Speed Force

DC and ComiXology have added six more issues of the 1987 Flash vol.2 starring Wally West, all at the 99-cent price point.

These issues introduce Red Trinity and Blue Trinity, two teams of ex-Soviet speedsters, as well as Chunk, who would go on to become a regular supporting cast member. Issue #12 begins the Vandal Savage/Velocity 9 story that straddles the transition from Mike Baron to William Messner-Loebs.

70 issues out of 249 (including #0 and #1,000,000) are now available digitally, including the complete first year. Mike Baron’s run is almost complete, with just two more issues to go. It’s not clear whether DC has a regular schedule for these digital back-issues, but the last time they added to this series was January’s addition of #1-6. This suggests that they’ll be adding six issues every few months, starting at the beginning and working forward, filling in around the issues released as part of the Flash 101 promotion last year.

» The Flash (1987-2009) on ComiXology

They’ve also added six issues of Adventure Comics from its 1970s run as an anthology book. Issues #459-466 featured eight Flash solo stories starring Barry Allen. During the heavily serialized Bronze Age, these were throwbacks to the more goofy done-in-one Silver Age stories. I didn’t even know about them until I read one of Mark Waid’s interviews in The Flash Companion, then I started tracking them down on eBay. I’ve read the lot of them, and wrote about the stories here a couple of years back. ComiXology has Adventure Comics #461-466 online at $1.99 each.

Only a handful of the Silver/Bronze Age Flash series are available, most posted during the Flash 101 sale mentioned above.

» The Flash (1959-1985) on ComiXology
» Adventure Comics on ComiXology

I hope today’s release of Flash vol.2 #2-6 on ComiXology signals the beginning of a complete digital release of the Wally West Flash series. This brings the total to 63 issues scattered around the 249-issue series (including #0 and #1,000,000, both already available), mostly from the Waid and Johns runs, but there are still a lot of gaps…and most of the material is out of print.

»Flash comics at ComiXology.

The Mike Baron (#1-14) and William Messner-Loebs (#15-61) runs on The Flash have never been reprinted in trade paperback, and only the highlights of the extensive Mark Waid/Brian Augustyn run (#62-162, minus a year off for Morrison/Millar) have been collected. A lot of that is due to the changing market during the 1990s. When Waid started, collected editions were rare. Vertigo was seeing some success, but the idea that people would shell out for a whole series in graphic novel form hadn’t yet sunk in. (These were the days when studios weren’t sure there was a market for complete TV seasons on home video, either.) By the time Geoff Johns took over the title, DC was collecting full runs of a few high-profile series, but not all, or even most of their books.

Now, of course, everyone expects most comic books will be collected, and waiting for the trade is actually a workable strategy. But it’s not often that DC Comics goes back to fill in the gaps in their library — at least, not in print.

Gold and Bronze

With any luck, digital releases will also be the way we’ll finally get the Bronze Age and the Golden Age re-released. I’ve grumbled on a number of occasions that DC seems to keep reprinting the same early years of the Silver Age every time they come up with a new format, and never seem to get past the early/mid-1960s on Barry Allen’s series. (Even the upcoming Flash Archives vol.6 brings that series up to…1964.)

I’d really like to see more Golden Age Flash Archives. DC has only gotten as far as issue #24 out of 104, and the first super-villain (The Shade, as it turns out) doesn’t appear until #33…but these volumes seem to come out so rarely that I expect to die of old age before DC finishes collecting the series. In print, anyway. This is one of the reasons I went forward with my effort to hunt down the original comics, or at least as many of the key issues as I could find in my price range. Read the rest of this entry »

One of many pieces of Flash news from Comic-Con that just didn’t sit right with me was the news that Barry Allen and Iris West were being retroactively split up for the New 52, and that Barry would be “playing the field.”

Really? This is the guy who, after Iris’ untimely death, when he finally forced himself to move out of the house where he lived with his late wife and try to get on with his life, promptly fell for the new girl next door. The idea of him dating someone else isn’t preposterous, but a player? That seems a little far-fe—

Oh, wait. Never mind.

(Seriously, though, this is one of the things that bugs me, because in my opinion, the Barry/Iris relationship should be central to the character(s). It might bother me less if DC wasn’t undoing the Lois/Clark marriage at the same time. I still haven’t decided whether to actually put together a post listing all the announced elements I do and don’t like and why.)

DC has released a preview for this week’s flashback comic starring the Scarlet Speedster of the Seventies.

DC Retroactive: The Flash (1970s)

The Flash may be able to save cities from tsunamis and stop criminals in their tracks at the blink of an eye, but he’s just found out that his super-powers come at an incredible cost. And when arch nemesis Gorilla Grodd strikes at the heart of Barry Allen, he’ll use every weapon he can think of against him…including Barry’s wife.

RETROACTIVE: THE FLASH – THE ’70s features a classic tale from the 1970s as well as a new one written as an homage to the decade. From the cumulative creative teams of Cary Bates, Benito Gallego, Sal Buscema, Martin Pasko, J.L. Garcia Lopez and Dan Adkins, don’t miss this one-shot when it hits stores tomorrow.

