Nerdage confirms that Flash Chronicles will feature Barry Allen. Since the Chronicles line of trade paperbacks is supposed to start at the beginning and run through chronologically, I can only assume that DC considers Barry Allen to be the “original” and not that Jay Garrick guy who inconveniently appeared 16 years earlier. *sigh*
Newsarama has more on Wednesday Comics, which will include a weekly Flash feature, including some promo art. (via SpeedsterSite)
sigh sigh sigh
LOL. Gee, it doesn’t sound like you have a problem with them reprinting Wally stories by Waid or Morrison. Or Jay’s stories. Just Barry’s.
Why you hatin’ on ol Mr. Bowtie?
And now back to your regularly scheduled….sigh
Because the same Barry stories have already been reprinted twice in Archives and Showcase forms, and both those series are currently active.
There’s a fifth volume of Barry’s Flash Archives that should be out next week. I have no complaint about that, and in fact I pre-ordered it the moment it showed up on Amazon, because it contains stories that previously hadn’t been reprinted since the 1960s and were only available on 50-year-old newsprint.
The Morrison/Millar Wally stories? Never reprinted before.
Jay’s stuff from 60-70 years ago? Criminally underrepresented. Less than 25% of the material has EVER been reprinted (and that’s including reprints as backup stories in regular Flash comics from the 1960s and 1970s), and the rest tends to run $50+ per issue on the collector’s market — and that’s if you find a copy that’s falling apart.
So yes, I would MUCH rather they continue the Golden Age Archives or at least release different Barry Allen collections instead of reprinting the same stuff over and over again every time they switch to a new format.
Never mind the fact that the original idea behind the Chronicles series was to start at the beginning, and they’ve chosen to start in 1956 instead of 1940.
Does that mean Kerschl will be doing the art on the Flash stories? That’d be nice.
Why don’t they CD-ROM this stuff like MARVEL?
But why do you think they keep reprinting the SA Flash stuff? I’m guessing it’s supply and demand. The GA archives have mostly been dropped due to poor sales, even though as you point out the cost and availability of back issues are prohibitive.
And the SA stuff sells really well. Plus those versions of the characters have been the principle versions for decades. In line with that, this makes a lot of sense.
Another factor may be the cost of restoration. The SA stuff has been archived already, so the cost of printing 8-10 volumes is just paper. Whereas a lot of the GA material may still be in rough form, and require complete restoration. Higher costs plus lower sales means fewer GA archives. At least for now.
@Lia: yep. i’d recognize Karl Kerschl’s work anywhere!
.-= Jason West’s latest blog post: Rebirthing… =-.