We gather today to say good-bye to
Bartholomew
Henry
Allen.
Today is the day he disappears from the CW universe.
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| Trapped forever in the otherworldly dimension called "Broadway". |
Fortunately, in the DCU Proper Barry hasn't disappeared!
Oh, wait....
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| He kind of has. Into DCU's upstate farm of "the multiverse". |
He's not DEAD (any more). But recently the forces for Wally-nostalgia have won out, and, in the DCU's most recent multiversal soft reboot, "The Flash" title (both the name and the series) have (once again) gone to Wally West. And his wife and his kids and some girl in China and Max Mercury and (*snort*) "Inspector Pilgrim" and Impulse and (<eyeroll>) Ickto, and the Linear Men and a whole lot of other nonsense being spewed by some writer (Si Spurrier) who CLEARLY read (and worshipped) too much Grant Morrison in their youth.
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| "What?" indeed. |
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| Thanks for whatever that is, Lovecraft-lover who wants to write The Doom Patrol. |
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| Hermes save me from writers with a Kirby-pun fetish. "This trade" is one no sane person will be buying in the future (which you have erased). |
But even in literary world lousy with speedsters,
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| Somebody needs to outlaw new speedsters. I mean, someone in OUR world, not Amanda Waller, who for the first time in my life, I agree with. |
two things remain constant.
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| Wally's always in over his head, and... |
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| Barry's going to have to save him AND the day. |
Would it kill them to give us an angle by which to care about Barry / Wally / Max / whoever, and then write stories about how that character tries to achieve goals, many of which will involve super speed?
ReplyDeleteMaybe it would, but then Barry would just go back in time and undo it anyway, so here we are.
Way back when, in the 90s and the "Impulse" comic, they didn't have trouble with needing constant power boosts or whatever. It was the Bart And Max show, where trying to be a hero and also be a kid, and Max was trying to prepare Bart to use his powers well. The main conflict in a given issue could be Bart trying to fit in with friends, and invariably he'd use his powers at some point, but it didn't require a boost from the Omni-Force. It was just, character whose side you're on is dealing with something relatable and we hope he succeeds.
- HJF1
"It was the Bart And Max show,"
ReplyDeleteAnd a wonderful show it was. It truly made me laugh and cry and think.
This nonsense just makes me shake my head.
I am contemplating the problem of how to make readers care about your characters, because it's something that is too often missing from stories. For example, I had cause to review "Emerald Dawn" recently, and it was a fine story in terms of the mechanics (haha, Tom Kalmaku joke), but it lacked a core of why anyone would give a damn. Even if you entered the story with a fondness for Hal Jordan (insert your own punchline here (haha, punch)), the story did nothing to actually make you want to like him. If anything it made a person like Hal a little less. They introduced a backstory of the dad's tragic death, but that is not compelling. So ultimately it was a story where a whole bunch of things happened, but it was impossible to care.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, returning to the general problem. I suspect the main thing is to show the characters dealing with problems we can relate to; maybe they're dealing with exactly the same problems we face, or maybe it's problems introduced by their powers. "My Adventures with Superman" is great at this: on the one hand Clark's got the naturally relatable problem of wanting to be accepted by his peers, and on the other hand Clark's got problems that come from having powers he's still getting used to. But the heart of it is, Clark is just a really decent guy that you have no choice but to root for.
- HJF1
I found a near haiku in an old issue of "Flaming Carrot" (#14 from 1986), thought I would share:
ReplyDeleteOnce ... I flipped a coin ...
Do it by the the book ... or not ...
It is not.
- HJF1