in the first place? Not going back in time to rescue the people that were manslaughtered in the accident to prevent a flashpoint but being able to go forward in time and then back?

I’m not necessarily the best person to discuss the likelihood of Batman and Barry being led astray by the cover-up, but I find the limited explanation given compelling enough to let things slide. Batman being distracted by the Joker wind-up toy and Barry following his prejudgment of Booster make enough sense, especially when taken with the context of the magnitude of the tragedy and how even someone as coldly logical as Batman or as experienced as Barry could make a mistake when dealing with a situation this emotionally charged. This is a rush job that then gets distracted further by the leaked files and Lois Lane’s story. I am the person to explain why time travel and two Flashes were needed to wrap up the arc in a way that was true to the larger themes of mental health crises.

People aren’t satisfied with this as the wrap-up of a story, time travel feels like a cheat to them. King is using a story device relatively unique to comic books to make arguably the most important point he makes in the story. We see in Wally’s confession to Lois that no amount of hearing from other people that he wasn’t alone would satisfy him. In order to move on, Wally needs to accept the fact that he is not alone from himself. This self-acceptance is true of anyone going through a mental health crisis, but only in comic books can two versions of the same person actually talk to each other.

The Wally in the immediate aftermath of the massacre (Young Wally) is flailing, caught in a vicious negative thought spiral, ashamed for having lost control, and desperately trying to fix the situation. He’s a kid that broke mom’s vase playing ball in the house and is desperately trying to glue the pieces together before she gets home. But 5-days-older Wally (Old Wally) has finally had the time to process both the overwhelming experience of the other heroes’ crises as well as the intervention of Booster, Harley, Batgirl and Blue Beetle. He is finally able to accept that he’s not alone and that he has other people to lean on for support when it’s “his turn” to be in crisis.

Young Wally’s core belief in the isolating honesty — that he was alone and unique in his suffering and therefore unable to ever get better — had just been shattered, and he still needed time to follow the emotional pathway towards believing the integrating honesty that is clear in the message Old Wally shares with him. It’s the evolution of his character from the nihilist that felt that he could never be healed to the optimist that believes that he is not alone in his suffering and that by supporting others and being supported by them he will be healed. The change in mindset had to come from within in order to stick. To borrow a trite example from Inception people had been telling him not to think of elephants for so long and it had never worked until he told himself that the elephants didn’t matter but the people talking to him did.

Part 7: Was Wally’s Violent Mistake Problematic?

In short, yes but it was true and that’s basically life.

Criticism from another segment of the commentariat found a lot to be at issue with in King’s decision to create another example of a “dangerous” mentally ill person. Belief that perpetuating negative stereotypes does more harm than can be made up by addressing broader themes is somewhat in vogue these days and for good reason. However, I think that a story as forthright as this in its depiction of mental illness would be doing a disservice to its readers if it didn’t interrogate all aspects of the issue including the problematic ones.

The truth of my mental illness and what I believe to be the truth of many iterations of mental illness is that even if they are not physically violent, they tend to be emotionally violent. I was a “dangerous” person to have a conversation with in the depths of my depression. I was particularly skilled at finding the exact thing I could say to break apart a friendship, either longstanding or developing, so that I wouldn’t have social obligations.

I’m not saying that the story would have been worthless if Wally was just saying scathing remarks to various members of the Justice League so he didn’t have to go on crime fighting missions anymore, but it would have lacked something that is core to comic books in terms of over the top danger and stakes for most of their conflicts.

But putting aside the obligations of a comic book, King is writing about a particular subset of the mentally ill when he is writing about superheroes. They are known to be stand-ins for soldiers suffering from PTSD that King has an intimate understanding of because of his time in the armed services. These people are fighters, trained to be capable of violence at scale, and when they lose control the consequences are potentially more violent than when most others do. That is the reality of the issue at hand, and ignoring it doesn’t make it any less real.

So yes, it’s problematic that what appears to be the only mainstream depiction of mental illness in comic books is wrapped up in physical violence, but that doesn’t mean that this story shouldn’t have gone in that direction. A greater diversity of perspectives is required in the culture, but any individual perspective should be evaluated on whether or not it is true to itself. King’s depiction of PTSD and mental illness is internally consistent yet also diverse with all of the confessionals and that shouldn’t be ignored either.

Part 8: Sisses and Bros before Heroes

The other defining arc of the story are the relationships between Blue and Gold and the Dynamicker Duo. During scenes with them as two separate teams and as a combined squad we see the power of the cheesy line “Bros before Heroes”. Both Batgirl and Blue Beetle are heroes supporting a friend instead of doing the “heroic” thing and following the lead of the Trinity to consider them murder suspects.

