Tag Archives: Cobalt Blue

The Flash vs…Barry Allen? The Bronze-Age Origin of Cobalt Blue

It can't be! The man about to murder my next-door neighbor...is me!

Most Flash readers, if they know about Cobalt Blue at all, know him as a new character introduced in the second half of the Mark Waid/Brian Augustyn run on The Flash in 1999. They might know that his link to Barry Allen was hinted at in The Life Story of the Flash and the first Flash Secret Files (both 1997), or that two Cobalt Blues appeared in the 1997 Speed Force special.

But Cobalt Blue’s origins can be traced all the way back to 1980!

Let’s return to the Bronze Age of comics. Continue reading →

Cobalt Blue, Classic Rogue?

21 Replies

“Chain Lightning” (Flash #143–150, including the lead-in) is a polarizing Flash storyline. Some fans love the look into the future of the Flash legacy. Others can’t stand that it hinges on Barry having an evil twin. (I’ve never been entirely sure how much of the objection is to the evil twin trope in general, or to the fact that Cobalt Blue is Barry’s evil twin.) Even Mark Waid admits that it didn’t work, though he maintains in The Flash Companion that the idea was sound, he just screwed up on the execution.

But then I had a thought: What if Cobalt Blue had appeared during the Silver Age instead of the late 1990s?

The evil twin trope hadn’t been discredited yet, so there would have been few objections on that basis. And with Barry as the new, current Flash rather than a fond memory, there would be no sense that DC was tarnishing a cherished hero’s legacy.

Consider: The Flash’s opposite number, who could have had his life but for a twist of fate, who fights against the law instead of for it, who uses magic instead of science. There’s some solid appeal there. And being a conceptual opposite makes him fill a different role than the Reverse-Flash, who is basically the Flash, but evil. (Sort of like Savitar vs. Zoom)

Obviously the big 6-issue epics didn’t exist back then, but I can imagine Chain Lightning as a recurring type of story, where once a year or so, the Flash has to go into the future to help another future Flash fight that generation’s Cobalt Blue.

So…

Is Cobalt Blue that much worse a name than Captain Cold, Professor Zoom, Pied Piper or Abra Kadabra? (Admittedly, Waid says in the same interview that he wanted to use the name Wildfire, but DC nixed it.)

Is a literal evil twin that much harder to swallow than a clone (Inertia), a mimic who has been known to alter his appearance to match the original (Professor Zoom), the product of an imperfect duplicator ray (Bizarro), or an alternate universe version (Ultraman)?

Is the concept that much more hokey than a gang boss who dresses as a clown (Joker), a talking telepathic gorilla (Grodd), a villain who spins (The Top), runs around in a parka and snow goggles in the heat of summer (Captain Cold), or throws trick boomerangs (Captain Boomerang, of course)? Look at the reactions to Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge from people who don’t read The Flash. They were surprised to find that the Rogues were compelling characters. Readers outside the Flash fanbase look at the Rogues’ names, costumes, and powers and figure that they’re nothing but lame jokes, but when used properly, they transcend the cheese factor.

What do you think? Am I totally off-base here, or could Cobalt Blue have worked as a classic Silver-Age villain?

(Originally posted October 2008. Expanded from a remark I posted on Twitter earlier, itself condensed from a post on Comic Bloc in response to Heatwave the Rogue’s assertion that Cobalt Blue is the Mopee of the modern era.)

Covers: It Can’t Be…YOU?!

3 Replies

As it turns out, the Flash was right. The man removing his mask in the prologue to “Chain Lightning” wasn’t who Wally thought he was at first. But Cobalt Blue certainly looked like the classic Scarlet Speedster! (Flash v.2 #144, 1999).

Interestingly enough, the series returned to the cover concept less than a year later during the Dark Flash saga, reversing the lighting, the angle…and who was doing unmasking. (Flash v.2 #154, 1999) Continue reading →

Archive: 5 Possible Candidates for The Flash: Rebirth Mystery Villain

Leave a reply

Originally published as a guest post on The Weekly Crisis, on June 9, 2009. Imported here after that site shut down.

The biggest question in Flash: Rebirth so far — after “What’s up with Barry’ Allens parents?” and “How the heck did Barry come back, anyway?” — is “Who is the mystery villain?”

The very first scene in issue one is a break-in at a Central City crime lab: an unseen assailant kills the CSIs and re-creates the lightning-and-chemical accident that transformed Barry Allen into the Flash. In his internal monologue, he “speaks” as if he knows Barry Allen and even claims to have brought Barry back from the dead — and that it was the worst thing he could have done to him. It’s not likely that Geoff Johns is introducing an entirely new character. So, who might he be?

What we know for sure: He’s a man, has white hair, and carries a staff tipped with a lightning-bolt-shaped blade at each end. In short, not much. Also worth noting, Barry has picked up a new, traumatic backstory, which Geoff Johns has hinted is part of a crime committed against the Flash — in short, deliberate manipulation of history. One page of the preview for issue #3 also suggests a time traveler may be involved.

There’s been a lot of discussion on various message boards and around the web about the possible candidates and I’m sure everyone’s been wondering just who the mystery villain is. As such, I’ve put together my own list of candidates and reasons why each makes sense. Hit the jump to find out who made my short list of suspects!

Continue reading →