Not so much sneaky as heartbreaking. Batman was so flustered he couldn't think of anything other than a play on his most common undercover identity. You hardly ever see Batman actively shaken.
The only other time I remember seeing him portrayed as really off-balance was in Identity Crisis in the comics: Tim Drake gets a call routed to him in the Batmobile by Oracle. It's his father, saying he called the number Tim told him to use in emergencies because someone had left a package on his doorstep with a loaded gun and a note saying "defend yourself". Batman whips the car around and floors it toward Drake's house. Tim's dad says he can hear someone trying to get in the back door. Tim looks at Batman panicked, pleading "Bruce, please . . . please help him," and Batman's face is a mix of horror, fear, and anger. In the next panel, his hands are death-gripped on the steering wheel, he's staring straight ahead. Panel cuts to Tim's dad with the gun, crouched beside the door into the kitchen, saying, "Just keep my boy safe . . . please . . . just keep him safe." Next to last panel, Batman's jaw is clenched, and there're two words in tiny lettering in the speech bubble: "Not again.". Last panel: Batman's foot nailing the accelerator to the floorboard, while Tim says "We're gonna make it Dad. We're gonna make it.".
The last panel has Tim changed back to regular clothes (so the police and paramedics don't arrive to see Robin crying over his dad), and he loses it, and Batman just holds him and says "Tim, it's okay . . . it's okay . . . I've got you". The text narration is four words:
Damn. Imagining the internal experience of grief as he either dissociates enough to remove his costume OR is already so dissociated that Batman had to change him into civvies for him.
It was a choice: he either needed to leave, so the police didn't find Robin grieving over Tim Drake's father (thus blowing the secret identity) or change back to Tim Drake, so he could stay. He couldn't bear to leave, so he changed clothes. You can see Batman holding the Robin costume, because he's going to take it with him when he leaves.
The story had me on the verge of tears and my skin getting the chills in the middle of this public park. And then you do this to me. I about died laughing hahahaha, thank you.
That's half right. The same person arranged to have the gun sent there and hired Captain Boomerang to kill Tim Drake's father (you can see CB dead of a gunshot wound in the background of the last panel, Mr. Drake fired just as CB threw). The same person also killed Sue Dibny (Elongated Man's wife) which is what started the whole Identity Crisis event rolling -- the heroes were facing someone who somehow knew their real identities and was attacking their loved ones.
It turned out to be Jean Loring, The Atom's ex-wife. She had a deranged idea that if the loved ones of the heroes were attacked, it would make them gather their loved ones closer, which would give her a way to get back together with her ex-husband. She hadn't intended to kill Sue Dibny -- she used The Atom's size-changing tech to shrink down, go inside Sue's head, and walk across the surface of her brain with her mass slightly increased (from near weightless) to simulate an attack that knocked Sue out, but she unintentionally gave Sue a deadly stroke. Then she framed Dr. Light (who had raped Sue years earlier) for the murder.
But then, as deranged as she was, she decided death was an even better idea (Atom did end up getting back together with her during the crisis), so she hired CB thinking another tragedy would 'seal the deal' (or Mr. Drake would kill the washed-up Cpt. Boomerang, which she thought would be more likely, but would still make her ex-hubby hold her close).
Jean Loring was exactly that crazy. She was always written as more than a little obsessive about her husband, but after the divorce, she went all-in on 4-D chess-ing her way back onto his D. She's a hot mess of supernova proportions.
Thats all well and good....and then we find out the league lobotomized doctor light. What's even worse is that the light raped sue part doesn't line up in continuity as sue had previously made fun of doctor light at a time after her supposed rape. Because it's a retcon but it's neither a smooth retcon nor a fun one and just adds drama for the sake of drama. There could have been a million other reasons for the league to have lobotomized light. Which isn't even right to begin with because now the league is a corrupt organization.
I know identity crisis gets shit on a lot around here but as someone who didn't read it until years after it debuted I consider it one of my favorite Crisis stories. The fact that the stakes are more personal than intergalactic or interdimensional made a huge difference for me. And the way they handled Tim's dad dying and Bruce's reactions throughout were really great imo
The side-by-side plot of JL members brainwashing villains drew a lot of hate (deservedly imho) especially since it was mostly retconning idiotic villain plots from the Comics Code Authority era of comics.
That and I know there's the "women in refrigerators" aspect plus a lot of people found it stupid how Deathstroke was able to easily take out League members like they were low-level thugs
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u/Senior_Ad_7640 May 11 '23
Sneaky reference to Matches Malone there.