December 23, 2010
Today’s guest post is the first in a series of interviews by Greg Elias on The Art of Speed.
In 1988, Wally West was powerless, penniless and nearly homeless. With Flash #15, the creative team of writer William Messner-Loebs and artist Greg LaRocque began their memorable take on the title. Throughout their run, Loebs and LaRocque established the touchstones of Wally’s life in Keystone City, including many of the character’s major themes and a supporting cast that remains vital. LaRocque was also on board when writer Mark Waid took over, starting with issue #62 in 1992. Wally West continued to bloom under Waid, reaching new levels of confidence and self-assuredness each month. Wally’s road back from that low point played out over five years and 64 issues.
Each and every benchmark during that time, including the landmark issue #50 and introduction of a new Flash costume, was seen through the eyes and pencils of LaRocque. Previously associated with a highly- regarded body of work on Legion of Super Heroes, his style would end up defining the Flash for longer than any artist since Carmine Infantino or Irv Novick.
Perhaps no storyline is more closely identified with the development of the Wally West character than 1993′s The Return of Barry Allen. Within, Wally is faced with the shocking apparent return of his deceased uncle and mentor, Barry Allen, the second Flash. This was LaRocque’s last stand on the title – his final run with the character he had drawn from the depths of poverty and doubt. We asked LaRocque about his work on the story, focusing on the construction and the subtleties of putting together a super-speed coming-of-age.
Q: One of the things that defines The Return of Barry Allen is the super-speed action sequences. You’ve got Johnny Quick and Max Mercury in the mix, along with Wally West, Jay Garrick and “Barry Allen”. Given the larger cast, and each character having the same power (and somewhat similar costumes), what were some of the challenges in constructing these memorable scenes? Was there an attempt to define each character’s own “style”?
GREG LAROCQUE: That is best demonstrated in the construction scene when Max Mercury teaches Zoom a lesson in technique. Mark wrote it out for me in the script & it was a challenge to visually portray the different ways the cast displayed their skills. With Max, he was all about grace & fluidity, like water, like mercury. Zoom ran & moved effortlessly because he was the fastest & gloating. Jay & Johnny were the traditional full speed ahead runners.
Quick note on Wally. I never drew him running. He GLIDES like an ice skater.
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October 3, 2010
Some linkblogging for the weekend.
May 31, 2010
The linkblogging catchup continues!
Comics Should Be Good features Flash #54: “Nobody Dies” (William Messner-Loebs and Greg LaRocque) in their Year of Cool Comics. It’s one of my favorite one-issue stories from Wally West’s run, and not surprisingly it made the reader-selected list of top 10 Wally West stories a few weeks later.
A bit off topic, CSBG also reviews Mysterius the Unfathomable. It was a fun fantasy/horror/comedy miniseries last year, and is now available as a trade paperback.
Multiversity Comics recommends the new Flash series. Among other reasons: “he has a secret identity which actually gets used, instead of being forgotten for more exciting superhero stories.” And of course, “Flash has some of the best and most fleshed out rogues in the business.”
Update: One more! Several Flash storylines appear in CSBG’s Greatest Mark Waid Stories Ever Told list: Dead Heat, Terminal Velocity and The Return of Barry Allen.
May 23, 2010
Comics Should Be Good has posted the results of their reader poll for the Greatest Wally West stories ever told. It’s technically a top ten list, but they included eleven stories because the #10 winner was essentially a prologue for one of the other winners.
It’s interesting to break down the results by writer:
- 7 by Mark Waid (including the top three)
- 2 by Geoff Johns
- 2 by William Messner-Loebs
In a way it’s surprising that Geoff Johns, DC’s current superstar writer, isn’t more heavily represented, but it also makes sense. Mark Waid’s run on The Flash was very much about Wally West and his journey through young adulthood (Messner-Loebs’ run even more so!), while Geoff Johns’ run tilted a bit more toward the Rogues.
Head over to Comics Should Be Good for the full list!
August 28, 2009
Last night I logged into Twitter and found myself in the middle of a storm in which people were posting joke names for speedsters. It all started when Geoff Johns posted the following:
- @GeoffJohns0: RT @Brainiacphive Hello. I have a name for you for a Flash character: Speed Date. #newspeedsters
Well, people went with it! You can read them all at #newspeedsters until the posts drop off of Twitter search’s radar in a few weeks. Some of my favorites:
- jonahlantern: this one is easy. Bad guy team. Jamaican, with ice powers on top of speed. Cool Runnings.
- blacaucasian: Runs Really Fast. Because he runs really fast.
- mgrabois: Usain Bolt (a popular suggestion, but I think this was the first)
- jester1436: Quickstep and Foxtrot
- MarkWaid: Charlie Hustle
- Knippenberg: Captain 23-Skidoo
- mattfraction: Th Flsh (@shanajeanh remarked, “too fast for vowels?” )
- Mike2112McKone suggested several, including: Zip, Zap, Whoosh, Reverb, Skid and iSpeed.
- Bart_Allen: All Day I Dream About Speed- another corporate sponsored speedster (in response to my suggestion of Sprint – and in case you’re wondering, look at the first letters.)
- ValVictory: Krackle and Pop as in the sounds of the speedforce (I suggested “The Sounds of the Speed Force” it sounded like a band, and VV agreed, saying “Anyone play bass?”)
- ValVictory: happy fun American run fast time man — That one is from overseas.
- ValVictory: Sir speeds a lot — The U.K. flash
- bobbynash: Fast Bastard
- housetoastonish: Speedy Alberto Gonzales – He’s Quick To Judge
Stephen Wacker chimed in with a number of characters based on people in the comics industry.
