** I was provided an electronic ARC by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**

I couldn't turn this one down when I saw it up for review, and I was really glad to get to read it. This touches on several heroes and the stresses in their lives, how they are handling them per each different type of person. I love this eye-opening look at the PTSD and trauma each of these characters is carrying & has collected over the lengths of their lives/careers.

As my one caveat bringing it down, I am getting tired of the over usage of Quinn.

A serious story that's more introspection than violence. Each of the superheroes in the story is dealing with the stress of their work and their past, and expresses it in an in-character and appropriate way.

To be honest, I didn’t care for this title at all. DC continues to misuse Wally West and force Harley Quinn down our throats.

Discussing PTSD in terms of superheroes shows them in a new, more human light. This is a much-needed title, and Tom King did a great job portraying PTSD. I highly recommend this for a library wanting to expand their collection.

I love Tom King. He’s a super nice guy. I met him last year at NYCC and he was totally polite and kind to the awkward fanboying I engaged in. I really like his writing style and have loved his work on Batman and The Vision and Mr. Miracle. I look forward to his Adam Strange. So know it is not a knee jerk reaction to say that Heroes in Crisis just did not work for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I love many things about it. I love the structure of his comics, his use of 9 panel grids, and the way his character’s voices seem so natural. I love the grand idea behind it - even superheroes need help sometimes. Even now, in the early 21st century, mental health problems are still stigmatized. People suffering from them are often coded as villains, especially in comic books. So it is a very powerful thing to help normalize to the comic reading audience that everyone needs help some time and just because someone is suffering does not automatically make them a Joker or a Mr. Zsasz. I don’t even dislike him for using Wally West as the fulcrum of his story - Wally was, in my opinion, an unnecessary victim of the new 52 - there was no room for most legacy characters when all of the silver age heroes were de-aged and restored to their prime in new #1s. When Geoff Johns finally brought Wally back I was thrilled! But by not restoring his family, it removed some of the most important parts of Wally’s story. I really appreciate what Tom King was trying to do, showing us just how devastating and debilitating it would be to suddenly not only lose your children, but, find they had been wiped from existence and, on top of that, to find out that your wife/partner/best friend didn’t even remember you. That would fracture anyone.

I objected to the fact that Tom King made Wally a killer (although not a murderer, it is clearly involuntary) who tried to cover up his crime and implicate two innocent people. I know that Mr. King was trying to show how broken Wally was and how much damage his trauma had done to his character and his psyche, but it still felt like character assassination to me. I am not saying I have an easy solution to this narrative problem, and I understand that my feeling upset at this turn of events might be exactly what the author intended, but it still felt out of character to me.

Likewise, Wally’s willingness to use time travel to falsely implicate Booster Gold and Harley Quinn doesn’t jibe with his unwillingness to use the same time travel ability to undo all of the deaths he just caused. His reference to not making the same mistake Barry made that led to Flashpoint felt hollow to me - it was a false analogy because Barry’s Flashpoint timeline meddling dealt with events years in his past that would have obvious ripple effects, whereas Wally could’ve gone back in time ten minutes after everyone died to prevent it from happening.

I am not currently reading Doomsday Clock, and other DC Comics as they are coming out now, it it seems from the Previews that Wally now has both the Moebius Chair and Dr. Manhattan’s powers, so I hope that a reality warp is coming soon that allows him to restore all of the wrongly killed characters to life, including Wally’s children. I will wait and hope that he gets a happy ending soon. Or, if not an ending, at least a more uplifting status quo.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Heroes have a hard job, and Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman have created Sanctuary to fill a specific need that job creates. A place where there was quiet, and anonymity, and safety. A place for heroes to find mental and emotional help when they needed it. But then someone kills a bunch of the heroes staying there. And when news of Sanctuary, and the heroes who have stayed there, hits the media…

Unsurprisingly, this is a very thought-provoking comic. I enjoyed the way that the idea of heroes needing mental and emotional support was handled, as the timely topic could be handled very badly in the wrong hands. The individualized stories really brought characters and their conflicts and secrets pains to life, while prolonging the mystery of who actually killed all the Sanctuary dwellers and still revealing how Sanctuary works and the consequences of its creation—and the consequences of acknowledging that heroes are just as vulnerable as any other person, that fears and regrets and nightmares are universal. The story is both deeply human, and still about heroes, and things that are utterly inhuman, or beyond human. Subtle moments of humor are nice to run across. Is the story a little heavy-handed at times, maybe, but I think that sometimes people need heavy-handed. If you need help, if you’re in crisis, heavy-handed may be the only thing that can really reach you, and this comic may be just what some people need.

