This weekend features two comic book conventions: the comics track at FanExpo in Toronto, and Baltimore Comic Con. DC has had a presence at both, splitting their events between Dan Didio in Toronto and Ian Sattler in Baltimore.
CBR covers FanExpo’s DC Nation without revealing any Flash news, though they did plug Francis Manapul’s role on the TV show Beast Legends.
@liabrown1 caught a few bits of info at today’s DC Universe panel:
- Flash will intro a new character in the 2nd story arc. Afterwards will be Secret Origins. #
- Flashpoint will greatly affect the Justice League, but otherwise DiDio refused to talk about it. #
- On Adventure Comics: currently the Legion, then Flashpoint, then a new char will lead the book. #
Update: CBR’s FanExpo DC Universe report is now online.
Newsarama covers Baltimore’s DC Nation with a live-blog, including this exchange:
Q: Is Sterling Gates’s Kid Flash book coming out?
Gates: nope.
Sattler: “But we have something really cool in its place that we can’t talk about.”
They may be talking about the second Flash book, Flash: Speed Force, that Geoff Johns leaked/announced in San Diego. (I got the impression that they weren’t quite ready to announce it at the time.) Or they may have something else in the works.
Update: CBR’s Baltimore DC Nation report is up as well.
Update (Monday): a bit more news from DC’s Sunday Conversation (Baltimore, via CBR):
Where should fans of Wally West be directing their attention? “It’s coming,” Gates said. “Geoff Johns is world-building for Barry Allen right now.”
Yeah, and tomorrow is a rest day. As much as I’m enjoying the new series, I’m really cynical when it comes to DC’s treatment of Wally West these days.
Update (Monday): ComicsAlliance’s FanExpo DC Nation write-up includes Dan Didio explaining that “the constant reinventing of the same characters was getting confusing and factionalizing our audience,” so they decided to pick one Flash, one Atom, etc. and standardize on the “classic” version.
Never mind that in some cases, the “classic” version was dead or retired before they made this decision, and never mind the fact that they also insist that Blue Beetle Ted Kord will stay dead, and Renee Montoya will continue to be the Question. And I don’t see Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, either. So the explanation doesn’t quite add up.
On Adventure Comics: currently the Legion, then Flashpoint, then a new char will lead the book.
I hope I didn’t understand it right, is a new char going to lead the flash book, or the adventure comics?
Joey – A new character will headline Adventure. The Flash book will have 2 arcs leading up to Flashpoint – the one after the current arc (Dastardly Death of the Rogues), then Secret Origin.
But it’s interesting that Adventure will tie into Flashpoint – what we don’t know if it is a Legion tie-in or something else.
Could it be the Flash-GL time travel story asked Geoff Johhns about some time ago?
I just re-read Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds yesterday, and in issue #4 or 5 the adult Brainiac 5 explains to XS that she is from their universe rather than the universe she thinks she’s from, because she and her family were hiding from Reverse Flash and his army of evil speedsters, or something like that. Brainiac 5 also mentioned the Tornado Twins and an adventure or two that involved them. Got me thinking that maybe those are hints about Flashpoint, much like Geoff used Starman in JSA to hint about Legion of Three Worlds several months before it came out.
The thought had crossed my mind as well. Especially since that explanation was *far* more complicated than needed to explain her being related to “New Earth’s” Barry and Iris, since earlier in that issue they’d reminded the reader that time travel sometimes slips you into an alternate reality. They could have easily just said that Barry and Iris, when traveling to the 30th century, had slipped into another universe.
Either it was complication for complication’s sake, or it was setup for something down the road.
A new character? Oh boy. I can’t wait until he’s gruesomely killed two crossovers from now.
I can’t wait for Flash Secret Origin. I loved his secret origin stories for Supes and GL. Much like the GL story set up Blackest Night expect this to do the same for Flashpoint. Now I gotta add Adventure Comics to my sub when this Legion stuff is over. LOSH are not my favorites.
Agh…the new character. You just know the first story at least will put the new character in the spotlight.
Hey, maybe the ‘new character’ will be Wally? He’ll certainly SEEM like a new character what with being absent for so long. -_-;; (Yes, I’m feeling sarcastic today. Apple download. I hate Apple files. They take my entire weekend to download just the major ones. sigh.)
No Kid Flash book? Again? Oh, that will go over well with the Bart fans.
