"Don't bring the 'real world' into the ACTUAL comics."

While I'm waiting to be retrieved by my great-to-the-fifteenth-or-so grandson, Brian Hibbs is saying what I meant to say about Identity Crisis. Since I seem to be incapable of saying it myself (or so I must conclude), I'll point you there. Excerpt:

Execution, skill, craft, passion, this is clearly Very Good, but because the absolutely wrong set of characters were picked to tell this story, I also think it's Awful. I think both things at once.

I would only modify this to say that I am withholding final judgement until the miniseries concludes, just as David Welsh says I should:

You’re trying to judge the comic based on individual chapters: Obviously, this is madness. Sure, DC is publishing IC in a monthly format, but that doesn’t entitle you to evaluate it on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

(I should point out that Welsh intends this as sarcasm.)

Be reasonable. Spend $4 a month, just in case it might make sense later. It’s the least you can do. Then, after you’ve shelled out $30, you can say how much you hate it. You’ll still be wrong, but you won’t be hamstrung in this manner.

Tell you what, DC: Publish the collected trade first, I'll buy it, and then we'll both be happy, right? (At San Diego Comicon, DC said the trade is scheduled for November 2005.)

Maybe not. They keep claiming they don't--can't!--make money on the trades, that they only way the business model works is with regular monthly sales of 32-page pamphlets for $3. Or, in IC's case, 40-page pamphlets for $4, since Meltzer is a Real Author.

This needs some further thought.