Heroes in Crisis #8 Review and **SPOILERS**

Wally West Dunnit

Writer: Tom King

Artists: Mitch Gerads & Travis Moore
Colorist & Cover: Mitch Gerads
Letters: Clayton Cowles
Variant Cover By: Ryan Sook
Associate Editor: Brittany Holzherr
Editor: Jamie S. Rich
Cover Price: $3.99
On Sale Date: April 24, 2019

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

We were promised some serious answers this issue, so let’s have it! My review of Heroes in Crisis #8, have at it!

Explain It! 

Back in 1991, DC Comics had their own "Days of Future Past" type event called Armageddon 2001. In that story, a character named Waverider came back from a dystopian future to stop one of the DC Universe’s heroes from turning into an evil despot named Monarch, who would ultimately murder the other heroes and create the aforementioned dystopian future. Through the series, all signs pointed to this hero being Captain Atom, so far as to have him owning the Monarch’s costume, until someone leaked that tidbit to the comics press…then in the last couple of issues of the event, DC Comics pivoted, changed the Big Bad to Hank Hall (aka Hawk of Hawk and Dove) and made an otherwise middling DC event into one unbearable to read. The clues to Monarch’s identity at the beginning have no bearing on its ending. If you believe in your story, then stick to your guns; if you don’t believe in your story, then don’t publish it!

I wish I could say this was an isolated incident for DC Comics, but as you continue along their publishing history, a pattern emerges: the many walk-backs from Crisis on Infinite Earths that occurred almost immediately after John Byrne left the building; the reinstatement of Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps, and eventually Barry Allen and his trappings; the truncating of "Knightfall" to accommodate Zero Hour, or the truncating of Brightest Day to accommodate Flashpoint and then the New 52; and to list the editorial wishy-washiness during the earliest years of the New 52 would take too long to read. Like, remember when Pandora was supposed to be a thing? Man, they fucked that up but good.

And, of course, they fucked up Heroes in Crisis too. I don’t know if it was an editorial edict that changed this story from whatever it was supposed to be into what it has become. I don’t know whether the writer, or the art team, or the copy boy decided around issue three or four that whatever was the intended story should now be entirely new. Even casual readers must have noticed that the covers to the last couple of issues have had no relation to the story within. Interested parties have probably detected a stark variance between the past few issues' solicitations and actual contents. But you don’t need to be in the “comics know” to see that this story has zagged when it should have zigged. The sheer absence of the Trinity, the lack of fallout from Lois Lane’s revelations about Sanctuary, that whole “puddlers” nonsense from the first issue––it’s obvious that whatever was initially planned has not come to pass. And some of this gets addressed in this issue of Heroes in Crisis, but in such a hackneyed, shitty way so as to be insulting to the reader’s intelligence.

So here’s your spoilers: Wally West dunnit. He hacked into Sanctuary and watched everyone’s confessionals and was so wracked with anguish, that he ran outside and had a Speed Force supernova. And the other heroes in Sanctuary, hearing an alarm, ran outside to help Wally, but instead were murdered by his blast. Except for Booster Gold and Harley Quinn, who heard the alarm late for some reason. So he used Sanctuary’s holodeck powers to show each of them a scenario where Wally was dead and that the other had committed the deed. Wally confesses all of this in captions scattered throughout the issue, in an interview with Lois Lane, incidentally. Never mind that Superman confirmed that Wally was dead in the first issue. Don’t bother mentioning that Roy Harper’s dead body was found indoors, despite Wally having his Speed Force fart while outside. What I want to hear you ask is why, when this series was advertised as having six full issues of Clay Mann on art, we are getting more and more Mitch Gerads as time has gone on, to the point that it’s all him here, pretty much. Something changed here, four or five issues ago. And what it changed into is a pile of porcine shit.

Bits and Pieces:

Maybe the story as initially intended might run better, but this one is just insulting. If you are still collecting this series, please get help. And if you are still reading it, please get medicated.

2/10

-->