Heroes in Crisis #3: Welcome to Sanctuary

Lee Weeks handles the majority of the art in this issue, taking over for Clay Mann, who only provides the first and last pages. While I would argue that Weeks is a step down from Mann, it is still going from exceptionally great art to great art, so not much is lost there, if anything at all.

Where the issue struggles is in the pacing, not only of the issue, but the overall narrative trajectory. Nothing meaningful seems to happen in this issue if you subscribe to the theory that what you see is not necessarily truth, but some form of a virtual fabrication. Given the nature of Sanctuary, with the masks, Kryptonian sun crystals, and virtual landscapes, it would appear that whoever the mastermind is likely is manipulating Harley and Booster’s perception of the events at hand. How far said manipulation goes is anybody’s guess at this point—perhaps all the way to the top, with the Trinity, or perhaps only localized to the residents of Sanctuary. Time will tell.

In a nutshell, this week’s issue seems to be yet another vehicle for King’s fascination with introspection and projection. The sequences with Lagoon Boy clearly prey on reader’s empathy, constructing yet another forged sense of connection with a character only to violently tear that character from their hearts after carefully implanting him there. It is a move that I’m not particularly fond of, particularly after seeing it played out time and again in his extended run on Batman.