Q: Is Sterling Gates’s Kid Flash book coming out?
Gates: nope.
Har-har…
Sattler: “But we have something really cool in its place that we can’t talk about.”
You forcefully cancelled a book that we were looking forward to for almost 8 years, did you seriously think we’d be “OMG YAY!” about this new announcement you refuse to talk about?
…Didio, I hate you.
You didn’t even pick the “classic” characters! Classic Flash? That’d be Jack Garrick. Classic Atom? Ray Palmer? Nope, you’re thinking of Al Pratt. If you’re going to do something in the “classic” sense, GET IT RIGHT.
(Ted Kord is just hiding in Rip’s Timelab, you’ll see)
-facepalm- I said Jack Garrick, didn’t I? I meant to type Jay. My keyboard is weird and the first time I typed his name, only the first two letters and the last two letters came up -_-
Blame it on Hypertime. It worked for Wally.
To be fair, I shouldn’t have put the word “classic” in quotes. I don’t know how Didio phrased it, but Comics Alliance used the word “original.” *headdesk*
Hal, and Barry are definitely classic characters, but it takes a mental blind spot to consider them the “original” Green Lantern and Flash.
And that’s why I feel that if they are not doing a Wally story with the Flash movie, where they can play up the whole ‘Legacy’ aspect like I don’t think any super-hero movie has, they ought to do a Jay Garrick movie instead, and loot as needed from Barry’s Rogues and what have you.
Fanboys have accepted this before- DCAU “Tim Drake” was pretty much just Jason Todd with a less unpopular name, and cartoons and movies in general have mishmashed all sorts of elements from disparate periods in comics into solid adaptations.
Some guy – so basically, Jay should be placed in Barry’s costume and fight Barry’s villains. Why go to the trouble?
Barry is basically the definitive version of the Flash. The costume, villains, the DCU associations (JLA, GL, Superman), the reporter wife, etc.
Use him, instead of shoehorning someone else into his boots. (Which I suspect, is the real reason Barry was brought back to the oh-so-contrived modern DCU – da movie.)
Since you bring up the movie, here’s something to remember about the Flash. As far as the general movie-going public is concerned, the definitive version of the Flash is not Barry Allen – or Wally West, or Jay Garrick.
He’s that guy in red who runs fast.
They don’t know his name, or what he does on his off-hours. They don’t care. In fact, they look down on us for knowing useless trivia like that.
Half of them think his name is Flash Gordon.
Sure, they might have vague memories of some TV show from 20 years ago, or a cartoon from when they were kids, but they never really paid that much attention to it. Maybe they’ll remember that he fought a talking monkey, or that he had to eat a lot.
For this audience (which, let’s remember, is a lot bigger than the audience that reads comic books), whoever is in the movie will become the definitive Flash, whether he’s named Barry Allen, Wally West, or Kyle Rayner. That’s if it happens, and if it’s a success.
There’s still a good chance that the few people who do go see it will walk out of the theater wondering why Ming the Merciless never showed up.
Kelson, this is exactly why they will want to do the most comics-faithful adaptation possible. What made the Flash a comic that could survive straight for essentially 50+ years? The studios, luckily, appear to believe that making the films match the tone and content of the comics works better, based on the examples of Spider-mans 1-2, Iron Man, Batman Begins, Dark Knight, etc.
At one point, Warners was gearing up Green Lantern as a Jack Black comedy. But with the new regime, the keyword is faithful. And from all appearances, it seems the GL film they’ve made is based mostly on Geoff Johns Secret Origin arc, and the stories that inspired that.
I’d expect a similar model for a Flash film. One that has Barry as a CSI guy, Iris as a reporter hounding him for info on hot cases, and then the lab accident. And then we’re off to the red costume, the rogues, with Zoom reserved for the sequel.
So we can reasonably expect the upcoming Flash: Secret Origin arc to serve as a preview of what they’ll plan for the film. At least to some extent.
Kelson makes an excellent point. People don’t care about The Flash or GL or Aquaman or Green Arrow or IRON MAN or THOR. People like Batman and Robin and Superman and Spider-Man and Captain America and Wolverine and the Hulk. Easily accessible characters that Everyone knows. Half the people seeing GL on the big screen are gonna wonder why he’s not black. Seriously. So as far as a Flash movie is concerned, make it about Barry or Wally or even Jay. Just make it RIGHT. 🙂