Identity Crisis is one of DC’s most memorable events, a murder mystery that rocked the Squadron Supreme, Marvel’s equivalent to the Justice League had their own version almost twenty years earlier in Mark Gruenwald’s seminal Squadron Supreme mini-series from 1985. Much like Identity Crisis, it revolved around the topic of mind-wiping and behavioral modification.
There have been different Nighthawk (a riff on Batman) and his role as United States President to further his agenda. With the help of the Avengers, Overmind was driven from the Squadron’s world, but as a result of his conquest, their planet was teetering on total collapse.
The Squadron stepped in and took command of the United States and began rolling out a Utopia program that would solve many of society’s issues, such as crime. Tom Thumb, the Squadron’s resident tech master, designed a behavioral modification machine that altered a criminal’s personality, turning them away from their dark impulses. Several Squadron oppose the program but are overruled and it is rolled out. Within weeks, the Squadron has “rehabilitated” many criminals, including their former foes in the Injustice Institute. The controversial Identity Crisis by Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales deals with similar themes; it was revealed that the heroes of the Justice League had been mind-wiping villains over the years, and much like the Squadron’s behavioral modification program, there were a number of ethical issues that arose.
Both series explored the thorny issues that arise from such actions, but Squadron Supreme goes further, showing heroes using the tech on each other in disturbing ways; for instance, the Golden Archer (a riff on Green Arrow) used the machine on Lady Lark (Black Canary) and made her fall in love with him. The show explored the trauma faced by the former Injustice Institute as they coped with the changes forced on them—in one memorable scene, the former villain Ape X was rendered catatonic as a result of her programming. Finally, the series explored what happens when that technology is inevitably turned to bad ends.
At the end of both books, the heroes learn that shortcuts such as mind-wiping, or behavioral modification, do not work and only produce more problems. It is not the place of superheroes to solve humanity’s problems, a lesson both the Justice League and the Squadron Supreme learned only after they almost destroyed their worlds.
