Flash: Rebirth artist Ethan Van Sciver’s latest Your Time is Now Mine column features, as promised last week, a sneak peek at the miniseries’ artwork.
Hmm, looks like Barry Allen visiting the Flash Museum in his secret identity.
Click through for a larger image and lots of random commentary.
Flash: Rebirth #1 of 6 ships in April 2009.
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
To keep the lengths of time in perspective, I’ve put together this timeline from the end of Geoff Johns’ well-regarded run on The Flash through several relaunches and two Crises to next year’s Flash: Rebirth. I’ve taken the cover dates from the GCD and shifted them back two months, since that seems to track with the release dates that I remember.
| Dates | Span | Issues | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2005 | Flash #225 | Geoff Johns’ last issue. | ||
| September 2005–January 2006 | 5 months | Flash #226–230 | Wrap up Wally (Cavalieri w/Lightle) | |
| February–May 2006 | 4 months | No Flash Comics | ||
| June 2006–January 2007 | 8 months | Flash: TFMA #1–8 | Bart as the main Flash (Bilson & De Meo) | |
| February–June 2007 | 5 months | Flash: TFMA | Wrap up Bart (Guggenheim) | |
| July 2007 | 1 month | All-Flash | Wrap up loose ends from “Full Throttle” | |
| August 2007–August 2008 | 13 months | Flash #231–243 | Wally & the Flash Family (Waid, Peyer w/Champagne) | |
| September–December 2008 | 4 months | Flash #244–247 | Wrap up Wally Again (Burnett) | |
| January–March 2009 | 3 months | No Flash Comics | ||
| April–September(?) 2009 | 6 months | Flash: Rebirth | ||
So from the point DC essentially gave up on Wally’s series (September 2005) to the point that DC will stake everything on a relaunch with Barry (April 2009, assuming it doesn’t get delayed) we’re looking at 3½ years. The longest run of a series during that time would be All-Flash with Flash #231–347 — just 1½ years, of which barely one year focused heavily on Iris and Jai West. (Alan Burnett or his editor shoved the kids off to the side pretty quickly when he came on board to do the wrap-up.)
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.
Newsarama spoke with Ethan Van Sciver at Mid-Ohio Con this weekend, and he talked about Flash: Rebirth. Some highlights:
But this is not just about Barry Allen’s return; this is about the Flash’s rebirth. This is the entire Flash legacy, all of the friends and neighbors, and bringing them all back and giving them a purpose and a new sort of lease on life. So even though Barry Allen has already appeared in Final Crisis, and was brought back in Final Crisis, which saved us a little bit of work, you’ll still see many long-lost friends. And you’ll be happy to see them again — some for the first time in ages.
And on Wally’s new costume:
He will have a very interesting and exciting new costume that will establish his own unique identity in the Flash Universe. When you see it, it will be instantly familiar. Nobody’s going to freak out. It’s not suddenly blue. He’s not reverting to the costume he wore as an infant, or as Kid Flash. It’s just a handy new look that fits right in, just like everything I’ve done. I just try to keep everything so that it looks like I didn’t create it. It was already there.
One interesting surprise buried in The Flash Companion is the fact that during the development for the 1990 Flash TV Series, CBS wanted to cast Jack Coleman as Barry Allen. Yes, Heroes‘ very own Noah Bennet, the man with the horn-rimmed glasses.
From the interview with Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo:
BILSON: You know what? The network offered the role to Jack Coleman, who used to be on Dynasty, and he wouldn’t do it because he wouldn’t wear the suit. That’s what I remember.
So what might Coleman have been like as Barry?
Here’s Barry Allen from his first appearance in Showcase #4, alongside a picture of Jack Coleman from Dynasty a couple of years before The Flash went on the air, and another picture of him as today’s audience would recognize him.
Well, he certainly would have looked the part!
Also, John Wesley Shipp was Bilson & De Meo’s second choice for the role. Their first was Richard Burgi, who went on to lead the duo’s later show, The Sentinel. CBS went with Shipp because, in the network head’s words (according to De Meo), “I can see that guy on a lunchbox.”
Image sources: Barry Allen scanned from The Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told, art by Carmine Infantino and Joe Kubert. Dynasty photo via Heroes The Series. Heroes photo via BuddyTV.