The only real distraction I found in the comic was Harley Quinn. Her pretty well-established origin story specifies that Harley was a psychiatrist when she was just Harleen, and that fact makes some of the things Harley says and does in Heroes in Crisis seems a little out of character. I do think that Harley, as a character who clearly deals with mental illness, was a good character to include in the story. I was just a bit surprised by how her part of the story unfolded.

In the end, I think that Heroes in Crisis is an important and very poignant comic. While not the first comic to explore the idea that superheroes are as human as any person, the heart and compassion in the comic – even around the brutal murders, the anger, the mental pain and anguish – make this a different kind of read.

ARC from Netgalley.
I was waiting to read this in one sitting, and I did, but I was really disappointed. The premise is that the heroes of the DC universe (and some villains) could be given the chance to work through their mental issues at a place where their secrecy could be upheld, but also allow them treatment. This sort-of mental rehab center was dubbed Sanctuary.

SPOILERS BELOW


The only thing that really comes out of this, is that Arsenal (Roy Harper), Poison Ivy, and Wally West (and a bunch of minor heroes I'd not heard of before) are dead... kind of. AND Either Harley or Booster Gold did it. Ultimately, we find out that Wally West orchestrated the whole thing to try and cover up time travel (the fundamental flaw of Speed Force users) and the only one who is really dead is Roy. The dead Wally found was a future version of Wally, and Ivy gets resurrected by The Green (which calls out to me for a Swamp Thing return!) Wally goes off to Justice League jail to contemplate what he's done.
What could have happened would have been great for comics. They could have really allowed characters to dive deep into all the crazy things they've done and then try to make atonement. We could have had a DC book that showed readers that heroes have issues and there is nothing wrong with seeking help. Could have been DC's poster child for mental health support. BUT instead we get another speedster fucking up the timeline leading to a murder mystery that tries again (and fails) to show us how cool Booster Gold is. UGH...

Tom King is a great writer, but I wanted so much more from this.

I was super intrigued by the premise of this story. Mental Health in the DC world is pretty much not a topic that is discussed, so this was refreshing. Unfortunately, the plot was such a whirlwind that I was lost most of the time and it was hard to follow. The art work is very much in style with DC comics and was well done, and although it isn't necessarily my personal style, it isn't something I can fault the graphic novel for.

Tom King is simply one of the best, serious comic writers working today. Grit, pain, PTSD, King is the go to guy. This is such a good idea, but honestly, having Harley and Booster, two jokesters, in the center of this book just didn't work. Harley was not funny like she normally is. Booster and Beetle's banter felt a bit forced. The story itself, the idea of Heroes having PTSD is brilliant. The pay off, with the person who actually did the deed made sense, but how that person tried to cover it up did not. I didn't hate this like so many people did, but it just feel flat. I give it a 3 because Mann and his team of artists did an amazing job here.
Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC.