- Ran Didio. Slow-ey Cavalieri. Street Tomasi. Matt Traction. Slowing Gates. “On your Mark, get set, WAID!”
- I can’t stop….Drag Rucka. Ethan Van Slider. Slow Quesada. Richard Running. gRANt. Chasin’ Aaron. Axel Alonso.
And here are my own humble contributions:
- Mr. Zip, of course! (As in the panels from “The Return of Barry Allen.” I was really surprised no one had suggested it yet.)
- The Running Man
- Sprint(tm), the corporate-sponsored speedster
- The Hot Flash
- Zoom’s little brother, Vrooom
- Greased Lightning
- Spud Racer – the Mr. Potato-Head Flash.
- Theed Racer, the Flash from Naboo
- Race Windu. He’s powered by Force Speed instead of the Speed Force.
July 11, 2009
Some linkblogging for the weekend:
Two Artists and a Writer
NYC Graphic Novelists has an interview with Carmine Infantino. He talks about growing up in the depression, breaking into the fledgling comic industry, building the Silver Age, and his tenure as editor at DC. Update: There’s been some fallout from this interview, with Infantino feeling he was misrepresented.
Geoff Johns will appear at a Blackest Night launch party at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles on Tuesday, July 14. Update: The Tuesday event at Meltdown has been canceled. He will also be signing at Isotope Comics in San Francisco on Saturday, July 18.
The Green Lantern Spotlight Podcast has an interview with Ethan Van Sciver. It’s long at 99 minutes, but it’s worth a listen. He talks about everything from deadlines and inking to why he’s drawing Iris Allen younger to designs for Black Lanterns.
Review
The Captain’s JLA Blog reviews “Speed Demons”, the Superman: The Animated Series episode that guest-starred the Flash and introduced the scarlet speedster to the DC Animated Universe.
The Flash-Back Podcast reviews The Return of Barry Allen.
Fan Creations
Flash endorses Green Lantern for Mayor! (via Robot6)
The Heretics Blog has a collection of fan films, including the Flash getting a speeding ticket.
July 3, 2009
More linkblogging! This rounds out a week’s worth of Flash-related pages I’ve stumbled across.
Kid Flash has a cameo up in this Adventure Comics #1 preview over at The Source.
Robot 6′s Grumpy Old Fan considers several major creative decisions by DC over the last 25 years, including making Wally West the Flash after Crisis on Infinite Earths, and considers what might have happened if they’d gone differently. In the case of the Flash, if they’d gone for a new, unrelated character instead of Barry’s former sidekick, the 90s focus on legacy characters might never have happened.
Four Color Media Monitor dissects interviews on Flash: Rebirth and Barry Allen given by Dan Didio and Geoff Johns, comparing their statements to the miniseries’ emphasis on death.
Comics Should Be Good highlights another Cool Comic Book Moment from The Flash detailing a pivotal moment from Flash vol.2 #78 — second-to-last chapter of The Return of Barry Allen.
June 7, 2009
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April 13, 2009
Last week, comic book writer and artist John Byrne posted about how he would have brought Barry Allen back if he’d had the opportunity during the 1990s, as he hinted when responding to speculation about the cover for Wonder Woman v.2 #109. (IIRC, the Flash in the issue was either a clone or a robot. It’s been a long time since I’ve read it.)
Simple, really. It’s very, very, very hard to “kill” a character who can travel in Time. How old was Barry when he “died” in CRISIS? For all we know, he could have been 106.
My idea was to simply have Barry pop into existence in the “current” DCU, returning from one of his trips thru time to find he’d “missed his target” because of disruptions caused by CRISIS. He would then live out whatever life (nature and duration) the Powers that Be would allow.
This is similar to the way Mark Waid did bring Professor Zoom “back” for “The Return of Barry Allen” and the way a young time-traveling Hal Jordan spent some time in the then-present DCU for “Emerald Knights.” It’s also not far from the loophole Marv Wolfman placed in the character’s death in Crisis on Infinite Earths. The main difference is that in Wolfman’s plan, it would be Barry Allen during his final run, rather than a Barry from earlier in his career.
Byrne goes on to add:
(I also had an idea that, since Wally was being The Flash, Barry would take on another identity for a while, knowing that sooner or later he had to go die in CRISIS. But when the moment came, Wally would bushwhack him, take his place, and that would actually have been Wally we saw die.)
Interestingly, Peter David did essentially the same thing in his final Supergirl arc, “Many Happy Returns,” in which the Earth-1 Supergirl’s rocket gets diverted and lands on Post-Crisis Earth. After a few adventures, the Post-Crisis Supergirl gets in the rocket and takes her place, leading to a story of a 1990s heroine in a Silver-Age world. It doesn’t end well, for either of them.
Found in this week’s Lying in the Gutters, which also features another Flash-related story, short enough I might as well just quote the whole thing:
The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket, Rhode Island is having an online auction to raise funds for its non profit theatre. One of the items is a “Flash: Rebirth” #1 coupled with a TPB of “Flash: Terminal Velocity,” signed by the late great Mike Wieringo.
February 13, 2009
Newsarama’s latest 20 questions with Dan Didio is up, featuring a detailed response to the question, “Why bring Barry back when Wally has been the Flash for a whole generation of readers?” — and the cover to Flash: Rebirth #2, an homage to that classic Showcase #4 cover (previously reimagined for the collected edition of “The Return of Barry Allen”)
Time to start worrying about dead speedsters?
The Q&A segment is long, so I’ll put it after the cut.
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