Brad Meltzer has made his name in pop culture writing thrillers about American politics. But he's still best known in comics for a DC event series that arrived nearly 15 years ago.

At its heart, Identity Crisis was a murder mystery that shook the Justice League to its core. But when it arrived in 2004, the turns of the plot proved some of the most controversial and consequential changes to DC's heroes in the modern era. It also proved a runaway best-seller in both comic shops and bookstores and gave birth to some of the firmament of what DC has been ever since. Meltzer's always kept a hand in comics, but his legacy will always begin with Identity Crisis.

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To mark 15 years since the book arrived on the scene, CBR and the writer unpack Identity Crisis' legacy as one of the first mainstream superhero crossover hits of the modern era. We asked Meltzer how he sees the books more controversial aspects in the here and now, and explore with the author the one genuinely meme-able phrase from the book.

CBR: While we were discussing your most recent non-fiction thriller, The First Conspiracy, you brought up how your comics career began with a run on Green Arrow, and it's been quite some time since you made your comics debut following Kevin Smith.

Yeah, they brought me in because Kevin had made that their #1 superhero book, and if they gave it to another comic book writer, everyone would go, "What happened to Kevin Smith?" But if they gave it to a novelist, they'd say, "What does DC know that I don't?" It was a total ploy to get people to read the book, and thanks to Kevin's kindness, I got a chance.

And at the same time, this year is marking 15 years since Identity Crisis.

That's crazy.

I don't know how much time you spend reflecting on your own history, but considering that milestone, it's very strange to look at that book as a precursor to a lot of the ways superhero graphic novels are sold today. That's the first collection I have a memory of seeing the author's name on the top of the cover, as big as the title. It looked like one of your thrillers more so than an average DC book. What's your memory of the push to make this thing so different?

It's interesting. People always ask me how I make best-selling books. And what I say is that a bestseller is like catching lightning in a bottle – the only way it works is if everything happens at once. You have to have a good book – that goes without saying – but you also need a great cover and a great marketing plan. And you also need a publicity plan and getting the press to weigh in with good reviews. And then the sales team has to place the book at the front of the store. It's just everything needs to happen at exactly that moment. Wonderful books have been written that never get that chance.

For me, I remember that Green Arrow was this wonderful move by [then DC editor] Bob Shreck to bring in someone new. Comics weren't as cool as they are now. Kevin was a big get for them. I remember when back in the day, the screenwriter Sam Hamm did an arc for Detective Comics and it was like "Oh my God! A screenwriter is writing a comic!" But really no one outside of comics wrote for comics. Kevin said he wanted to do it, and then I was the next guy through the door because I love this world. I think Green Arrow, it worked for myself and DC realized that we could then do something even bigger.

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My memory of Identity Crisis was that it felt like the launch of one of my novels. We all sat down, and we had this incredible publicity machine ready to help with David Hyde and Alex Segura back in the day. They were really pushing interviews with the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly and saying, "This is not just a monthly comic book. This is an event for us." And then the sales people like John Cunningham came in and said, "We want this in the front of the store like one of your novels. We want your fans coming in and looking for this book." It wasn't a comic book. It was a book. And to me, there was never any difference between those two things. But DC was consciously under Dan DiDio's leadership reaching for this bigger audience.

And I also remember that this was at a time where if you read [Diamond's distribution catalogue] Previews, everything was ruined. Everything in terms of spoilers was right there. You knew what the twist was. You knew who the surprise guest star was. All of it. And the comics I remember reading growing up were Marv Wolfman writing "The Judas Contract" where you had no idea Terra was a bad guy. When that moment happened, it blew your brain apart.

I remember saying to Dan at the time, "Let's get that back again. Let's show them nothing." In my novels, no one knew what was going to be in Chapter 12. You read it and get hit in the face. So I wanted to bring that back to comics, and Dan and the marketing people said, "We're not going to put info in Previews. We're not going to do the thing where we release copies a week early to retailers and let them spoil it for whoever wants to hear." The scripts were never handed out even internally at DC. They were kept under lock and key. God knows who kept them, but no one had them. The goal was to consciously make this feel like something that could bring the surprise back to comics. I wish I could take credit for it, but it was really everyone from Dan DiDio on down to Mike Carlin editing it, to the publicity and marketing people pulling together.