There’s a secret place for broken superheroes to treat their ptsd called the sanctuary. Believe it or not, superheroes need therapy, especially after fighting evil villains. The continuous bloody combat over time, logically, takes a toll over their minds. The sanctuary is the place they free-associate, decompress and confess. It’s meant to be a place of healing. Whether intentional or not, the endpapers drop the letters HER and on the second line, CR. It should have read HEROES IN CRISIS but it instead, spells out HEROES in the THR-OES of ISIS. If it’s intentional, it’s clever wordplay. From the beginning of the comic, we know someone is killing people and superheroes and there are two obvious suspects. One of the suspects is Harley Quinn, a notorious villain who was a former psychiatrist for Joker. The second suspect is Booster Gold, who’s accustomed to screwing up his life. We are led to believe they committed the mass murders and the rest of it is history after just a few pages. (Not so simple under Tom King's masterful pen). The sanctuary was set up as a secret place where heroes could feel safe but lately it had become a place where uncertainty happens. An entity records and helps each hero suffering from PTSD but everything is immediately erased after the session. We don’t ever see the client-therapist relationships between the sanctuary and the heroes but we know that they exist. Scrolling through panels of Superhero confessions leaves the reader overwhelmed (which might be the point of how the panels are laid out). With so many suspects, how can we possibly be right who we have are the murderers? And you’d be surprised what kind of emotional baggage each carries. These superheroes are dealing with the same difficult emotions a normal human being has to reconcile in a lifetime. They are manifestations of despair, woes and crisis from battles that they’ve won or lost. How can people ever trust them again after such brutality against them. Aren't superheroes supposed to serve and protect them? Representations of the superheroes are double-checked against THE DC COMICS ENCYCLOPEDIA : THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO THE CHARACTERS OF THE DC UNIVERSE for accuracy. I am, however, not fond of how Harley Quinn was rendered. She was a firecracker & dominated the book, visually. That's not to say the illustrations weren't full and engaging. Kudos to the artist. Interesting twist on superhero stories and worth every minute of your time. Those new to the DC world will be mesmerized.

Who would have thought that super-heroes got overwhelmed, discouraged, and depressed! Well, they do, and Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman have set up Sanctuary, a secure site somewhere in the Midwest for super-heroes and at least some super-villains to get therapy for their problems. But, then something happened there - accident or murder, the scene is unclear. Also unclear is who is responsible - Booster or Harley. An interesting conundrum for the Batman and Flash to solve while Superman and Lois Lane have to deal with the supposedly destroyed video of super-hero therapy sessions being emailed to Lois Lane for an expose. Fun times in super-hero land!

Tom King's Heroes in Crisis could be one of the most important stories of the current era. This is a book about depression and trauma that I think reads very true, and the basic motivation of the book's antagonist is brilliantly tied in to a very relatable pathology of mental illness. In the genre of comics that remind us "superheroes are people, too," Heroes in Crisis seems exceptionally appropriate for its time and place. Though you might struggle with mental illness, the book says, and though you might seek help for it, you are no less than even Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman themselves. Heroes in Crisis can also be read as a meta-commentary on DC Comics's own publishing schema, a brave and fascinating self-indictment of the mayhem left behind by so many reboots.

Glad I finally got to read Tom King's 'Heroes in Crisis' trade, but it felt like there was something lacking. Maybe it was the changing costumes (more so Harley). Maybe it was an interest in learning more of how Sanctuary worked that was instead glossed over. Maybe it was the pacing across the 8 issues. Or maybe it was some plot/character gaps in between issues. Still, I liked the exploration of heroes coping with their accumulated trauma.

Tagline: “How does a superhero handle PTSD?”

Superheros have been dealing with the repercussions of death and destruction for years and who better than author Tom King, a former CIA operative, to know that this would start to wear on these DC heroes. Thus Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman band together to build a secret mental health clinic in rural Nebraska called Sanctuary where heroes can go for anonymous assistance. It is staffed by androids and offers virtual reality reenactment and counseling to help them with their issues.

Event books seem to be my kryptonite with DC. While I rarely read about individual superheroes, except for Aquaman lately, I am a sucker for these stories that bring everyone together in sometimes implausible ways. So the story begins with Harley Quinn and Blue Beetle duking it out, as each accuses the other of being a murderer- and we soon find out that there was a slaughter at the Sanctuary with several heroes dead. While most of them are heroes of little note, Wally West who is the original Kid Flash, is one of the casualties. The Big Three are called to investigate, and they are dumbfounded, as they had put in place many safeguards to protect their traumatized brethren.

The story had some incredible highs and lows. While I applaud the idea that superheroes would need counseling to process their grief and the insight that King brought to the large cast of characters, the ending was very convoluted. I had to poke around in The New 52 and DC Rebirth to understand why the culprit did what they did, and it still didn’t make a lot of sense. But no matter, this character will be yet again retconned and their crimes will not matter in the future. In addition, the release of private confessionals to the public and Lois Lane’s decision to go to print with the story rubbed me the wrong way. In real life, there are “outings” of people’s private lives all the time for sensationalistic effect, all in the name of the “public’s right to know”.

