Geoff Johns was all over the place this week, talking with Hero Complex about several projects including Flash: Rebirth, to Newsarama about his Smallville episode, Legion, and to Wizard about the comic book projects he has for 2009.
Regarding Flash: Rebirth, he tells Hero Complex about series losing their focus:
When the book starts to not be about that, maybe it needs to refocus. Writing Flash with Wally West, he was kind of the sidekick to Barry Allen, the original, then he became the main Flash after Barry left and died. But you look at what the theme of Flash’s book has been for the last 200-something issues with Wally West and it’s been about a man trying to fill someone else’s boots. It doesn’t really have anything to do with speed. I mean, it has something to do with speed, but it was not totally what the book was about. The new Flash that I’m doing is all about speed. What speed means. I’m sure that you have a Blackberry or cellphone, or I’m sure that you’ve downloaded songs or something and asked, “Why is it taking so long?” Everyone wants everything faster today, so speed is even more of something that we can all relate to on a different level.
I like the fact that he wants to focus the book on speed. However….
The guy writing Flash: Rebirth, who also wrote ~60 issues of the last series, feels that Wally West’s defining characteristic is being a wannabe. Remind me again why Wally’s fans should simply relax and trust him? 🙄
Agreed. I was reluctantly confident about things until this article. I could honestly see you arguing that the first 79 issues (until “The Return of Barry Allen”) are Wally dealing with filling Barry’s shoes. But 80-100 are pretty clearly Wally just maturing as an adult. 101-150 being just pure super hero stories. And anything after 150 only comes back to Barry in issue 200 when Wally hesitates about the memory wipe because he thinks Barry should be remembered, the Identity Crisis tie-in, and 225 when Barry actually shows up. And 200 is really the only one where Wally seems to struggle with the daunting legacy task.
Definitely feels like I’ll be sacrificing my favorite character so Geoff can have his back. But oh well, if the stories are good that’s all that matters right?
I was looking forward to the series (kinda) until I read this. Along with the solicit for Rebirth #1 that says another Flash dies. Wally? Jay? So far I’m not happy with this. Hopefully I’m worried about nothing, but so far things aren’t looking good.
Bingo.
There’s little about this that excites me. I have some interest and that’s about it.But that interest wanes when I find out stuff like 1) the wannabe thing and 2) the speed metaphor(s) that seem to be on the way.
Enh. Maybe it’ll have pretty pictures.
.-= West’s latest blog post: Mary, Mary, Mary =-.