My take on Heroes in Crisis is that its message is easier to understand if you have gone through major trauma in your life. I think it is harder to digest if you haven’t. We see Wally West struggling with his place in the Rebirth universe. He is all too aware of what he had before and what he no longer has—his family.

What we see is a person trying to reconcile his grief through talking to himself in the literal past and future versions of himself. I have to hand it to Tom King for being this inventive in handling this concept. On so many occasions have there been situations where people wish they could go back and talk to their past selves to give advice, to assure, to let them know that everything is going to be ok.

While Wally initially doesn’t handle this situation properly—Wally goes to the future and has his future self kill his past self and thus sets up the events of HiC—he breaks out of that cycle with the help of friends. Hopefully, other readers can see what I am seeing and pull that out and how it could apply to their own lives or the lives of people they know. HiC is trying to say something important if you know where to look and not get swept up in the notion of whether a character would do something in particular. I give high marks to the whole team on the wrapped series.

Parting note: Clay Mann and Tomeu Morey deserve an Eisner nomination for their work on this book. Their combination has led to some of the most beautiful work in a superhero book in a long, long, while.