Post by Zoom on Jan 24, 2011 20:52:50 GMT -5
I seem to have stumbled across a retelling of Identity Crisis from Jean's point of view.
Credit to Chris Eckhart.
“Hi, I’m Jean Loring and I miss my ex-husband Ray Palmer. I know I dumped him for another man and divorced him years ago, and it’s clear he still carries a torch for me. How can I get back together with him? I’ve got it! I’ll borrow his superhero costume with unique White Dwarf powered shrinking powers and while using it for the first time, attempt to non-fatally harm one of our friends, using the rationale that this threat against superheroes’ loved ones will cause Ray to want to reunite. Even though he already wants to reunite.”
“Who should I use as the victim for this dangerous ruse? While I have a Rolodex of even the best-kept secret identities, I suppose I should target Sue Dibny, universally loved and publicly known wife of Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man. This is perfect, because today is the day of her husband’s big birthday party, and every hero in town will be heading over to her house. That’ll shake everyone up! And she’s pregnant! Perfect! Good thing I scheduled an appointment to meet with my ex-husband at the precise time I decide to commit this crime, that’s a perfect alibi. Hope he’ll be late!”
“Oh no! It appears that my untrained walking on Sue’s brain has caused her to die! Who knew? Good thing I had the foresight to bring along a flamethrower, “just in case” I end up murdering her. I can burn her corpse! I don’t know why I think that will mask my footprints on her brain, and it’s also completely illogical that none of my actions were detected or recorded by the most advanced security system in the universe. But hey, I guess today is my lucky day because the flamethrower I USED FOR NO REASON implicates Sue’s old rapist in the murder, even though I didn’t know about the rape! Oh, and my husband was half an hour late, leaving me plenty of time to wipe the blood and soot off my clothes. Good thing I’ve got such a solid gameface, he doesn’t suspect a thing!”
“Huh, turns out the rapist was mindwiped and didn’t know about the rape either but somehow intuited that he was going to be blamed for the murder anyway. Lucky me! Now I will fake a murder attempt on myself in order to draw Ray closer, even though he’d haven taken me back before all this if I just asked. In order to avoid actually dying by my own hand, he’d better arrive precisely on time for this meeting in order to save me, even though he was a full half an hour late to our last meeting for reasons no one ever thought to question! And since I improbably left no trace at my first murder for absolutely no adequately explained reason, it won’t be suspicious that the security systems don’t detect anyone but me!”
“Perfect! Ray and I are back together! But I had better do one more murder just to tie up loose ends. This time I don’t want to get my hands dirty, so I’ll just get in touch with the Calculator, a criminal mastermind so secretive that not even Batman can track him down. And since I can do that for no justifiable reason, I might as well somehow know who Robin’s family is, despite having dumped by Ray before Tim Drake ever became a superhero. Through my buddy Calculator, I’ll hire a fat loser who only commits crimes with boomerangs to do this third murder, so people will know it is connected to the two previous murders that didn’t involve boomerangs at all. And since I can do absolutely anything at this point, I might as well sneak an untraceable gun into Tim’s dad’s house for him to use against Captain Boomerang! Sure, this will tip off the heroes as to who the third victim is, but so long as the many different people on the case who can move faster than light are somehow occupied at the time of the murder, that won’t matter. Hopefully Mr. Drake and Captain Boomerangwill somehow attack and kill each other at exactly the same time, so that no one will be around to ask questions. I just hope no one questions why this third murder was different in every possible way from the first two!”
“Ha, what do you know? No one seemed to care that the first two murders were performed by a SILENT AND UNTRACEABLE PHANTOM and the third one was a fat guy kicking down a door going “HEY I’M CAPTAIN BOOMERANG AND MY MURDER OF YOU IS GOING TO MAKE ME REAL FAMOUS! ME, CAPTAIN BOOMERANG, MASTER OF THE BOOMERANG. THIS ONE MURDER, NOT THE THIRD IN A SERIES, WILL CERTAINLY PUT ME ON THE MAP!” Nope, that didn’t raise any red flags at all for anyone. And my husband’s back with me! Everything’s coming up Jeannie! I sure hope I don’t accidentally blurt something out that only the killer would know right before I have sex with my superhero husband!”
