Tag Archives: Wally West

Flash Transition Timeline

To keep the lengths of time in perspective, I’ve put together this timeline from the end of Geoff Johns’ well-regarded run on The Flash through several relaunches and two Crises to next year’s Flash: Rebirth. I’ve taken the cover dates from the GCD and shifted them back two months, since that seems to track with the release dates that I remember.

Dates Span Issues Description
August 2005 Flash #225 Geoff Johns’ last issue.
September 2005–January 2006 5 months Flash #226–230 Wrap up Wally (Cavalieri w/Lightle)
February–May 2006 4 months No Flash Comics
June 2006–January 2007 8 months Flash: TFMA #1–8 Bart as the main Flash (Bilson & De Meo)
February–June 2007 5 months Flash: TFMA Wrap up Bart (Guggenheim)
July 2007 1 month All-Flash Wrap up loose ends from “Full Throttle”
August 2007–August 2008 13 months Flash #231–243 Wally & the Flash Family (Waid, Peyer w/Champagne)
September–December 2008 4 months Flash #244–247 Wrap up Wally Again (Burnett)
January–March 2009 3 months No Flash Comics
April–September(?) 2009 6 months Flash: Rebirth

So from the point DC essentially gave up on Wally’s series (September 2005) to the point that DC will stake everything on a relaunch with Barry (April 2009, assuming it doesn’t get delayed) we’re looking at 3½ years. The longest run of a series during that time would be All-Flash with Flash #231–347 — just 1½ years, of which barely one year focused heavily on Iris and Jai West. (Alan Burnett or his editor shoved the kids off to the side pretty quickly when he came on board to do the wrap-up.)

Didio: Bart Was a Step in the Road Back to Barry

An interesting revelation from the latest 20 Questions with Dan Didio at Newsarama. He’s previously claimed (though many fans remained unconvinced) that Bart Allen’s death in Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13 was planned from the start, but we’ve got a new twist. Here’s part of his answer to question #15:

Bart was always going to go away, and I think the mistake was that we probably pulled Bart a little too soon, but quite honestly again, that was the problem of lining stories up with Countdown. The Bart story was due to be extended a little bit longer, but due to how things were lining up, he had to leave sooner.

That story’s not complete yet. We’re going to see more of what that story was about shortly – it was always the plan for Bart. He was going to be the Flash of the moment as we made our way back to Barry. [emphasis added]

Okay, not a big surprise that they shuffled things around to match with Countdown.* But am I reading that right? Is he saying that they planned to bring Barry Allen back as long ago as Infinite Crisis? Didio continues:

I think Mark Waid did an admirable job of stepping in and trying to find a different slant to Wally and the family, which we found out, was a more difficult story to tell than when we planned it. I think Mark did as best a job as possible – he put so much thought and effort into fleshing out that family, and I think we have a couple of rich characters in the children because of that.

This is the other thing that gets confusing, depending on who tells it: When was the plan made for Wally to return, and when was the plan made for Bart to be killed? Mark Waid’s interview in The Flash Companion suggests that he, at least was led to believe that Bart’s move up to lead Flash was intended to be indefinite, not a fill-in gig, though he predicted it wouldn’t catch on. And Didio’s remarks here about Waid “stepping in” suggest that they did bring him on unexpectedly — though that could simply be the result of moving up the timetable. (Which, now that I think about it, might explain artist Daniel Acuña’s sudden departure.)

I’ll agree with Didio on this: the West Twins are promising characters, even if most of the comics readership seems to want to throw them under a bus.

But at the end of the day, there’s a certain expectation of what a Flash story is, and what you want to see in a Flash comic book. While we expanded the Flash family, people really wanted to see the Flash.

And that seems to have been the main criticism of issues #231–243: Not enough of the Flash in The Flash.

But the goal for me, always, was to get back to Barry in the same way the goal was to get back to Hal in Green Lantern.

Whoa, hold on a second. Now he is saying that they were planning to bring Barry back from the beginning?

