Identity Crisis #1 (8/04)

Sue Dibney, loving wife of the Elongated Man, was murdered in her Opal City apartment after sending her husband out on patrol to distract him from her planning his birthday celebration. Somehow, her killer managed to enter undetected an apartment safeguarded by "Thanagarian, Martian, and Kryptonian technology. Not to mention all the upgrades Steel stole from a Mother Box." J’Onn J’Onzz attended the funeral, alongside many of his and the victim's shared acquaintances. This included much of the JLI and all of the surviving members of the Detroit-based League. Afterward, Green Arrow noted, "J’Onn and Arthur (who both buried children) search for Mirror Master. The mood they're in, he better hope they don't find him.) Though Mirror Master was a potential suspect, a secret cabal of JLofAers had someone specific in mind they intended to visit while everyone else was on fool's errands.

Among the creative credits given to Brad Meltzer, Rags Morales and Michael Bair was the much smaller notation of assistant editor Valerie D'Orazio. After a stormy departure from DC Comics, D'Orazio began a series of posts on her Occasional Superheroine blog which noted the behind-the-scenes maneuvering to create a series where one of the rare happy, healthy marriages in comics ended in the brutal murder of a pregnant woman. Allusions were made to the trauma inflected on both characters and the creators forced to depict increasingly aberrant actions in what was marketed as a mainstream "event" comic.