Yet, the book worked in smaller moments. There were some interesting pairings- towards the end Batgirl, Harley Quinn, Blue Beetle and Booster Gold band together to solve the mystery of what happened. As I don’t read a lot of DC, I was unaware that Harley and Poison Ivy were a couple, but the two of them have a brand new mini-series that takes place directly after this event, aptly named Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. I enjoyed seeing Batgirl prevent Harley from spiraling out of control, and the bromance between BB and BG. I looked up several of the heroes I was unfamiliar with, and the insecurities that the four Robins showed was pitch-perfect. Tom King is now known as someone who writes about deeper psychological issues, and that is readily shown in this story.

The artwork by Clay Mann, Travis Moore, Mitch Gerads, Jorge Fornes and Lee Weeks was absolutely outstanding. For so many artists, the style stayed remarkably consistent. The two-page splash pages that opened each issue were visually stunning, with distinct drawings of both small settings and large outdoor expanses. The nine-panel pages were my favorite, as each character was drawn with precision, with facial expressions showing their personalities and conveying the distress that they each of them was working through. Rich colouring and lettering also added to the top-notch illustrations.

All in all, a thought-provoking story that may trigger some difficult feelings for some readers, as mental health is a loaded topic for some, but is worth discussing and bringing out into the open. I was glad to read an online preview from NetGalley before it was published and will plan or ordering this graphic novel for my library.

A friend and I were discussing, before we knew this was coming out, how superheroes must have horrible PTSD considering their lives and the continual fighting they have to do in order to save the world, over and over again. We both agreed that something discussing that needed to be written. A few days later, we heard about this coming out. We laughed and agreed we would both be reading it.

There is a stigma when it comes to mental health issues in America. I can't speak for other cultures, but in America, there are many ways of speaking down to others, implying they aren't mentally "normal". They are playing a few cards short of a deck, crazy, nuts, insane, a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and on and on. I have heard countless stories of people who have a mental health issue, but since they are feeling better with their meds, think they don't need the meds anymore, stop taking them and then have worse symptoms and behaviors. They stop taking them because they want to be "normal", like everyone else. Many more never seek treatment because they don't want to be seen as "crazy".

It doesn't help that as soon as you have that label, no one will listen to you and believe you, because you are "crazy" and what you say can't be trusted. (This was used in the past a lot with women being shunted to mental health facilities forcefully, being labeled as "hysterical". So I can see why people fear being labeled as such. One automatically becomes less of person in the eyes of others with that label attached.)

So to have a graphic novel tackle this idea with superheroes, with people who are supposed to be superior in every way to the average human, is very important. It isn't perfect, but it's a good step in the right direction towards stamping out the stigma of mental health issues and illness.

That being said, the mystery and storyline wasn't my favorite. It jumped around a lot and one of the team-ups made NO sense to me, BUT I don't religiously follow comics, I just pick up what interests me. I also didn't know a LOT of the superheroes that were featured in the little snippets we see of their talking sessions. Maybe knowing more about the characters and the world would have helped a little, but I don't feel like it detracted greatly from my enjoyment of the book.

I feel the mental health issue topic was super important and the artwork was beautiful, so the rest didn't bother me too much.

4.5 stars, rounded down to 4, as the answer to who-dun-it and how-they-did-it was a bit of a head scratcher for me. I think most will like this one. I really liked it and feel that the plot was very important. Highly recommended.

My thanks to NetGalley and DC Entertainment/DC Comics for an eARC copy of this to read and review.

While is was an interesting concept, I think this story came off a little bit to heavy handed. It was tough to read at some points ( which I understand is the point) at the end of the day we got to super hero comics for a break from reality, not to be hit with it. Humanizing super heroes is a good thing and something that should be done, but this just went a step to far into depressing in my opinion.