Well why didn’t they do that in the first place?

Seriously, Infinite Crisis would have been a perfect time to bring Barry back. Sure, a lot of us would have been pissed off that they were getting rid of Wally just because it was a Crisis and going back to Barry just so that they could bring back the guy who was the Flash when they were twelve — but you know what, we’re pissed off anyway. Plus we’ve got the frustration of three years of mismanaged Flash stories on top of that.

So, to sum up: DC considered Bart as a temp from the beginning. And DC never had any intention of bringing Wally back after they kicked Bart out, at least not as the primary Flash. It was all about Barry from the start.

*I find it amusing — in a banging-my-head-against-the-wall way — that people were so annoyed with the way some stories were stretched out during Countdown for the sake of lining books up, and people are annoyed now with Final Crisis because they’re not trying to line everything up.

Creative Consistency

Edit: This has been restructured and rewritten a bit to make the post come off a bit less personally, since that wasn’t the intention.

Groovy Superhero is running a series on The World’s Fastest Cancellation, looking at the way the series has been relaunched over and over since Geoff Johns 2005. The Flash has had a remarkably consistent writing credit over the years, until Geoff Johns left the book in 2005 to do Infinite Crisis.

Wally Before Geoff

One thing the author of that series said got me thinking about the series’ creative history: In part one, he or she writes about the book after Geoff Johns left it:

The Flash…was relegated to the status he had endured throughout most of the ’90s: a “who needs work?” book, being tossed around from creator to creator

Tossed around from creator to creator? True of the last three years, but certainly not true of the 1990s. William Messner-Loebs wrote the book for four years from 1988–1992. Mark Waid* took over in 1992 and stayed on until 2000 (Brian Augustyn joining him officially halfway through after several years as editor and an uncredited co-writer), with a one-year break during which he wrote JLA: Year One and Grant Morrison and Mark Millar filled in. In fact, if you count the Morrison/Millar run as a main creative team, there’s a grand total of only five issues by fill-in writers** from #1 to #225 (the end of Geoff Johns’ run), covering 1987–2005.

Long-Term Consistency

If you go further back, Gardner Fox wrote most of the Golden Age books, with Robert Kanigher coming in near the end. John Broome wrote most of the Silver Age, with Fox and Kanigher. There was a transition period in the late 1960s, and then Cary Bates wrote nearly every issue from the early 1970s through 1985.

Three main writers from 1940-1970. One from 1970-1985. Five writers or writing teams from 1987-2005. (I’m lumping the Waid/Augustyn and Waid solo runs together. Same with the Morrison/Millar and Millar solo books.)

Now let’s look at the book after Geoff Johns left in 2005:
4 issues by Joey Cavalieri
8 by Danny Bilson & Paul De Meo
5 by Marc Guggenheim
7 by Mark Waid
6 by Tom Peyer
4 by Alan Burnett
2 one-shots

Six writing teams in three years, and a couple of one-offs.

Flash or Thrash?

Following Johns’ final issue, it’s clear they had already decided to axe the book, since all that remained was one stand-alone story that had been sitting on the shelf and the 4-part “Finish Line,” which was clearly intended (like the current “This Was Your Life, Wally West”) to wrap up the series.

Then DC proceeded to throw lead characters, creative teams, and creative directions at the wall haphazardly, hoping something would stick. How could anything gain traction with that much churn?

In my opinion, given that DC is already committed to relaunching the series with Flash: Rebirth, the best thing DC could do to build the book back up would be to keep Geoff Johns on after the miniseries, and give him at least a year to establish the series tone, direction, and at least one long-term arc. Then make sure that whoever follows him is sufficiently high-profile not to scare readers off, and won’t simply throw everything out and start over.

