Oh, Meltzer, how I stab at thee

Afraid of the Light has some new content up. It's good stuff. I think I agree with Chuck that Brad Meltzer did what he did on Identity Crisis because he's too much of a fan rather than not enough of one.

I will soon rant briefly about Identity Crisis but first, I'll show the cover to issue #7 which is one of my favorite comic covers of all time.

See, even I can find something nice to say about Identity Crisis

Now, on to the rant:

I don't like Meltzer's writing on Identity Crisis but my reasons are different from those of a lot of his other detractors I've seen. I don't have a problem with the darker direction he took the characters in (though I don't think IC was dark, per se). I don't have a problem with the premise behind the series or any of the deaths of Z-list characters at the hands of double-Z-listers.

I don't like Meltzer's writing on IC because it's lazy. He took the easy way out that so many writers of novels, etc. have taken before him. He wanted us to hate Dr. Light so he made him a rapist. Yawn. That action had no reason to be there other than to elicit a reaction from the readers. None. Nothing in Light's background suggested that he would do such a thing and even within the scene the rape made no sense.

Meltzer could have done the work to make us hate Dr. Light in so many other ways but he opted for the shortcut. I wasn't disgusted by the rape just because it was a rape (though that was a big part of it). I was disgusted by it because it was tacked on. It came out of nowhere and such a brutal act must have a better reason to exist in a story than this one did.

Next up: Why bringing back dead characters in an Alternate Universe story isn't much of a surprise.