“Shit.”
Credit to Chris Eckhart.
“Hi, I’m Jean Loring and I miss my ex-husband Ray Palmer. I know I dumped him for another man and divorced him years ago, and it’s clear he still carries a torch for me. How can I get back together with him? I’ve got it! I’ll borrow his superhero costume with unique White Dwarf powered shrinking powers and while using it for the first time, attempt to non-fatally harm one of our friends, using the rationale that this threat against superheroes’ loved ones will cause Ray to want to reunite. Even though he already wants to reunite.”
“Who should I use as the victim for this dangerous ruse? While I have a Rolodex of even the best-kept secret identities, I suppose I should target Sue Dibny, universally loved and publicly known wife of Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man. This is perfect, because today is the day of her husband’s big birthday party, and every hero in town will be heading over to her house. That’ll shake everyone up! And she’s pregnant! Perfect! Good thing I scheduled an appointment to meet with my ex-husband at the precise time I decide to commit this crime, that’s a perfect alibi. Hope he’ll be late!”
“Oh no! It appears that my untrained walking on Sue’s brain has caused her to die! Who knew? Good thing I had the foresight to bring along a flamethrower, “just in case” I end up murdering her. I can burn her corpse! I don’t know why I think that will mask my footprints on her brain, and it’s also completely illogical that none of my actions were detected or recorded by the most advanced security system in the universe. But hey, I guess today is my lucky day because the flamethrower I USED FOR NO REASON implicates Sue’s old rapist in the murder, even though I didn’t know about the rape! Oh, and my husband was half an hour late, leaving me plenty of time to wipe the blood and soot off my clothes. Good thing I’ve got such a solid gameface, he doesn’t suspect a thing!”
“Huh, turns out the rapist was mindwiped and didn’t know about the rape either but somehow intuited that he was going to be blamed for the murder anyway. Lucky me! Now I will fake a murder attempt on myself in order to draw Ray closer, even though he’d haven taken me back before all this if I just asked. In order to avoid actually dying by my own hand, he’d better arrive precisely on time for this meeting in order to save me, even though he was a full half an hour late to our last meeting for reasons no one ever thought to question! And since I improbably left no trace at my first murder for absolutely no adequately explained reason, it won’t be suspicious that the security systems don’t detect anyone but me!”
“Perfect! Ray and I are back together! But I had better do one more murder just to tie up loose ends. This time I don’t want to get my hands dirty, so I’ll just get in touch with the Calculator, a criminal mastermind so secretive that not even Batman can track him down. And since I can do that for no justifiable reason, I might as well somehow know who Robin’s family is, despite having dumped by Ray before Tim Drake ever became a superhero. Through my buddy Calculator, I’ll hire a fat loser who only commits crimes with boomerangs to do this third murder, so people will know it is connected to the two previous murders that didn’t involve boomerangs at all. And since I can do absolutely anything at this point, I might as well sneak an untraceable gun into Tim’s dad’s house for him to use against Captain Boomerang! Sure, this will tip off the heroes as to who the third victim is, but so long as the many different people on the case who can move faster than light are somehow occupied at the time of the murder, that won’t matter. Hopefully Mr. Drake and Captain Boomerangwill somehow attack and kill each other at exactly the same time, so that no one will be around to ask questions. I just hope no one questions why this third murder was different in every possible way from the first two!”
“Ha, what do you know? No one seemed to care that the first two murders were performed by a SILENT AND UNTRACEABLE PHANTOM and the third one was a fat guy kicking down a door going “HEY I’M CAPTAIN BOOMERANG AND MY MURDER OF YOU IS GOING TO MAKE ME REAL FAMOUS! ME, CAPTAIN BOOMERANG, MASTER OF THE BOOMERANG. THIS ONE MURDER, NOT THE THIRD IN A SERIES, WILL CERTAINLY PUT ME ON THE MAP!” Nope, that didn’t raise any red flags at all for anyone. And my husband’s back with me! Everything’s coming up Jeannie! I sure hope I don’t accidentally blurt something out that only the killer would know right before I have sex with my superhero husband!”
“Shit.”
