Buckling under the buzz and praises, I finally checked out Identity Crisis, marketed as a big event and became quite a hit for DC in terms of sales (they used to be eclipsed by Marvel in a major way)

All I knew about it was about someone important in the Justice League dying, you can guess that from the first issue cover (heroes hovering coffin). I am not actually that familiar with the Justice League (I never heard of The Atom for example) so I was surprised that it wasn't more Supes and Batman. Ollie (Green Arrow) has a much bigger role as a leader and central character of this story. He was written like he was so badass but I kept thinking this old man is a frickin archer, what gives. There was an excellent scene with a villain named Slate (new to me again) whose enhanced brain could predict everyone's move (a bit like Mindnighter in the Authority), that was quite good. In the end, this story is a good mystery and it kept me up (read the whole thing in a sitting) to find out who was behind everything. There's actually a few pages where Batman asked "who benefits" (from the death) against three panels, it was done very well, a bit misleading. My man who's really into DC liked that this story explained Batman's general feeling of paranoia and questioning about the League. It is said that Identitiy Crisis has had a lot of fallout around the DC Universe (what that would be I have no clue)

I was quite impressed with the story. It moved at a good pace and structure (the first issue works has a continuous countdown to the climactic death). All the issues but the first couple in particular have a very episodic feel to them, it would have been great for single issues but it's a bit strange as a collected work. It's still good though, it's a hard balance to strike because you have to keep the reader interested on a weekly basis but how do you write so that it doesn't feel too choppy when all the issues are put together.

Meltzer didn't really have a background in comics, he's a novelist. He first wrote a popular story called Archer's Quest before he landed Identity Crisis (he also is the creator of the short lived WB drama Jack and Bobby)

I was quite turned off by the art, Rags Morales was pretty forgettable. His style is pure DC which is to say no flash and semi realistic, old school comics. Star artist Michael Turner provided the covers for the individual issues, his was a refreshing art to look at but I'm not a big fan of his either. He did a pretty good job on the Wonder Woman cover although it was idiotic how she wasn't much in the issue (mostly her lasso)

In stature, we could say Meltzer attained the level of hype that Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angely, Firefly) acquired after his very good stint on Astonishing X-Men, in terms of coming in as an outsider of the comics industry (Kevin Smith did so as well, to some degree). Incidently they had Whedon write the foreword for the collected issues

The original mini series was 7 issues long, it was released from June 2004 to April 2005. The hardcover reviewed here came out in 2005 (288 pages), it has a nice book jacket design and I like the emboss work (or rather engrave, deboss?) on the actual cover (under jacket)

Identity Crisis original covers by Michael Turner