Newsarama interviews Cary Bates about his work on The Flash and Justice League of America back in the 1970s, and his upcoming DC Retroactive specials revisiting those books.

With the books closer to release (DC Retroactive: The Flash: The 70s comes out next week), he’s able to say a little more than he did in our interview back in May, plus of course we weren’t asking him about the JLA! There’s some strange spoilery information about “Son of Grodd,” but what really caught my eye was what Bates said about the timeframe of the DC Retrocative books:

The deadlines for the retro books were very tight, so once I signed on I had to come up with the plots for both books within 24 hours.

24 hours! Wow! I’d gotten the impression that the Retroactive specials were a last-minute addition to the schedule, and this seems to confirm it. My suspicion: After DC decided to push full-steam-ahead on the reboot/relaunch/whatever it actually is, they decided to give the previous versions of the major characters a “last hurrah” before moving on.

When you’re done reading the Newsarama interview, jump back and check out our two-part interview in which Cary Bates talks more about his 1970s Flash run, the Death of Iris Allen, and where The Flash would have gone if it hadn’t been canceled during Crisis on Infinite Earths.

DC has released the covers for DC Retroactive: The 70s, the series of July one-shots featuring the return of classic writers to the interpretations of the characters that they wrote back in the day.

The cover for DC Retroactive: The Flash – The ’70s is by Benito Gallego, Sal Buscema, and Carrie Strachan. The book is being written by Cary Bates, who talked about it a bit in an interview with Speed Force last month.

It’s titled “Son of Grodd” and it explores the concept of fatherhood on two parallel tracks, one dealing with Grodd and the other with Barry….With this story, heretofore unspoken aspects of the Allen marriage will finally be explored in depth. At the same time, you’ll be seeing a new side of Grodd as we find out what kind of father he might have made back in the ’70’s.

There’s more in there, of course, so be sure to read the whole interview if you missed it the first time around.

UPDATE! Artist Benito Gallego dropped by to point out his original pencils for the cover!

Welcome to the second part of our interview with legendary Flash writer Cary Bates!  A DC Comics luminary, Bates’ first Flash story appeared in 1968, and he was the regular writer on the book from 1971 – 1985.

Last week we discussed the genesis and impact of the Death of Iris Allen story arc, which we have also been annotating here at the site.  This week we’ll look at the implications of that story and the final days of the Flash title, as well as Bates’ upcoming work for DC Comics, both Flash and otherwise.

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One of the seminal writers in DC Comics’ history, Cary Bates has crafted adventures featuring comics’ greatest characters for all or part of six decades.  From his years as one of the main Superman scribes to 2010′s The Last Family of Krypton, he has left his mark on the world’s finest superheroes, experimenting with the genre and storytelling to stunning effect.

His first Flash story, 1968′s “The Flash – Fact or Fiction,” has been collected numerous times among the Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told.  But that tale is, literally, just the beginning.  After taking over as full-time writer in 1971 with Flash #209, Bates spent an amazing 14 years on the title until its cancellation in 1985.  He also authored the memorable Flash stories featured in Adventure Comics and the DC Special Series in the late 1970s.

With Showcase Presents: The Trial of the Flash set for a July release, we’ve been running annotations of Bates’ Flash issues that laid the groundwork for the Trial story and the final years of The Flash.  We’ll take a break over the next two weeks to hear from the man himself, and learn how he took a character ensconced in Silver Age sensibilities and created an emotionally-charged super-saga far ahead of its time.

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Following the devastation of issue #275 and the immediate fallout in #276, Flash #277 had a lot to deliver.  Iris was dead and Barry’s mind was ravaged by a massive dose of PCP.  He found himself aboard the Justice League Satellite, begging his friends and teammates to bring her back to life by any means.

This type of subject matter was far beyond mainstream superhero norms of the era.  A drug-addled Flash begging the JLA to bring Iris back from the dead is a shocking turn for a character who was, less than a year before, engaged in stories about Golden Age comic books.  Even more notable is that the change occurred while the title maintained the same writer: Flash legend Cary Bates.

UP TO SPEED: Flash has turned on his fellow JLA members, threatening to take down the entire Satellite with him!  Links to research and artwork are included throughout this post.

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…and we’re back with the newest installment in our Flash notes!  Hot on the heels of Cary Bates’ classic #275, the action doesn’t stop as Flash is pushed to new limits!  Links to artwork and research are included throughout this post.

UP TO SPEED: Last week, Barry and Iris found renewed passion after a female fan was able to unmask Barry as Flash.  Attending a costume party in his Flash duds, Barry was targeted by heroin smugglers and mysteriously drugged.  Iris, tending to Barry, was attacked off-panel.  Responding to her cries, Barry discovered Iris unconscious, and deranged convict Clive Yorkin hovering over her apparently lifeless body.  Barry collapsed attempting to lift his wife, prompting party-goers to call an ambulance…for the one of them who was still alive!

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