Heroes In Crisis may share an ominous word with some of DC Comics’ most high-concept continuity reshuffles, but it’s a different kind of story all together. Inspired by writer Tom King’s time in the CIA and the psychological stressors people in that line of work can be confronted with, Heroes In Crisis is said to be a more analytical look at what makes superheroes tick and remind us that they need help too.

It’s also described as a murder mystery involving the patients at Sanctuary, the psychological treatment center for superheroes. But while King has a proven track record of balancing thoughtful reflections on the human condition with the wants and needs of a superhero story, Heroes In Crisis sounds awfully similar to one of the most controversial events of the 2000s: Identity Crisis.

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Identity Crisis

Identity Crisis was a seven issue series released in 2004 by Brad Meltzer, Rags Morales, Michael Bair, Alex Sinclair and Ken Lopez. The main crux of Identity Crisis is that all those happy, carefree superhero stories of the 1970s were actually as bleak and morally gray as the tales spun in the '90s and 2000s. The inciting event of the series is the murder of a pregnant Sue Dibny, the non-superpowered wife of the Elongated Man, who is attacked in her own home and set on fire, leaving the goofy and loveable stretchy sleuth to cradle the love of his life’s burnt husk in one of the series’ many upsetting and lasting images.

Over the course of the series, it’s revealed that during Elongated Man’s tenure in the Justice League of America, the Teen Titans villain Doctor Light gained access to the JLA Satellite and brutally raped Sue, which again is portrayed in the most upsetting way possible while maintaining Comics Code standards. The heroes are then divided on whether or not to mindwipe Doctor Light and are caught in the act by Batman, who is also mindwiped by his teammates.

RELATED: What DC’s Heroes In Crisis Cover Tells Us About King & Mann’s New Series

There are more murders and attacks; The Atom’s ex-wife Jean Loring is saved from a hanging, Firestorm is accidentally stabbed and forced to sacrifice himself by flying into the sky and exploding, and Captain Boomerang and Robin’s father Jack Drake kill each other in a standoff. Ultimately, it’s revealed that Loring was Sue Dibny’s murderer, having used The Atom’s size-changing belt enter Sue’s brain and give her a fatal stroke. Her plan was to scare Ray Palmer back into her arms, with Sue's death being an unfortunate side effect, and the series ends with her being admitted to Arkham Asylum while The Atom abandons his team and enters the microverse.

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Grim ‘n’ Gritty

Identity Crisis has been hailed as a step towards maturity for superhero comics, but it’s actually anything but. It’s a teenager’s idea of mature, filled with unnecessary rape and murder which don’t just muddy the waters of the DC Universe in the present, but actively make the effort to muddy the waters of its history asm well. It’s as if everyone involved in the key decision making behind Identity Crisis were ashamed of the comics they grew up reading, and felt the need to go back and tell the quote-unquote “real story” behind those happy-go-lucky superhero stories in order to justify the time spent reading them.

RELATED: First Page from DC’s Heroes in Crisis Spotlights Harley Quinn, Booster Gold

Identity Crisis kicked off an era of DC that was defined by its bleakness; Ted Kord was shot dead by Maxwell Lord, Superboy was murdered by his Earth-Prime doppelganger, Bart Allen had his speed stolen and was beaten to death by The Rogues, Roy Harper’s daughter Lian was crushed to death in the fall of Star City.

There were bright spots, too, but over the course of just under a decade, the DC Universe became an increasingly bleak place and writers were constantly looking to top the last, most bleakest event. By the time Roy Harper was off his face on heroin holding a dead cat in an alley believing it to be the corpse of his infant daughter, there was nowhere else to go, and the New 52 relaunch followed shortly thereafter.

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The Gift

While we’ve seen how Tom King can handle themes of psychological trauma inflicted on superheroes in books like The Omega Men and Mister Miracle, his recent “The Gift” storyline with Tony S. Daniel in the pages of Batman doesn’t inspire much faith that Heroes In Crisis will be as nuanced as it needs to be.

The story saw Booster Gold go back in time to save Bruce Wayne’s parents, in an effort to prove to Batman that he was better off as Batman. It ended with Booster arriving in the past in the first place to save the Waynes, only to find an emaciated and insane version of himself fighting with a gun-toting Bruce Wayne, and he witnessed the deaths of both of them. Returning to the present, he told Batman and Catwoman of what happened, and it’s implied that he’s sent to Sanctuary to recover.

RELATED: Tom King Is Revolutionizing the DC Universe By Making It More Human

The entire story was built around the impossible premise that Booster Gold would be so dumb as to attempt such an endeavour, because while the time-lost hero isn’t the smartest around he’s not a complete idiot either. Mischaracterisation aside, “The Gift” reads as almost masochistic in the light of Heroes In Crisis’ announcement, serving solely to put a fan-favorite superhero through the most awful scenario a writer can think of, solely to set up the next story. Superhero comics can be bleak for sure, but “The Gift” was one of the most dour and unpleasant stories in the genre this decade, and only served to make the DC Universe a darker and less pleasant place.

Sanctuary

Heroes In Crisis is described as a murder-mystery which sees the majority of Sanctuary’s patients found dead, with Harley Quinn and Booster Gold seen as the prime suspects by the Trinity of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Identity Crisis was also structured as a murder-mystery and saw the heroes of the DC Universe go to some incredibly dark places to find not many answers, and it’s increasingly worrying that Heroes In Crisis might do the same.

RELATED: DC Continues to Drop Clues For Tom King’s ‘Sanctuary’ Project

Sanctuary’s role as a psychological facility for traumatized superheroes means that we’re probably going to get a bunch of dead B and C-Listers, and we’re probably going to see more heroes given the Booster Gold treatment of unnecessary and excessive trauma simply to move them to Sanctuary for whatever their role is in Heroes In Crisis.

This doesn’t mean that Heroes In Crisis will be bad; Tom King’s work with Mitch Gerads on Mister Miracle has been some of the most effective and honest comics storytelling ever about the trauma of war in a superhero context, and it’s likely that series will spin out directly into this one (the final issue of Mister Miracle is released two weeks before the debut issue of Heroes In Crisis). But there’s precedent at DC, under the same management now than it had then, that once the bleakness train starts rolling, there’s no stopping it and nothing short of a line-wide continuity reset will fix it. If the series can learn from the mistakes of Identity Crisis, it could be something really special with something important to say -- but in order to achieve that, it has to avoid giving in to the temptation of bleakness for bleakness’ sake. Let's hope King and Mann are up to the task.