Newsarama has a 3-page preview of next week’s The Flash #11 featuring Heat Wave, written by Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato with guest art by Marcus To and Ray McCarthy.
It looks like this version of Heat Wave is somewhere between Geoff Johns’ pyromaniac and Adam Glass’ full-on psychopath in Flashpoint: Legion of Doom (a portrayal I could do without ever seeing again) — a lot of it probably due to the fact that his power upgrade doesn’t seem to have worked out as cleanly as Captain Cold’s or Weather Wizard’s.
Also, I can’t stop seeing the fact that the splash page uses the STAR WARS lettering style.
Is that Iris on the cover? Isn’t she still trapped in the Speed Force with the others from the boat?
It does look like her, doesn’t it? Maybe she won’t be trapped in the speed force much longer.
Well, this confirms that my decision to drop the book was the right one.
This confirms that my decision to hold off a decision on whether to ever get the trade for a year was the right one. Holy moley. Please tell me the red head (who for one insane moment….nah) the red head wasn’t killed. I hate it when people or animals die. Hurt…yeah, action story, but hate deaths. 🙁
Grant you, Heatwave was never a fave with me, but this….this makes me nervous. Like I really would rather not see what was going to be on the next page let alone pay several dollars for the ‘privilege’.
Lia, fyi (while we mope) I discovered this webcomic http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive.php about some school kids. Now I’m not one for kid or female characters yet this thing has kept me up all night. It keeps getting better and better. Maybe you’ll get captivated too. It beats being bored. 🙂
I’ll check it out, thanks! I’ve picked up Saga from Image to replace my Flash pull — I’m enjoying it so far, although with the violence and salty language I don’t imagine it would appeal to you much. It has great world-building, though.
That’s what I liked about the link despite some pretty mild horror in it (by most people’s definition). I think the creator was influenced by Harry Potter some, but it kept me reading SOLID for some 7 hours before I ran out of updates to view.
btw, ScansDaily showed a bit more of Earth 2 #2. Still hating the new look for Jay. And Bart’s mask.
They also had some Alan Scott/Batman crossover pages and….I really miss Alan’s original costume. It looked good on him in an old-timey way.
Contrast that I rather like the new duds for the Trinity an it rather galls that I don’t like Jay or Bart’s. Barry’s okay, but then it’s hardly different from his old one.
Now Heatwave looks like any other fire mutant from the Marvel Universe. This is why the Rogues need tech in their hands.
Yes! Being Super Geniuses (or at least with an annual buying subscription with ACME Villain Tech) was what made the Flash Rogues stand out. Now they are more powerful but also are getting lost in the crowd of meta bad guys. If Batman can be significant without any powers while fighting mega-baddies, why can’t the Rogues be the same while going up against Barry? Okay, I’m not buying into the franchises, but still…it rankles.
All Flash needed to do to win against the Rogues was knock a gun out of their hands. Not much of a challenge for someone who can move at the speed of light.
But that was why they had to be super crafty about it with elaborate traps and such’ems. 😀
When you put it that way, intrinsic powers other than super-speed or stopping time wouldn’t help either. No fight with the Flash should last more than one panel unless he’s fighting Professor Zoom or Hiro Nakamura.
But that wouldn’t make for very interesting stories, would it?
So since it doesn’t really accomplish much, why not keep what makes the Rogues different instead of changing them to be like everyone else?
I look at it this way: Flash comics were a lot of fun back in the Olden Days. The Rogues were kickass during the Waid and first John’s run years.
Supposedly what was considered wrong with that to which they felt compelled to change it? (Whomever ultimately ‘they’ were.) If the argument is ‘realism’ then I gotta say that I can’t recall the last Science Magazine article of on a human managing to reach lightspeed….yet there Barry is doing just that. Same with the vast majority of super heroes populating DC then or now.
When were the Rogues “kickass” during Waid’s run? He did a great job with Trickster and gave us a good Mirror Master story, but otherwise wrote them as losers. He killed them off because he thought they were old hat (a move he later regretted).
I’m certainly not using realism as an arguing point. A man with a flame-thrower (or “heat gun”) is more realistic than a man with literal fire in his belly. But the latter presents more challenges for a super-hero.
Johns really made the Rogues into a compelling bunch. Most of them, anyway. He never seemed to have a good handle on Trickster or Piper (but then Piper doesn’t count as a Rogue to me anyway). Sometimes, DC fixed things that really weren’t broken. I would’ve preferred that the Rogues be a mix of metas and badass normals. Weather Wizard would be a good choice for a meta, for example.
Still am pretty ticked off at how Piper’s been handled. Grrrrrrrr…
This is exactly what I’ve been arguing for months. With the ridiculous speed stunts the Flashes do, NOBODY (apart from other speedsters and people who can manipulate time) should be a threat to them. We need a hearty suspension of disbelief already, so I don’t find the Rogues having weapons to be any more of a stretch.
I’ll give Johns credit for that, his expansion of the Rogues’ characters also included little snippets about how they confront the Flash. For example, I remember something Snart mentioned about constantly generating an intense field of absolute cold in order to just slow the Flash down or something along those lines.
Yes, taken to it’s logical conclusion, super-speed is an ultra ability to counteract, but that the Rogues have been able to do just that constantly just shows their own level of resourcefulness, creativity, and craziness. To make it better, they used tech to accomplish this rather than simply using that same tech to cause mass mayhem.
Plus, foes like Thawne annd Hunter were set apart from the other Rogues due to their innate powers that allowed them to fight the Flash on his own turf. Now, everyone has meta abilities. They’re diminished as a result.
Heh….to quote the Rogues in Batman The Bold & the Brave: It’s not the same!
I’ll give that if you absolutely had to metamorize The Rogues then the creative team has done a pretty fair job of doing so. (I’m still miffed about The TOP though if only for the sake of Top fans. Don’t understand the creative decision on that one at all just as I don’t understand Babs getting to be “the iconic” Nightwing in Smallville. The above examples do explain one thing though as to why they won’t allow Wally:
DC Ed has lost it. 😛
(Or at least they’ve lost me.)
It was having the exact same powers as Flash that allowed Zoom to fight him on his own turf. Captain Cold having cold powers doesn’t take that away from Zoom.
It’s all the other evil speedsters that diminished Zoom.
I think that having one less contrivance in the conflicts, whether regarded as a small one or a big one, is a definite plus.
I don’t think it’s the guns that made the Rogues distinct from other super villains. Batman has Mr Freeze and Firefly after all.
Yes, but Batman has no powers. A guy with no powers fighting other guys with no powers is normal.
I’ve given it a bit more thought after reading some panels from Marvel. In it Gambit wins a fight against Quicksilver. Even if Q is still slower than Flash, Q should have seen that stick coming in slow motion. I recall thinking the same in the JLU cartoon where Flash was similarly felled by a stick to the neck. “No way.” Didn’t stop me enjoying the episode though.
But how does this really help a meta Rogue? Barry would still be able to out move them with his speed. All he’d have to do is throw a speedball *anything* at them and knock them unconscious: end of fire and ice or whatever. So if the outcome is the same whether it be meta or guns….why not stick with the fun gadgetry and outlandish tricks?
Kelson, I would add magic to stopping time and similar speed ability. Also the power to fly as high as Superman and destroy the whole planet with Flash on it. (Unless Flash just vibrated onto another Earth. There is that option.) Hmmmm