Newsarama interviews Cary Bates about his work on The Flash and Justice League of America back in the 1970s, and his upcoming DC Retroactive specials revisiting those books.
With the books closer to release (DC Retroactive: The Flash: The 70s comes out next week), he’s able to say a little more than he did in our interview back in May, plus of course we weren’t asking him about the JLA! There’s some strange spoilery information about “Son of Grodd,” but what really caught my eye was what Bates said about the timeframe of the DC Retrocative books:
The deadlines for the retro books were very tight, so once I signed on I had to come up with the plots for both books within 24 hours.
24 hours! Wow! I’d gotten the impression that the Retroactive specials were a last-minute addition to the schedule, and this seems to confirm it. My suspicion: After DC decided to push full-steam-ahead on the reboot/relaunch/whatever it actually is, they decided to give the previous versions of the major characters a “last hurrah” before moving on.
When you’re done reading the Newsarama interview, jump back and check out our two-part interview in which Cary Bates talks more about his 1970s Flash run, the Death of Iris Allen, and where The Flash would have gone if it hadn’t been canceled during Crisis on Infinite Earths.
