Tag Archives: Ethan van Sciver

Word Balloon interviews EVS on Flash: Rebirth

The latest Word Balloon podcast interviews artist Ethan Van Sciver on his role in Flash: Rebirth. Newsarama has posted selected quotes, including this:

I’ve been talking about bring Barry back for years. He’s been dead for 23 years I think we’ve paid sufficient homage to the greatness of the original Crisis…you know there’s still great stories to tell about this character let’s bring him back NOW. He’s a crime scene investigator, and we can tell stories in a pg-13 way that couldn’t be done in the silver age.

People are going to focus on Barry Allen being back …but really what Flash Rebirth is about is restoring the entire Flash mythos. We want to realign everything up again, have it all make sense, and make it more palatable for every Flash fan. The Flash mythos is only partly understood now…There’s going to be a big map that explains concepts that people already kind of have an inkling about, will be totally explained therein.

I’m going to have to listen to this later.

Linkage: Ethan Van Sciver on the Future of Wally West

9 Replies

CBR reports on last week’s Spotlight on Ethan Van Sciver at Comic-Con. Among other things, he talked about redesigning Wally West’s costume and how he sees the personalities of Barry Allen and Wally West.

“I’m redesigning Wally West’s costume right now, and it’s terrifying.” While Sinestro’s costume, with its seemingly random blue color and “jester collar,” was ready for a redesign in Van Sciver’s eyes, “Wally West is the most perfectly designed costume ever, aside from Green Lantern’s costume, in my opinion.” Van Sciver said the challenge was to redo the costume without either making it less cool or more cool than Barry Allen’s and thus implying that one character is better than the other.

“I want Barry to come back and be King Arthur. He’s the most straight-laced, perfect Flash, rigid in his morality and his ethics,” making the looser, cooler, more laid-back Wally a Lancelot figure. Van Sciver told the audience “Kick me in the ass if I fail.”

So there’s at least some hope for Wally fans that he won’t be totally shoved off to the side. Maybe.

On the other hand, he also confirmed that the monthly Flash series will “stop” for Flash: Rebirth. How it will be relaunched afterward — picking up where it left off, or where Barry’s series left off — or with a new #1 — he wouldn’t say.

Johns & Van Sciver on Flash: Rebirth

3 Replies

DC has announced that Geoff Johns and Ethan van Sciver are working on Flash: Rebirth, starring Barry Allen. It’s a 5-issue miniseries starting in January. Some quick linkblogging:

Speed Force: LiveBlogging DC Nation (where the announcement was made).

Newsarama: SDCC ’08 – Johns & Van Sciver Talk Flash: Rebirth.

CBR: CCI: Johns and Van Sciver Team Up for “The Flash: Rebirth”.

Flash @ DC Nation (San Diego) — Barry Allen: Rebirth

3 Replies

I’m in the DC Nation panel, and it looks like wifi is working. Dan Didio just walked up on stage and walked back off.

I won’t be trying to post everything as it happens, but any Flash-related stuff will go up as quickly as I can type it.

Dan Didio, Judd Winick, Keith Giffen.

It just hit me that I’m liveblogging something.

Geoff Johns & Ethan Van Sciver are working on Barry Allen: Rebirth. Bunch of applause.

More people on stage.

Talking about Trinity.

Someone in the audience said something like “Thanks for bringing back the best Flash.” So Didio responded, let’s settle this, and had the audience vote. About equal applause for Barry, Wally, Bart. Almost as much for Jay. Someone shouted out, “Flash Thompson!”

Polling panelists:

Bill Willingham – “The guy in the flower delivery hat”
Peter Tomasi – Flash Gordon
Barry
Greg Rucka? – Pass
Jay Garrick
Jann Jones – “I’m the coordinating editor, not the story editor”
Bob Wayne – Jay
Mike Carlin – Flash Flood
Keith Giffen – (didn’t catch his answer)
Judd Winick – Quicksilver
Johns & Van Sciver: All of them!

Barry Allen: Rebirth or Flash: Rebirth is due in January. [Note: Final Crisis and Alan Burnett’s arc on Flash, “This Was Your Life, Wally West,” both end in December.]

Talk about Batman: RIP.

Kevin Smith walks in — huge audience reaction. Doing a Batman mini, Cacophony. Joking about how it’ll take 6 years.

Turning over to questions.

“Does that mean ‘Crisis’ is done?…are we going to use ‘calamity’ next?”

Fan to GJ: Just read RR, loved it. “When are you and Kolins coming back? It’s been a mess.” GJ: “Ethan and I are doing Flash: Rebirth. So we are coming back.” [Note: This doesn’t say anything about whether they’re staying after Rebirth, or just coming in to fix it.]

Fan asks what went wrong with Countdown. DD wants to know what we thought was broken about it. “If we don’t know what the problems are, we can’t address them. We can’t fix them.”

DD: “One of the things we wanted to do with Countdown was to try to be completely different from 52. Obviously we succeeded.”

Elseworlds: Mike (Carlin?) & Cary Bates on one project.

Fan: “If I’m allowed one man-crush on a team, Geoff & Ethan.”

DD re: Justice League movie: “No plans at this time.”

Fan: Crisis books keep scaring people off by killing characters off. Will you bring Rainbow Raider back? Geoff: “Sure, I’ll bring him back.” (Not clear how serious.)

Fan: Really excited about Barry — how will you distinguish them? Geoff: Read the book. (Longer, but that’s basically what he said.)

Geoff JOhns will be staying on GL after “Blackest Night.”

OK, I’m off to dinner.

Related: Vaneta Rogers at Newsarama interviewed Johns & Van Sciver about Flash: Rebirth. (Thanks to Stormking at Comic Bloc.)

Wednesday in San Diego

5 Replies

My first post on San Diego Comic-Con is up. Flash report: A dozen or so people in Flash T-shirts around the hall…plus every single member of the DC Booth staff. (This probably doesn’t mean anything — they’ll probably all be in GL shirts tomorrow, Wonder Woman on Friday, Superman on Saturday, and Batman on Sunday. But I found it interesting.) I also spotted Ethan van Sciver as he drew a sketch for the last person in the line.

Ethan van Sciver at Wizard World

1 Reply

Newsarama’s Vaneta Rogers spoke with Ethan van Sciver at Wizard World Chicago last week about his upcoming projects, including Green Lantern: Blackest Night with Geoff Johns and an untitled Wonder Woman project with Gail Simone. They also discussed the rumors of an upcoming Flash project with Geoff Johns.

The artist had just come from a DC panel where Dan DiDio seemed to always turn to him to answer any question about The Flash. We asked: Why is that?

“Because he’s a sadist, deep down. He even told me that. He said, “I just like to see you squirm.’ I honestly have no idea. He likes to get the rumors going,” Van Sciver said.

We talked about the rumor mill and how most fans think his upcoming “secret project” with Geoff Johns is either Aquaman or The Flash.

“Aquaman’s leading the pack?” Van Sciver said in obviously feigned surprise….

The mysterious van Sciver/Johns project — whether it’s Flash, Aquaman, or something else — will be announced in San Diego later this month.

More at Newsarama.

Ethan van Sciver is no stranger to the Flash, having worked with Geoff Johns on the 2001 graphic novel The Flash: Iron Heights (now collected in the second edition of Flash: Blood Will Run, released earlier this year). He also worked on Impulse with Todd Dezago, where he helped create Inertia, and did several covers for The Flash in 2004 and for The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive in 2007.