Without a deep knowledge of the canon I find it harder to understand Batgirl and Harley’s team-up than Blue Beetle and Booster teaming up. At best I understand Batgirl to be recognizing in Harley a person who is too often written off as broken or damaged beyond repair, and Batman’s suspicion of her to be seated in that stereotype rather than the evidence. Blue Beetle and Booster’s team up is laid out more explicitly in Blue Beetle’s confession from #4. Booster picked up the phone when Beetle called him. “He’s the guy who’s there.”

While this may be a seemingly innocuous statement, friends pick up the phone or answer texts all the time, the reality here is King laying out one of the key roles others play in preventing crises from starting. This is the lesson that people who don’t experience mental health problems or at least don’t experience them with an unmanageable severity need to learn from this story.

I’ve already elaborated on how feeling alone in their struggle fall deeper into their problems because they begin believing in the isolating Honesty. That feeling starts somewhere though, and it grows over time, there’s a window where people can still intervene and stop the spiral downward. Beetle has called Booster in a time of crisis before, and Booster answered. In doing so, Booster let Beetle know that he’s not alone, he has someone who’s ready and willing to share the burden that Beetle is dealing with. That relationship goes beyond mere friendship which is why it’s “Bros before Heroes” to the two of them.

It’s challenging to have that level of a relationship with someone. You can’t be that for every one of your friends, and all of your friends can’t be that to you, and that’s OK. It doesn’t even need to be a matched pair. I have friends that I will always pick up the phone for, that I’ve flown cross country on short notice to be there for, but I don’t expect them to do the same for me. Similarly, I have a friend that picked up the phone for me even when I didn’t do it for her, and it saved me in one of my darkest moments. It’s a responsibility that needs to be taken very seriously. Because you may literally be holding someone’s lifeline in your pocket.

To tie this back to Wally and the larger canon, Wally losing his lifeline — connected to his wife Linda and his kids Jai and Iris — isolated him in an extreme fashion. The other heroes, most likely blinded by their joy at having Wally back and considering him near-infallible as the “hope” of the universe, never extended another lifeline to him. He didn’t receive it from the Titans, Barry, or anyone else. It’s clear during his confessionals in Sanctuary that no one is quite taking his despair at losing his family seriously enough as something that could fundamentally alter him. He feels this terrible weight of expectation settle in around him of having to be the hope for others, their lifeline, without having one of his own, and it starts breaking him.

Even his experience during Rebirth of coming into and out of reality, as various friends of his become that lifeline that tether him to reality briefly and then lose hold of it, was traumatizing. When Barry finally brings him back, it doesn’t appear to dawn on Barry exactly how important he has become in Wally’s life, and the Titans don’t seem to realize they were not quite supportive enough to hold Wally in reality. If any of those characters are able to understand the gravity of that situation and truly embrace a role as Wally’s lifeline then maybe none of this happens. Maybe Sanctuary’s therapy is more effective if he has someone he can point to besides Linda as a lifeline.

I can only hope that the five heroes that saved Wally are able to support him when he finally leaves the jail cell we see him at the end of the series. I guess we’ll have to read and find out in his upcoming series.

Part 9: Conclusion

So now what? The cat’s already out of the bag with the critical response. Google’s algorithm has already decided that this is a terrible story arc and a character assassination of Wally West. What’s the point of writing anything else? Partly, this is a personal exercise. When I conceived of this, I wanted to write it pseudonymously and try and get it posted on some comic website as a clickbait-y hot take ahead of the new Flash series and the trade release of Heroes in Crisis, but I realized that would be doing something almost as bad as being dismissively critical to begin with. It would be building up a persona to hide my identity behind. To isolate myself from interacting with the public regarding my ongoing mental health struggle. It would be sending the message that the critics were right, no one wants to read a story about someone describing a mental health crisis and what its like going through it because it’s “too dark”.

People have said that comics aren’t the place people go for learning about or dealing with those issues. Comic Book Criticism quite obviously isn’t that place either because I haven’t seen anyone write something like this, and I’ve gone looking. At best there’s a comment at the bottom of a review that says “I understand why some people might not like this but as a survivor of a suicide attempt this really means a lot to me.” To those people I say thanks for sharing and I hope that you don’t feel alone like Wally did.

But to the idea that this isn’t the place to discuss these issues? Fuck that noise. These conversations are hard, uncomfortable, and painful for everyone involved. There’s no right place to discuss them, especially while mental health therapy isn’t free and is still stigmatized in ways other medical therapies are never.

It’s trite to say if even one person learns something from this story that helps keep someone from falling into crisis or helps someone get out of crisis it was worth it, but it’s also true.

My DMs are open if you need to talk. I can’t be your lifeline forever, but I can be for now.