At the WonderCon DC Nation panel, DC announced a series of one-shots coming this summer called “Retro-Active.” Each set features three one-shots set in 1970s, 1980s and 1990s continuity re-uniting the characters with the creators most associated with of classic runs from that era.
The Flash issues will be written by:
- Cary Bates for the 1970s
- William Messner-Loebs for the 1980s
- Brian Augustyn for the 1990s.
Each issue will feature 26 pages of new story and 20 pages of reprinted material and will run $4.99. No word yet on artists or release dates. Other characters announced include Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Justice League of America.
It’s odd that they’ve broken up the Waid/Augustyn team. Given that Waid has expressed willingness to work for DC again, I figure this means one of two things:
- DC doesn’t want to hire Mark Waid for now.
- Mark Waid doesn’t want to return to The Flash after the disaster of “The Wild Wests.”
Source: CBR coverage and Newsarama coverage.
Update (Monday): DC has released the logos and writers for the event.
Well that could be interesting…I’m most keen to see Cary Bates’ work, but Messner-Loebs will likely be the most popular.
Oh please oh please give us corny punning ’70s Rogues, Mr Bates!
Anyone else wish John Broome was alive and willing to write comics again? Though I suppose you’d need at least Julie Schwartz to do it properly, if not Carmine Infantino as well.
And yeah, what’s with Mark Waid not being there? I’m sure he could do a ’90s style Flash story if he wanted to, he’s said that he did something different from his first run on purpose and paid for misjudging what the fans wanted.
There was an interview done with him not too long ago asking him if he had any plans to go back to working at DC and his response was “Eh…they’ve got my number.” I think there may be some hesitance on his part to work there again, though I won’t speculate as to why.
Yeah, I was thinking of that, but in too much of a hurry to look for it. The response gave me the impression that he would be willing to work for DC if they asked him, but he wasn’t going to be the one to break the ice.