The Four Color Media Monitor

The 9th and last issue in an extremely contemptuous miniseries has come about, and wouldn't you know it, nothing changes at all, and Wally West is denigrated:

Wally seemed doomed to die himself by the end of the series. His body was among the dead at Sanctuary. As Booster Gold discovered, Wally's corpse was five days older than it should have been, meaning that after completing his plans, Wally returned to the past and used his own younger self to commit suicide.

Instead, Booster and his allies find a way to help Wally live. Booster uses his future tech to clone an extra body for Wally to plant in the past. Wally is now free to continue his life, but he still has to pay for his crimes. He turns himself over to Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, doomed to live out the rest of his restored life in prison. Though somehow we doubt this is the end of Wally's story, especially with the climax of DC Rebirth looming in Doomsday Clock.

This is as mind-boggling as it is disgusting. But by now, it perfectly describes how pretentious and worthless Tom King really is as a writer. And it makes no difference even if this isn't the end. Why, if Geoff Johns is the main author of Doomsday Clock, it suggests he was okay with something so atrocious in the first place, and even if they're going to reverse it, that doesn't change the fact this was just more waste of paper and money. Especially anybody who foolishly bought it. Something to consider: if the idea was that you'd have to read a followup miniseries to get the "whole" story, that's another thing wrong with it; you shouldn't have to read multiple, consecutive minis for a particular direction, as it only amounts to fleecing the audience of more money.

All that aside, this compounds why DiDio's time as head of DC is way past, and he needs to be removed from management. It's been indicated he's never liked the heroes who made up the cast of the Teen Titans, explaining why the most notable members took such a blow here. Batman News is one site that's given the mini a deservedly negative review, and says:

Tom King’s Heroes in Crisis is a failure as far as I’m concerned. The book damages a great, legacy character, and this final issue fails to deliver a satisfying conclusion. I think we all know what Tom was going for here, but it didn’t happen. Whether you blame Tom himself for this, Dan Didio, the “murder mystery,” mistreatment of characters, editorial mandates… Whatever. They’re all part of this, and the sum of these parts just don’t work. This issue, in particular, is just the nail in the coffin.

The time couldn't be better for calling a serious boycott of DC's output, until DiDio is removed from management. Reversing course in the status quos alone is not enough, because so long as men like DiDio are still in charge, they're bound to bring about more atrocities like this, as was the case with Identity Crisis 15 years ago. It's also pretty apparent they decided to throw Wally West under the bus so they could make way for the black protagonist they conceived over 5 years ago, for the sake of social justice propaganda, one more reason to reject this awful miniseries. And what "mystery" was there, truly? Anybody who falls for that kind of promotion isn't doing themselves a favor.

While looking over a few articles about the atrocity that' bound to precipitate DC's collapse, I found a comment on Newsarama's coverage that could also sum up what's brought things down to where they are now:

Granted that this entire series was as execrable in execution as it was ill-considered in concept... nonetheless, I cannot help but clearly recall what so many younger, more callow "fans" chortled to older readers such as myself years ago, back when a much-beloved character of ours (Hal Jordan) was similarly turned into a mass-murderer for no good or convincing reason, and we objected on the exact same grounds of *his* instantaneous transformation being no less out of character:

"Change Is Good. Why do you hate change, anyway?"

"He wasn't the first character in the DCU to use that super-hero identity, after all."

"If anyone actually cared about that character, the story never would have been written in the first place."

Etcetera, etcetera, '90s fanboi bull@#$% infinitum.

For the sakes of all my fellow fans who genuinely grieve over this pointless bumbling of Wally West's long-established characterization: I honestly sympathize, and hope you won't have to wait a decade or more (as we Hal Jordan fans did) to see said damage fairly and finally undone...

... but, all that being said: maybe now you have some small, faint notion of how heartsick and outraged we felt... and why.

When I read this, it brought to mind all the apologists for what we now call social justice tactics, and again, if this was done to pave the way for the black Wally conceived during New 52, they definitely went about it in the most offensive way possible. Those who saw nothing wrong with turning Hal Jordan into a mass murderer back in 1994 weren't just desensitized to violence, they were also a precursor to the social justice apologists in modern times. I'm sure those who supported destroying Hal in Emerald Twilight couldn't care less that a younger protagonist like Wally West underwent character assassination either.

And now look where superhero comics have ended up. Again, the time to boycott DC until DiDio's removed from the staff is now. Save your hard-earned money and buy from smaller publishers instead.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, dc comics, Flash, golden calf of death, Green Lantern, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, Titans, violence