In last week’s Trinity #25, a surprise guest star showed up: Barry Allen. Morgaine Le Fay and Enigma have altered history so that Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman never existed. In this timeline, the Justice Society International became a force that took protecting the world too far.
Spoilers for Trinity #25: Continue reading
Comics sales continued to drop in October, and The Flash was no exception.
02/2008: Flash #237 — 37,719 (- 9.0%) 03/2008: Flash #238 — 35,606 (- 5.6%) 04/2008: Flash #239 — 33,741 (- 5.2%) 05/2008: Flash #240 — 31,944 (- 5.3%) 06/2008: Flash #241 — 30,810 (- 3.6%) 07/2008: Flash #242 — 30,325 (- 1.5%) 08/2008: Flash #243 — 29,647 (- 2.2%) 09/2008: Flash #244 — 29,180 (- 1.6%) 10/2008: Flash #245 — 28,085 (- 3.8%)
The combined effects of the recession, poor reaction to the current run on the book, and a feeling that everything from now until April is just filler* — Flash: Rebirth was announced just days after this issue was solicited in July, so this is likely the first issue for which sales responded to the announcement — have combined to produce the largest drop in several months.
Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge, on the other hand, actually saw a slight increase in sales over the previous issue after the standard second-issue drop.
07/2008: Rogues Revenge #1 — 62,482 08/2008: Rogues Revenge #2 — 54,404 (- 12.9%) 10/2008: Rogues Revenge #3 — 55,056 (+ 1.2%)
Given Geoff Johns’ presence on both mini-series, this looks promising for Flash: Rebirth.(link via The Beat)
*You know what else was “just filler” prior to a relaunch? Alan Moore & Curt Swan’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” Now considered a classic Superman story. I’m not saying the current storyline compares, I’m just pointing out that “filler” isn’t always mediocre, and the current trend among fans to follow only “important” books can cause us to miss out on good stories.
DC’s website lists several more Final Crisis–related delays.
Unless the final issue Final Crisis itself gets pushed back even further (as rumored by this week’s Lying in the Gutters), it looks like Legion of Three Worlds will keep going several months beyond the main series.
Once again, there aren’t any Flash comics in February, with the current series ending in December and Flash: Rebirth launching in April. But the Flashes aren’t missing from the DC line that month, appearing in their usual team books and in Trinity.
Written by Dan Jurgens
Art and cover by Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund
Featuring an “Origins and Omens” backup story! Part 3 of the 4-part “Reality Lost” arc finds Booster Gold transported back to a seminal day in the history of The Flash! Here’s a hint: it has to do with a bolt of lightning and a chemical bath!
On sale February 11 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Team books, events, collections, action figures and more after the cut. Continue reading
Comic Bloc poster elias6 noticed that DC has posted a new cover for next week’s Flash #246.
DC initially released the cover on the left by Brian Stelfreeze, showing Wally’s wife Linda West vanishing into thin air. (Stelfreeze did the covers for issues #244 and #245, as well as the cover that’s been solicited for #247, the final issue.) The newly released cover, showing a profile of the Flash’s head with reflections running along his costume, is by Freddie Williams II, who recently wrapped up a 10-issue run on the series.
An interesting revelation from the latest 20 Questions with Dan Didio at Newsarama. He’s previously claimed (though many fans remained unconvinced) that Bart Allen’s death in Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13 was planned from the start, but we’ve got a new twist. Here’s part of his answer to question #15:
Bart was always going to go away, and I think the mistake was that we probably pulled Bart a little too soon, but quite honestly again, that was the problem of lining stories up with Countdown. The Bart story was due to be extended a little bit longer, but due to how things were lining up, he had to leave sooner.
That story’s not complete yet. We’re going to see more of what that story was about shortly – it was always the plan for Bart. He was going to be the Flash of the moment as we made our way back to Barry. [emphasis added]
Okay, not a big surprise that they shuffled things around to match with Countdown.* But am I reading that right? Is he saying that they planned to bring Barry Allen back as long ago as Infinite Crisis? Didio continues:
I think Mark Waid did an admirable job of stepping in and trying to find a different slant to Wally and the family, which we found out, was a more difficult story to tell than when we planned it. I think Mark did as best a job as possible – he put so much thought and effort into fleshing out that family, and I think we have a couple of rich characters in the children because of that.
This is the other thing that gets confusing, depending on who tells it: When was the plan made for Wally to return, and when was the plan made for Bart to be killed? Mark Waid’s interview in The Flash Companion suggests that he, at least was led to believe that Bart’s move up to lead Flash was intended to be indefinite, not a fill-in gig, though he predicted it wouldn’t catch on. And Didio’s remarks here about Waid “stepping in” suggest that they did bring him on unexpectedly — though that could simply be the result of moving up the timetable. (Which, now that I think about it, might explain artist Daniel Acuña’s sudden departure.)
I’ll agree with Didio on this: the West Twins are promising characters, even if most of the comics readership seems to want to throw them under a bus.
But at the end of the day, there’s a certain expectation of what a Flash story is, and what you want to see in a Flash comic book. While we expanded the Flash family, people really wanted to see the Flash.
And that seems to have been the main criticism of issues #231–243: Not enough of the Flash in The Flash.
But the goal for me, always, was to get back to Barry in the same way the goal was to get back to Hal in Green Lantern.
Whoa, hold on a second. Now he is saying that they were planning to bring Barry back from the beginning?
Well why didn’t they do that in the first place?
Seriously, Infinite Crisis would have been a perfect time to bring Barry back. Sure, a lot of us would have been pissed off that they were getting rid of Wally just because it was a Crisis and going back to Barry just so that they could bring back the guy who was the Flash when they were twelve — but you know what, we’re pissed off anyway. Plus we’ve got the frustration of three years of mismanaged Flash stories on top of that.
So, to sum up: DC considered Bart as a temp from the beginning. And DC never had any intention of bringing Wally back after they kicked Bart out, at least not as the primary Flash. It was all about Barry from the start.
*I find it amusing — in a banging-my-head-against-the-wall way — that people were so annoyed with the way some stories were stretched out during Countdown for the sake of lining books up, and people are annoyed now with Final Crisis because they’re not trying to line everything up.