Heroes in Crisis is a nine part series that deals with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in a way I haven’t seen done before. Sanctuary was created to help heroes talk about their pain and hopefully allow them to heal. It is an anonymous system that records confessions from various superheroes and then immediately deletes the record so everyone can feel safe that their weaknesses are not exposed. At Sanctuary there was a series of murders, but because of the confidentiality, everything was deleted, and no one knows for sure who murdered everyone. Is it Harley Quinn? Booster Gold? Or someone we have yet to see? We also learn that maybe those records aren’t as confidential as the heroes were led to believe.

I want to start by saying I am a huge Tom King fan, so when I heard he was doing a story that dealt with Superhero PTSD I immediately added it to my pull list. Tom King’s work on Batman and Mister Miracle are some of my all-time favorite stories. So, I am a little biased when it comes to Heroes in Crisis. That being said, this story is easily in the top 5 of my favorite series out today. Not only did I read and reread this book as it was released in single issues I also preordered it as soon as I could.

The first issue is brutal; it starts out with a fight between Harley Quinn and Booster Gold that cannot be described any other way, but brutal. They trash a diner, Harley sings a song about killing him, they take to the air and fall to the ground. Booster Gold accuses Harley of killing everyone, and she claims that she didn’t do it, he did. At the same time, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman arrive at Sanctuary and find that several heroes have been murdered. All of the violence is important to set the stage. It shows how high the stakes are for the heroes and how dangerous of a life they live. The heroes are trying to come to terms with the horrors that they see, and beginning with such a grisly murder and then later introducing the fact that their confidential sessions at Sanctuary may not be so confidential really puts the world they face into perspective.

The art is done by Clay Mann and Tomeu Morey, and it is impossible to separate the color work from the drawing. I cannot imagine any other combination working as well as they do. The art is breathtakingly beautiful for something so brutal. In the first issue, I had a hard time taking in some of the brutality because the scene was just so pretty to look at my brain did not want to believe that something so horrible had happened. Sometimes when you see a book this beautiful you add letters to the artwork and something is taken away. Clayton Cowles does not do that here; the dialogue does not take away from the page at all. In one scene in Issue #1 Harley is singing as she beats Booster Gold, and the way Cowles adds the music is pure art. Nothing distracts, and it is never hard to read.


One complaint that I have seen about Heroes in Crisis is that it doesn’t actually discuss mental illness. This frustrates me because I have PTSD, and it isn’t like the movies. My PTSD is quiet In the movies you see panic attacks and flashbacks, but instead of that I obsess, control, and organize. Heroes in Crisis is the first book I have read that shows my type of PTSD. In Issue #2 you see Batman’s confessional, and even though I have read it dozens of times, I still get teary eyed every time I see it. The look on his face, the fact that he can’t complete a sentence, and for seven of the nine panels he just stares at the camera—it is powerful. Wonder Woman insists that she will be fine. That is my favorite line, “I’m fine.” She states that others are suffering more and you should focus on them and not her. Superman is embarrassed that he is not ok. “What if it got out?” He is worried about what people would think. Tom King understands people. He is at his best when he is writing about larger than life characters with raw human emotion. I know that they are fictional characters, but seeing so many superheroes confess the same emotions that I feel and then get up and go back to work is empowering. So yes, Heroes in Crisis does in fact deal with mental illness, and they do it in a way that is both compassionate and brutally honest.

5 out of 5 stars.

Great book dealing with a tough issue. Mental health is a stigmatized concept in our society, and seeing beloved superheroes struggle with the things they've done and seen will resonate with readers. This book does not offer easy answers to the complex problem, which makes it all the more real. The message and art go hand-in-hand to provide readers with a gripping narrative.

I was interested in Heroes in Crisis from the first time I heard about it.
Tom King has become a writer that I keep an eye on.
It was good to see Booster Gold and Blue Beetle back in action.
I was surprised to see the Justice League taking a more secondary role to them.
Some parts of the therapy sessions seemed a little long, but most not overly much.
The artwork was excellent. I enjoyed it very much.
As far as books from DC with Crisis in the title, it wasn’t as far reaching, but it still had some impact to it.

I didn't care for this comic. I found it very dark and depressing. It was interesting seeing all the different heroes in the small therapy sessions, but I really had to force myself to finish this book. I'm okay with some dark in superhero stories, but this was just depressing from start to finish. (The art was beautiful). Just not my thing at all.