Promotional art for the Flash #0 issue – yes, the zero issues, going back to look at character origins and history, have been confirmed for September. Asked about surprises, Dan Didio lists several books that have done better than expected, finishing with, “And honestly, ‘Flash’ has been doing stronger now than it did prior to the launch of the New 52.”
First off, sorry for the lack of updates last week. Sometimes, life gets too busy to blog.
There’s been a lot of talk about Wally West since C2E2 panels brought up the usual non-answers, and a Bleeding Cool reporter accidentally asked Dan Didio about Wally.
He explained that fans had grown up with Wally West, seen him get married and have children and with the de-aging of Barry Allen, it would cheat those fans who grew to love Wally to de-age him as well.
As a justification, it’s a bit disingenuous. “We shouldn’t do to Wally what we did to Barry” kind of suggests that maybe they shouldn’t have done it to Barry either. And while there’s something to “We’re making your favorite character go away because we know you wouldn’t like what we do with him,” it seems like it would rank right up there with “I don’t want to ruin our friendship by dating you” on phrases that people like to hear.
At Boston Comic Con, Francis Manapul mentioned a rejected a Wally cameo that he tried to put into an early issue of the New 52 Flash.
He doesn’t say how Wally would have appeared, and frankly, that’s a problem in itself. A few months ago when I met Brian Buccellato at a signing, he pointed out that having Barry Allen young and Bart Allen as Kid Flash kind of squeezes out Wally: Wally should be somewhere between Barry and Bart. But if Barry never died, and Bart’s already Kid Flash, where does that leave Wally?
There’s just no room for Wally West in the DCnU.
I kind of suspect that’s by design: A lot of Didio’s statements line up with that first panel of Comic Critics up above (though I’m sure he did watch Justice League Unlimited – and note the reference to the same nostalgia cycle I talked about recently), and he’s often talked about how Barry Allen is “more iconic” and otherwise superior to Wally West. I’ve long thought, cynically, that “more iconic” means “the version I grew up with,” but as I mull over the words reported by Bleeding Cool, I think it means something else. Continue reading
At Comic-Con’s Sunday “The New 52” panel, Dan Didio stated that he’d wanted to reboot the DC Universe for five years, since Infinite Crisis*, but that the time didn’t seem right. Why not? And why is it happening now?
It makes more sense to tie it to Infinite Crisis: follow up a classic universe-changing event with a new universe-changing event 20 years later and usher in a new “age” of DC comics.
It seems clear that his plans morphed into One Year Later. Like the New 52, it was an attempt to establish a new status quo and provide a new jumping-on point for the entire line.
Something else Didio wanted to do with Infinite Crisis was bring back Barry Allen. He was coy about it for several years, but in the DC Nation column that ran the week of the last issue of Wally West’s Flash series, he explained that he’d wanted to bring Barry back with Infinite Crisis, but things didn’t work out, so they set up Bart instead. Then he’d wanted to bring Barry back in The Lightning Saga, but again, things didn’t work out, so they brought Wally back instead.
So what does it mean that things didn’t work out? Continue reading
DC released a lot of information over the weekend in San Diego, which I’ve pieced together from CBR, Newsarama, and reports from fans’ conversations with Dan Didio, Francis Manapul and others.
Continue reading
DC has four sessions on The New 52 at Comic-Con, and it sounds like they’re presenting on a different chunk of their line each day. The Flash wasn’t in today’s presentation, but people asked about it during the Q&A session. More specifically, people asked about the fate of Wally West, and for once, Dan Didio actually gave a straight answer.
From CBR’s coverage:
Asked about Wally West and his family, DiDio said “there are no plans for Wally West in the ‘Flash,'” because that series is about the “uniqueness of who [Barry Allen] is and how he moves through the world.”
Newsarama has a little more detail:
A fan who liked the multiple generations of speedsters asked about Wally West and his family in the DCnU
DiDio: “Right now there are no plans for Wally West in the new Flash series”
The series focuses on the uniqueness of how someone who moves and thinks near the speed of light lives.
Q: “I’m here to still talk about Wally West…”
DiDio: “okay…”
Fan: “Last year you said you took Wally off the table so Barry could be the sole focus, and now you’re still saying that again.”
DiDio: “We did say that last year cause we did want to build Barry Allen up as much as possible, and this year with the relaunch even more so”
Fan: “How does that work when you have four Robins running around?”
DiDio: “I think we could do that with all the characters” He ended the conversation by saying “I think we’ll be sticking with Barry for awhile.”
As you might imagine, I have some thoughts on this. I’m going to save them for later so that I can collect them properly.
If I go into a McDonalds and say “Hey, I love your McRibwiches. I don’t always see them all the time, though. When are you guys bringing back the McRibwich?”
the manager doesn’t flip me off and say “The McRibwich sucks, buy a Big Mac.”
— Comic Bloc message board poster Stephen Henel writes on DC’s approach to “Where’s Wally?” inquiries in a discussion of Flash #10.