Happy Halloween, everyone! Here’s the cover to Impulse #44 (January 1999) by Craig Rousseau and Wayne Faucher, featuring everyone’s favorite hyperactive teen speedster bringing home treats from around the world… much to his guardian Max Mercury’s dismay. (cover image via GCD)
This week’s Flash appearances include Justice League of America — as Impulse! — a Justice Society of America trade paperback, and possibly DCU: Decisions and Trinity.
Written by Dwayne McDuffie; Art and Cover by Ed Benes
The JLA stands helpless against the power of Anansi, the African spider god who has warped their histories. Vixen makes her final stand, brokering a deal with the powerful villain. But will she be forced to sacrifice the JLA and Animal Man? Or does her last-ditch effort mean something far worse?
[Note: Yes, that’s Impulse on the cover!]
Written by Geoff Johns Cover by Alex Ross; Art by Dale Eaglesham, Art Thibert and Ruy Jose
The book collecting the first four issues of JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA is now available in trade paperback! Determined to rebuild the Justice Society, Green Lantern, Flash and Wildcat initiate a recruitment program, tracking heroes across the world and bringing in the new Starman, Damage, Liberty Belle and more!
Also likely candidates for Flash appearances: DC Universe: Decisions #4 (conclusion of the miniseries) and Trinity.
Collected Editions has obtained DC’s advance TPB solicitations for Fall 2009, including a big surprise in speedster collections:
The Flash (featuring Impulse): Mercury Falling
It’s been years since any of Impulse was collected (Impulse: Reckless Youth
), and that was only the first few issues. Mercury Falling, which ran from Impulse #62-66, was the major epic from the Todd Dezago/Ethan Van Sciver run on the book, and featured Inertia’s master plan, Max Mercury facing almost certain death, and Bart being forced to confront the fact that his mentor and guardian might not be around much longer, while desperately trying to find a way to save him.
It actually ties in quite well thematically with the recent stories in Flash and Rogues’ Revenge.
The title is a bit odd, considering that the Flash doesn’t appear in the story at all (that I remember), but it follows the same pattern as other recent collections of lesser-known characters, like JSA Presents: Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. Get the main franchise with the recognized name out there first, then add the original title of the book.
Update: Amazon now lists this as being released on May 12, 2009.
Comics of the 1990s have gotten a bad rap. A lot of people look at them and see only the holofoil cover gimmicks, interminable summer crossovers (which are back), everyone trying to ape the Image style with humongous shoulder pads and spikes, mullets, Spider-Clones, Electric Superman, Emerald Twilight, and “kewl” revamps.
But there were also a lot of very good comics being published at the time, and everyone was trying new things. Sure, some of them didn’t work (like Bloodlines or Fate), but some of them did (like Starman). This list is going to be heavily DC, since that’s what I was reading at the time, but this is the decade that brought us: Continue reading
TwoMorrows’ book, The Flash Companion is now available! It debuted at Comic-Con last week, Amazon orders have been shipping, and it’s been showing up in stores.
Here’s one more excerpt to round out the quartet of Scarlet Speedsters. As with the others, it’s posted here with permission of the book’s main author, Keith Dallas.
By John Wells
WELLS: Why call him “Impulse,” rather than “Kid Flash”?
WAID: Because it was a perfect name. We didn’t want to call him “Kid Flash” because it sounded a little corny, and I still think it sounds a little corny. “Impulse” is the perfect confluence of a character’s name, his powers, and his personality, all in one word. And once we had the name — and I can’t swear it wasn’t Kurt Busiek’s suggestion — it completely summed up the character. Thought to deed in one motion without all those pesky synapses getting in the way.
WELLS: [laughs] It really did. Whose idea was that hair?
WAID: I think it was Humberto’s. Pure Humberto [Ramos]. Mike Wieringo had done the initial costume design, without the mask, but boy, Humberto went to town with the look, with the giant hair and the gigantic feet.
WELLS: Now kind of earlier on, you’d had the Tornado Twins revived in 1991’s Legion of Super-Heroes #18 and immediately had them executed by the Dominators.
WAID: [chuckles] “You” meaning “the Legion editors and writers after you left staff.” Don’t look at me, man.
WELLS: And later on, their DNA created a female speedster called Rush. And meantime, Don Allen was said to have been survived by his wife, Carmen Johnson and their two-year old son, Barry II. So what came first? You said you had the teen speedster idea for the Justice League story []earlier in the interview], was that before or after?
WAID: A little after, so that would have been the “Barry II” that we were talking about at the time, I suppose. But at that point, we were going to reboot the Legion with Zero Hour, so I knew that all bets were off in terms of Rush and those characters. It also freed up the name “Impulse,” which I believe was the codename of —
WELLS: Kent Shakespeare.
WAID: Kent Shakespeare, yeah.
WELLS: Iris brought Bart back to the 20th Century in the hope that Wally could cure her grandson, but she also wanted Wally to rein in Bart and train him in the use of his powers. Why was that not going to work?
WAID: It was so not going to work because Bart and Wally just hated each other. Wally saw in Impulse all of his own negative characteristics, so it put his teeth on edge.
WELLS: On the other hand, Max [Mercury] and Bart did work out pretty well, even though they didn’t think it was going to. How did you see that relationship?
WAID: We went into the Impulse series not sure who the mentor figure was going to be. And for a long time, I think we were talking about it being Jay, but Jay has his wife, Joan, and I don’t know what they could have brought to the series that wouldn’ t have been Ma and Pa Kent. Making Bart’s mentor Max, somebody who was so dry and so much the opposite of Bart, was too much comic potential to let go.
On Friday afternoon at Comic-Con, I went over to Artists’ Alley to see if I could commission a sketch of Impulse from Todd Nauck (Young Justice). He was talking with someone, and they kept talking for something like 5 minutes. When he walked away, it turned out that the guy he’d been talking to was Carlo Barberi — who drew Impulse during most of Todd Dezago’s run!
I talked to Todd Nauck briefly, and asked for the sketch, but I had a panel to get to so I couldn’t pick it up. I went back Saturday around 1:00 or so to pick it up. He was doing a sketch of Secret for someone else. He mentioned that when he started doing Young Justice, he was a huge Impulse fan, but got to really like the other characters over the course of his run on the book. By the end, Wonder Girl had become one of his favorites, because of all the character growth he got to portray.
See also: Autograph/Sketch Tally: SDCC 2008