Justin, an amnesiac teenager who recently escaped from two years of captivity (where he suffered brutal torture), returns home, only to discover that he is a super-hero that the world has thought dead for two years. Surmising that his abduction, memory-loss and super-hero status are related, Justin decides that he must don his costume once more in order to find his captors. Now Justin must simultaneously deal with two similar problems that each uniquely contribute to his on-going mental breakdown; establishing an identity for himself, as well as re-establishing his super-hero identity in order to seek out his enemies and regain his memories. Additionally, Justin must re-connect with his family and friends, including his boyfriend Michael (whose alcoholism has drastically worsened in Justin’s absence) and his father (who unknowingly assisted in Justin’s abduction). Once his costumed alter-ego re-emerges, Justin’s former captor, the billionaire entrepreneur turned recluse M.V.K. (who blames Justin for the death of his wife and young daughter, as well as his own paralysis), becomes enraged. Enraged by the fact that his failure to gain vengeance is seemingly being rubbed in his face, M.V.K. hires two villains to kill Justin. Justin defeats both, but the victories come at a cost, as during the course of one of the fights, Justin’s super-hero identity becomes public knowledge. This adds significantly to Justin’s ongoing identity complex, and contributes additional irony to the situation, as now the entire world knows who Justin is, while he, himself, still has no idea and is delving further into the realm of mental instability. Eventually, M.V.K. abducts Michael and uses him to capture Justin. During this encounter, M.V.K. reveals that he originally arranged for Justin’s abduction, and that Justin’s father assisted him. This enrages Justin enough that he breaks free and defeats M.V.K. Additionally, Justin gains back some of his memories. However, the victory is short lived and bitter-sweet, as the life that Justin had begun working so hard to rebuild gets prematurely ruined as his father stands revealed as being ultimately responsible for Justin’s abduction, and Michael decides that he can no longer have anything to do with Justin, due to how messy and complicated both of their lives have become as a result of Justin’s quest to regain his identity.
How do you prove who you are when you’re so lost that even you don’t know who you are? What happens when you walk around each day, becoming more and more hopeless because you are no longer the person you used to be? Finally, what happens when you’re in the middle of a breakdown, and decide to finally take your life back, no matter how impossible it seems? These issues are at the heart of this series, and they are issues that most people must face, on some level, at some point in their lives. Humans are constantly on a search to prove to ourselves who we are and who we are not; a search to establish our own identities. However, we generally get to do so with the aid of a lifetime of memories. Our memories, good and bad, are what define us, but Justin must define himself without them. Ultimately, this series illustrates how important identity is and shows how difficult it is to go through life not knowing yourself from the stranger next to you, while constantly wishing for the opposite. The target audience for this series would be anyone who can relate to the idea of not knowing the person staring back at you in the mirror; that is, anyone who is disillusioned by their current life. Identity is conceived as a 12 issue series, with the possibility of being able to tell many more.