Tag Archives: Barry Allen

Speed Reading: Recommendations

2 Replies

The linkblogging catchup continues!

Comics Should Be Good features Flash #54: “Nobody Dies” (William Messner-Loebs and Greg LaRocque) in their Year of Cool Comics. It’s one of my favorite one-issue stories from Wally West’s run, and not surprisingly it made the reader-selected list of top 10 Wally West stories a few weeks later.

A bit off topic, CSBG also reviews Mysterius the Unfathomable. It was a fun fantasy/horror/comedy miniseries last year, and is now available as a trade paperback.

Multiversity Comics recommends the new Flash series. Among other reasons: “he has a secret identity which actually gets used, instead of being forgotten for more exciting superhero stories.” And of course, “Flash has some of the best and most fleshed out rogues in the business.”

Update: One more! Several Flash storylines appear in CSBG’s Greatest Mark Waid Stories Ever Told list: Dead Heat, Terminal Velocity and The Return of Barry Allen.

Flash Family to appear on Batman: The Brave and the Bold this Saturday in Australia

27 Replies

Lucky Aussies. Batman: The Brave and the Bold’s Facebook page announced a couple of hours ago that The Flash Family will be appearing this Saturday for the first time together (although Jay had an appearance in the episode “Trials of the Demon” last year) and it will be airing in Australia first.

Australian fans will be able to watch a brand new, never before seen episode this Saturday on Nine Network’s Kids WB block at 10:35a! “Requiem for a Scarlet Speedster!” Barry Allen has long been presumed dead, but his “ghost” has been haunting Jay Garrick and Kid Flash. When Batman sees it too, they realize he is not dead!

Definitely sounds like a great episode in the making. I have to wonder though, who is under the cowl of Kid Flash? Wally West or Bart Allen? Since Barry has been long presumed dead in this continuity as well, did Wally ever step up to take over the mantle? Or did Jay just jump back into the role after Barry disappeared? And if either is the case how in the heck is Kid Flash still a “Kid”? Just how long are we talking about here?

As usual I can’t wait until we see more toy prospects. We’ve already seen a picture of The Brave and the Bold Flash (Barry Allen), I wonder if there is any chance we will be seeing a Jay Garrick and a Kid Flash in the near future as well? Flash Family box set? Yes please.

Interesting to note, this will be the first time we will ever be seeing The Flash Family all at once in a TV Show or movie. So excited for all the big things they have lined up for The Flash franchise.

–Devin “The Flash” Johnson

Flash in Adventure Comics (1978-1979)

11 Replies

During the late 1970s, DC redesigned Adventure Comics as a Golden Age-style anthology series, where each oversized issue would contain four or more different features. It didn’t last very long — after only eight issues, it went back to a standard size and price. The Flash, Deadman, and Justice Society features appeared in every issue, with Wonder Woman and Aquaman appearing in most of them. Edit: I forgot to mention, these features ran through Adventure Comics #459–466.

While the Flash stories in Adventure Comics were written by the regular writer on the book, Cary Bates, they took a drastically different approach. The main series was structured around long, multi-part stories featuring the Flash and Barry Allen’s supporting cast. The Adventure stories were quick one-offs. In fact, only two of the eight stories featured regular Flash villains! Instead they featured strange monsters or bizarre situations. It was sort of a deliberate throwback to the Silver Age during the Bronze Age.

The Adventure Comics run also spanned a period of transition for the Flash: The death of Iris Allen. She appears in three of the early stories (but doesn’t go with Barry to his high school reunion), isn’t mentioned in several, and by the end, Barry is grieving for her.

The Stories

#459: The Crimson Comets of Fallville High – Barry Allen attends his 15th high school reunion and a former classmate picks up his identity through ESP.

#460: A Nightmare To Remember! – After visiting Earth-2, Barry Allen finds himself in a bizarre reversed version of Keystone City, where the Shade has been elected mayor and Joan Garrick has divorced Jay and remarried the Fiddler.

#461: The Multiple Murders of Mapleville – Barry and Iris are traveling, and stop in a small town for gas. Barry gets framed for murder. There’s a major plot hole in this one, where a gun is set up as compelling him to fire it, but the compulsion is never mentioned again.

#462: The She-Demon of the Astral Plane – Iris meets an old flame who is studying astral projection, and has to try it out…but an extra-dimensional creature wants to follow her back and take over her body.

#463: Urtumi the Image-Eater – The Flash encounters an alien monster who formed the basis of local Native American legends. This one was weird enough I had to write it up.

#464: The Day Up Was Down – Abra Kadabra turns Central City upside-down — literally — looking for an applause machine.

#465: Who Is Invading Central City? – A sonic boom causes the Flash to pick up telepathic transmissions from creatures who can’t figure out what the invading humans want.

#466: The Cloud With the Lethal Lining! – The Weather Wizard turns over a new leaf and tries to use his powers to help people. It doesn’t last. And I really shouldn’t be bothered by the Flash running up a lightning bolt in a story where sunspots cause the Weather Wizard to turn good, but there are limits, you know?

Update: I’ve added the issue numbers to the list of stories.