Notes

*By part 5, he explains that “Waid’s main contributions to the Flash mythos were to introduce Wall and Wife Linda’s twins.” Now, I would assume that he meant Waid’s contributions this time around, but given the remark in part 1 about the series being a dumping ground of random writers in the 1990s, I have to wonder whether the writer in question is simply not familiar with Waid’s eight-year run, or that it established the Wally/Linda relationship, introduced the Speed Force, built up a family of speedsters, spun off an Impulse/Max Mercury book, and really established the Flash as once again being a major player after 60-odd issues of the B-list.

**Those fill-ins would be:
#29: Len Strazewski (1989)
#151: Joe Casey (1999)
#160: Brian Augustyn solo, not sure you can properly call it a fill-in. (2000)
#161: Pat McGreal (2000)
#163: Pat McGreal (2000)

Flash Ending With #247

With Barry Allen back, sales slipping, and a recent history of backtracks and revamps that makes a drowning victims’s flailing look stately, it was clear months ago that change was coming. Once Flash: Rebirth was announced, the only question was: when would the axe fall?

At the time the current storyline, “This Was Your Life, Wally West,” was announced, the story’s conclusion seemed a likely candidate. But #247 was solicited without any indication that it would be the final issue. Speculation started again, that there might be a single Faces of Evil issue spotlighting a Rogue, or that it might end with a blow-out issue #250, or might stop at #249, with the new, relaunched series combining numbers and relaunching with #600.

Today, DC Message Board member adohall posted that he received a letter from DC as a subscriber that Flash would be ending with #247, and he would need to choose another book to replace it on his subscription. Update: Comic Bloc’s Mark MacMillan confirms that he received the same letter.

It seems that Monday’s solicitations for January will have a distinct lack of Flashiness.

Review: Flash #245: “Invasion”

Last month I was pleasantly surprised to find the first issue of the four-part “This Was Your Life, Wally West” was quite good — in fact, the strongest opening chapter of a Flash arc in years. So does part two hold up?

For the most part, yes, with some reservations. Admittedly, I read it right after reading the conclusion of Rogues’ Revenge, which is a tough act to follow.

Carlo Barberi (Impulse, Casey Blue) replaces Paco Diaz on the art an issue earlier than expected. He’s dialed down his usual style to the point that it actually took me several pages to recognize it, but once I knew what to look for it was instantly identifiable. It works better for Flash than I expected, though he isn’t quite as effective as Diaz at making the deadly bee weapon genuinely scary. (They still appear as a credible threat, despite Amazons Attack.)

This issue brings in guest stars galore, both in the present day and in flashbacks, linking Wally’s two super-teams: the original Teen Titans, and the Justice League of America. Members of both (and the JSA) show up to help him deal with the new development revealed in part 1, while the Titans appear in a retrospective of his Kid Flash career.

It seems thematically appropriate to team up the Flash and Black Lightning: someone who got his powers by being struck by lightning, and someone who generates electricity. Similarly, Red Arrow, while serving as a literal link between the two teams, was once known as Speedy — a name that would have worked just as well for a young speedster as it did for an archer with quick reflexes.

Spoilers after the cut: Continue reading

Quick Link: EVS on Flash: Rebirth

Newsarama spoke with Ethan Van Sciver at Mid-Ohio Con this weekend, and he talked about Flash: Rebirth. Some highlights:

But this is not just about Barry Allen’s return; this is about the Flash’s rebirth. This is the entire Flash legacy, all of the friends and neighbors, and bringing them all back and giving them a purpose and a new sort of lease on life. So even though Barry Allen has already appeared in Final Crisis, and was brought back in Final Crisis, which saved us a little bit of work, you’ll still see many long-lost friends. And you’ll be happy to see them again — some for the first time in ages.

And on Wally’s new costume:

He will have a very interesting and exciting new costume that will establish his own unique identity in the Flash Universe. When you see it, it will be instantly familiar. Nobody’s going to freak out. It’s not suddenly blue. He’s not reverting to the costume he wore as an infant, or as Kid Flash. It’s just a handy new look that fits right in, just like everything I’ve done. I just try to keep everything so that it looks like I didn’t create it. It was already there.