Synopsis
Get a deeper look into the inner workings of Sanctuary. When heroes visited the facility, they relived their trauma through virtual reality, contending with the events that brought them there in the hope of reaching a meaningful resolution. That is, until the trauma took over and escalated these personal events into a full-blown crisis! Find out what pushed one of the superheroes over the edge and how it broke the machine. This special issue reunites the Eisner Award-winning MISTER MIRACLE team of writer Tom King and artist Mitch Gerads!
Review
A round of applause for Sir Tom King (we’re calling him that now). Just when I thought I had a strong sense of how the story was playing out this issue just pulled the rug out from underneath me.
With this issue Heroes In Crisis just cleverly subverted its own storytelling and has left the audience bewildered as to what will happen next.
The issue is setup like any other. We seem to simply be moving along with the story as planned. There’s short interview snippets with the bigger names who were killed in the massacre.
We focus on Gnarrk, Wally and Harley for much of the issue and retrace the events of issue one in many respects. We dip back into the holographic experiences of Gnarrk and Wally and learn that Harley was sneaking about the facility to see her good friend Ivy.
All of these moments seek to ramp up the emotionality of the series. Wally in particular tugs at the heart strings, especially is you are also reading the current Batman/Flash crossover happening elsewhere.
There’s also a quick opportunity to shoehorn in a Joker cameo as part of Harley’s treatment at Sanctuary. I was glad to see this was an isolated moment rather than bringing the character in. His presence would have overshadowed everything else going on here and we needed to learn an important lesson with this issue.
As the story progresses it becomes clear we are about to see some of those deaths again. I found myself asking what point this could possibly serve to the story? Do I really need to see Wally slain by Harley’s mallet one more time?
Well that was the moment the rug disappeared…
When Wally dies again in this issue is it Booster Gold who commits the crime and not Harley.
We’re now seeing this tory from an entirely different perspective with a different outcome. How could this happen? I hear you cry. Well Super Friends there are several theories going on here:
- Booster truly believes Harley committed the crime, hence his version of events earlier in the series.
- Harley believes that Booster committed the crime and we are now seeing events from her perspective.
- This is all a hologram playing out in Sanctuary for one of the Trinity. (Batman?)
Or perhaps the most disturbing possibility is that even the narrator of the story cannot be trusted. Now we know as little, or as much, as the Trinity and going in to issue #7 we’ll be re-investigating events for ourselves.
It definitely reinvigorates the story to know everything we thought we had learned may not be true. Now I don’t know who I can trust and I’m left feeling as though all my preconceived notions of the story have been thrown out of the window.
The artwork gets a little update here as Clay Mann handles only pages 1 and 20. Those act as the intro and outro to the story and feature his standard flare for the dramatic.
Mitch Gerads handles the rest of the book and does an admirable job of following in Mann’s footsteps. This is one of the most emotional issues of the story following that first issue. Gerads handles the big emotional moments well. Scenes between Harley and Ivy are particularly visually poignant as well as maintaining their playful relationship.
Overall it’s another great looking book.
Verdict
Heroes In Crisis sixth issue is by no means short of revelatory. I’ll be looking over my shoulder for the next few days because I just don’t know who I can trust anymore.
7/10
Heroes In Crisis #6 is written by Tom King with art by Clay Mann (p.1, 20) and Mitch Gerads (p.2-20) and colours by Gerads and Tomeu Morey.
You can pickup your copy of Heroes In Crisis #5 now where all good comics are sold!
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