Surprising Flash Fact: Wally West has More Experience than Barry Allen

27 Replies

I had an odd thought while reading The Flash * last week. Francis Manapul draws Barry and Iris in a way that makes them look fairly young, and I remembered someone’s remark that the cowl on Wally West’s new costume makes him look older than Barry, even though Wally used to be Barry’s younger sidekick.

Then it hit me: No, Wally isn’t older than Barry Allen (even with time travel) but when you factor in his earlier Kid Flash career, he actually has more experience than Barry at this point!

No, Really!

Wally West became Kid Flash very early in Barry Allen’s Flash career — only six issues into his solo series! Flash vol.1 started with #105, picking up from where the Golden Age Flash Comics left off, and Wally was struck by lightning in Flash #110, back in 1959. He didn’t retire as Kid Flash until very late in Barry’s career, in New Teen Titans #39 — just one year before Barry vanished in 1985.**

So Wally West has been running around for most of Barry’s career plus his own!

Team Player

During his JLA run, Grant Morrison is one of the few writers I can remember really building on the fact that the original Titans grew up as super-heroes. I don’t recall it being a plot point, but Morrison mentioned it in an interview, or possibly one of the Secret Files books, and it clearly factored into his characterization of Wally West. He might not have been as old as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, but he’d been working with a team longer than they had, and he was a consummate professional.

Wally wasn’t the rookie on the team by any stretch. That honor went to Green Lantern Kyle Rayner.

Of course, neither Wally nor Barry can hold a candle to Jay Garrick, who has been speeding since 1940!

*Yes, I do still plan on reviewing it. It was just a busy week, and for some reason, it’s been hard to sit down and write it.

**These are of course the real-world publishing dates. The fictional DC Universe would use a vague “X years ago” timeline that always seems to change, but usually compresses everything from the dawn of the Silver Age onward into a 10-15–year period.

Some Quick Flash Action Figure Updates

5 Replies

Hey all. A couple of cool items are coming down the pipeline very soon.

The Fwoosh has an exclusive first look at the DC Universe Classics Toys ‘R Us Exclusive Flash Repaint. Previously released in Wave 7 as part of the “Atom Smasher” series, the new deco has Barry decked out in a red uniform with gold accents; a look I think we are more used to seeing on Wally or on the old Flash TV Show.

It’s a simple repaint but I think it makes the figure look much bolder. The gold is slick and it translates to reality so much better than the yellow. But of course it’s all a matter of preference. You can find more pictures of the repaint as well as the Hal Jordan Toys ‘R Us Exclusive via The Fwoosh, HERE.

The second Flash figure was actually discovered on eBay a week or so ago by the guys over at DCHallofJustice.com and is also a repaint. JLU Barry Allen anyone?

Like I said it’s pretty much a repaint as far as I can tell, with a Wally head popped on top. While I would have liked a Barry specific sculpt I can completely understand the reason behind not making one; it’s just way easier to throw a Wally head on there and call it a day. Plus with the line appearing to be winding down a bit (although Target will carry Justice League Unlimited Figures through at least the rest of 2010) it doesn’t make sense to be cranking out new sculpts needlessly. I personally might just paint pupils on it myself just so I have another way to differentiate who’s who besides the belt.

With this discovery I’m now even more anxiously awaiting the rumored Jay Garrick coming up later this year. If we can get a box set with the first five Teen Titans before JLU is done completely I will be a very, very happy Flash fan. I’ve been waiting for an animated Kid Flash figure since “Lightspeed” aired a few years ago and since Teen Titans didn’t give us one it’s up to JLU. That is unless the Young Justice Action figures are in scale with JLU. Which I’m taking a wild guess and saying they won’t be.

I’ll hold off on judging them any further until I see them in person but the red and gold Flash is a must buy. The JLU Barry I will have to take another look at, but I’m fairly confident it will end up in my possession sooner rather than later.

Question: Do you prefer yellow or gold as far as the accents on a Flash costume?

Thanks for reading.

–Devin “The Flash” Johnson

Dead Parents and Super-Hero Origins

25 Replies

One last WonderCon post!

At the Comic Arts Conference panel on super-hero origins, James Robinson and Steve Englehart agreed that one of the key elements to a good origin is that it includes the hero’s motivation and a hook that readers can relate to. Robinson cited the Silver-Age Flash as missing that compelling motivation: Okay, he put on a costume to fight crime, but why? Why keep going?

Robinson also talked about why so many heroes have dead parents in their past: the fear of losing a parent is something that any reader can relate to. In fact, when someone asked later in the panel how one could create a good origin, Englehart flippantly replied, “Kill their parents?”

Later in the discussion, the moderator asked about retelling origins. Robinson said he was always wary of destroying what was already there, and preferred to try to add new detail around what already works. He cited Geoff Johns’ revised origin for Barry Allen, in which his mother is killed and his father framed for it, as a successful example.

Personally I disagree. It drastically alters the character’s history, and raises questions of why his history hasn’t changed in other ways, but most importantly, it introduces a cliche that wasn’t present in the original version of the story. If you’re going to revise a story, it seems better to remove overused elements than add them.

The same weekend, the New York Times published an article on the role of parents in young-adult fiction: traditionally, the role of a hero’s parents in classic literature was to die, or at least get out of the way, forcing the protagonist into his journey of self-discovery: the orphan’s “triumphant rise.” (via Neil Gaiman)

Yeah, writers have been using this trope for a long time.