This volume of TEEN TITANS ends where it began, in the ultimate battle with Harvest! The Titans find that Harvest’s plan is even more convoluted (and diabolical) than they had even dreamed. Can they defeat this threat…can they even survive? That’s where we join the Teen Titans for one more adventure in their current incarnation, in TEEN TITANS ANNUAL #3!
LIGHT SPOILERS ONLY
Flash #187 (1987-2008 Wally West series) arrives in DC’s digital catalog at ComiXology and elsewhere:
“The Thinker has plugged himself into the Flash’s brain! Can the Fastest Man Alive out-think the Thinker and free himself? Even if he does, he’s still got Blacksmith and the Rogues to worry about! “Crossfire” part 4.”
Geoff Johns, Scott Kolins, Doug Hazlewood, with a cover by Brian Bolland.
DC has settled into posting one Flash issue every two weeks since they finished Impulse (not counting the annuals), twice the speed of the original run. Barring a speed-up or a “Flash 201” style mega-release (neither of which would surprise me if the Flash TV series gets picked up, which we should know any day now), they’re about 2 years from filling in the whole series
Following back-to-back weeks with new Flash issues hitting the stands, the new writing team of Van Jensen and Robert Venditti sat down with Newsarama last week to talk about some of the major introductions made and threads introduced.
Be warned, the two go into some spoiler-level detail if you have not read the last couple issues. For more on Wally West, his parents, Future Flash and more, follow the jump!
This Annual gives us an intro to a very much alive Wally West…and it throws in another very familiar name as well…as Venditti and Jensen set the stage for the “Future Flash” arc with a shocking turn for Barry Allen. Something is very wrong with the future Barry…
LIGHT SPOILERS ONLY
IGN reveals 5 of Mike Allred’s 19 variant covers honoring the 1966 Batman TV show in May, including this wonderfully recursive image for The Flash #31.
This is something that’s been percolating in my head for a while, and I thought I should post it before the Wally West conversation becomes totally dominated by this week’s Flash Annual. This isn’t about the New 52 version, but about the two decades in which Wally West was DC’s primary Flash, and how that relates to Barry Allen and the “ownership” of the Flash identity. I’ve seen it suggested that legacy characters like the post-Crisis Wally West are like stalkers or identity thieves. It’s probably no surprise that I don’t see it that way.
The way I see it, there are two kinds of super-hero identities:
For Bruce Wayne, Batman is who he is. It’s the way he deals with his childhood tragedy. While Dick Grayson as Batman is interesting, he has less of a personal connection to the mantle than Bruce does.
Green Lantern is what Hal Jordan does. For Jay Garrick (at least when he’s younger) and Barry Allen, the Flash is less who they are and more what they do. Bart Allen? Impulse is who he is (pre-Flashpoint, anyway), and Kid Flash is what he does. (If you think about it, “Kid X” almost invariably implies a “What you do” identity, because kids grow up.) Arguably, being the Flash is more a part of Wally’s personality than it is of Barry’s, which is built more around his scientific outlook.
“What you do” identities can be passed along a lot more easily than “who you are” identities. They’re careers, businesses that can bring on a partner and move on to a successor. That’s why we’ve got four-plus in-continuity Robins (DC even referred to the Robin identity as an “intern program,” which fits perfectly)…but Batman successors in the present day (i.e. not Beyond) always hand the cowl back to Bruce within a year or so.
My take: Wally West didn’t steal his uncle’s identity. He inherited the family business.
Imagine the Flash Detective Agency, with Barry Allen as sole proprietor. He brings on his nephew Wally West as an assistant, shows him the ropes, takes him on as partner, and when Allen meets his untimely end, West steps up to keep the agency going. He takes over any open cases that Barry was working, sees a lot of the same clients, inherits a cell phone full of contacts (some of whom will talk to him, some of whom won’t)…and also inherits a lot of the enemies that the Flash Detective Agency has made over the years. Like anyone taking over an existing business, he’ll do some things the same and others differently. He’ll lose some old clients and win over new ones. He’ll make new enemies. And eventually he’ll make the business his own.
This is a bit more literal for Jesse Quick, who inherits QuickStart Enterprises from her father as well as taking on a variation of his superhero identity.
Or to take a non-comic book example, it’s easy to imagine that Veronica Mars will one day take over her father’s detective agency for good. That won’t make the agency any less the real Mars Detective Agency, nor will it make her accomplishments any less valid. The same goes for Wally West as Keystone/Central’s resident super-speedster.
Of course, the chances are rather slim that Keith Mars will come back after 20 years, take back the business, put Veronica on receptionist duty and then rewrite company history without her presence…