NEXT PAGE: Brad Meltzer's Advice to Heroes in Crisis Writer Tom King

Identity Crisis Justice League

CBR: The response to that book was tremendous. Every new issue was hotly debated, but I don't think it's anything compared to what we see on social media today. Do you feel the series was a precursor to how the discussion of superhero comics has evolved? And do you think the response to the book would be different now?

Brad Meltzer: The way we are today, the one secret creators whisper to each other when they're alone and no one is around to hear, is just how ruthless the readership has gotten. There's no pleasing anyone in any medium, and we all know that. Somewhere along the way, the culture got meaner. There was a beautiful article that came out the past couple of days ago in Esquire that was about how we owe Hootie and the Blowfish an apology. They put out this great album, and then their second album came out, and we tore them apart. And it's not because we didn't like them. It was because we thought that it wasn't cool to like them. We started making our consumption something for public consumption. Our taste was for public consumption. It's no surprise that reality TV gave birth to the Internet gave birth to Donald Trump. It's just this culture of judgement and hatred and venom.

I feel like that's the thing that gets lost. I remember when Identity Crisis came out, I never picked the title. I wrote the whole book, and then they decided to go with Identity Crisis because we wanted to make it feel like a big event. It was the first comic since Crisis On Infinite Earths with "Crisis" in the title. That was a choice.

I was texting with Tom King a little bit when Heroes In Crisis first came out, and I said, "Prepare yourself. You won't believe the passions you're going to find from everyone on their favorite character." I think that rather than being able to read and calmly judge and look at things, we turn everything in the superhero world into black and white. You're either the greatest writer of all time, or you're the worst. You're ever the hero to everyone who loves this character because you gave them a great moment or you're the worst thing to happen to writing since...insert whoever it was last month.

Heroes In Crisis #1
It's a snap to get shocked at the events of Heroes In Crisis #1.

The biggest part of the response to Identity Crisis revolved around the female characters in the book. It was bookended by tragic events for Sue Dibny and Jean Loring, and that aspect of the series got a very polarizing response even back then. Now we're in a different place in society in terms of how we talk about issues like domestic abuse and so much of what informed your series. Would you write it differently today if you had the chance to do it again, or do you not play those mental exercises?

I think it's dangerous to take old work and try to rewrite it for whatever today's standards are supposed to be for a particular moment. If you do that, you're starting to write by focus group and by groupthink. No great story will ever come from that. I think that anyone who read the book knows there are really hard issues in that book. There are moments about people and about us – about rape and about violence. Even when I look back on it, it's a hard moment to read. It's designed to be.

I remember at the time, people were writing, "Rape has no place in a comic." To me, if you say in any medium that subjects are off limits? Well, I'll say it this way. I wish there was no rape in the universe. I wish that awful event never took place. But if we say that we can't discuss this as a culture, we're in an even worse place than just having it exist. It will always be uncomfortable, and that's what art always has to do. Our medium has to deal with those issues, and that's what it's always done. Whether it was Stan Lee's soapboxes, or Black Panther being introduced, or the Hard Traveling Heroes dealing with issues of the counterculture. Wherever it might have been, there have always been places where comics have taken on the hardest issues in society, and I hope it always will. It may not please everyone, but art is not always meant to please you. It's, at its best, meant to challenge you.

Do I think Identity Crisis would be treated differently today? Absolutely. But I can't change it. No artist should ever go back and rewrite their work if it made a couple of people upset. I think it's far more important if you're writing from a truthful place rather than a reactive place. And the sad truth is, that issue needs to be dealt with and talked about more than ever. It's the only way we're ever going to make any progress.

On a lighter note, the other big legacy of Identity Crisis that maybe no one expected is that it created a trope, and that is the phrase "mind wipe" as a piece of pop culture.

[Laughs] I know! It's so crazy. It's everywhere. I think I invented that term. Now someone will probably show up and say, "No, it was in issue #16 in 1963," but I had never heard it. It was a term I invented because I thought it was catchy, and now I see it in TV shows and movies, and I can't possibly give all the credit to Identity Crisis. But some things move through the culture in mysterious and fun ways, and if it's just coincidence, it just moved through geek culture just the same. I can't tell you how many times I get e-mails from people telling me it showed up in some new place.