Identity Crisis’ Multiverse of Memory - Mitch Cunningham
The ‘Crisis’ has always served a kind of clerical function in the DC Universe: a multiverse-threatening catastrophe becomes the narrative vehicle of retcons, relaunches and a broad resequencing of the DC canon. But the real import of these stories has little to do with Monitor mechanics or the vagaries of the comic industry. The DC Crisis provides a peculiar narrative space in which the relationships between myth and memory play out in fantastic form, and thus explores the ways in which myths shape memory, or in which memory serves as personal myth, and the measures we take to forget, preserve or change these stories.
In 2004’s Identity Crisis (created by Brad Meltzer, Rags Morales and Michael Bair) this work of memory and myth plays out in a decidedly different way. There are no otherworldly threats, though there are certainly catastrophes. Instead of hammy intergalactic shenanigans, we have personal tragedies and ground-level mystery solving. Though the JLA’s Big Three play crucial roles in the story, Identity Crisis largely sidelines these figures in order to explore the relationships between minor or peripheral characters of the DC Universe.
The key ‘minor’ character here is Ralph Dibny, AKA the Elongated Man, whose universe is well and truly destroyed by the end of IC’s first issue, with the murder of his wife Sue. By issue two, all that remains is their love-story and the investigation into her murder, a detective story which unearths more than a few dark secrets regarding the JLA and the lengths that they’ll go to in order to safeguard those who matter most. Meanwhile the killer is on the loose, and remains an imminent threat to DC’s nearest and dearest.
As the Elongated Man literally falls apart at his wife’s funeral, it becomes clear that the ‘identities’ at stake are more than superheroic contrivances. Identity here is a product of history and relationships to others, either of which can be shaken in a tragic instant. The reconstructive work of mourning and investigation both play a part in recovering this lost identity, even if it has come to be marked by tragedy. In Identity Crisis’ B-plot, featuring Batman and Tim Drake, we see the ways in which tragedy can easily become destiny, fated to recur. And the chilling resolution to IC’s manhunt reveals the extent to which chasing identity, looking to change or recapture the past, can itself become the source of tragedy.
In this tightly-scripted chase secrets are revealed, founding myths challenged and relationships unsettled. The tightly-held personal myths of the key players – their love stories, family histories and relationships to their work – are subject to the same Crises once reserved for Infinite Earths. But there are no extra-dimensional avenues of escape this time. In the wake of tragedy and change, the only parallel universes at stake are memories of how things were, myths of how they came to be, and fantasies of how they could’ve been different.
Mitch Cunningham writes out of Geelong. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Voiceworks, Verandah, Windmills and Ekleksographia. Mitch is currently working on his PhD, examining the works of David Foster Wallace and new problems of authorship in experimental fiction.
