News Flash.

 

Well...

Yes.

Thank you, Bleeding Cool.

But, isn't that EVERY contemporary issue of "The Flash"...?

April 25, 2024

 We gather today to say good-bye to

Bartholomew 

Henry 

Allen.

Today is the day he disappears from the CW universe. 

Trapped forever in the otherworldly dimension called "Broadway".

Fortunately, in the DCU Proper Barry hasn't disappeared!

Oh, wait....

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.

"What?" indeed.

Thanks for whatever that is, 
Lovecraft-lover who wants to write The Doom Patrol.

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,

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.

Wally's always in over his head, and...

Barry's going to have to save him AND the day.

I saw "The Flash"

 The movie, that is. On the whole, I enjoyed it.

Now, I enjoy a LOT of films. I am the only living person who enjoys "Wavelength" 

This one, I mean. The 1967 one. Not the one in 1983. Or the one in 2018.  Which, sadly, were not sequels.

My enjoying a film doesn't mean to imply that it's objectively good, or even that I think it's good. But they are certainly many good things about film. Ezra Miller --despite his personal failings and the rather annoying off-model version of Barry Allen he's portraying -- is a very experienced actor and during the serious emotional parts of the film, it really shows. As for the comedic parts--

how shall I put this?

Expert panel? Any help for me...?

Let's just say, although there are certainly funny bits and I laughed out loud several times, the attempts at humor were, on whole... misplaced.  Some not only fail to stick the landing, they failed even to take off enough to HAVE a landing.  I'm going to cheat and just blame Stupid Humor Attempts Based on Awkwardness in Superheroes on Marvel-aping.  Fair? Maybe not. But it does absolve me of expending any intellectual effort on why anyone in charge of a zillion dollar picture would think some of that stuff (especially Marty McThigh) was, you know, so amusing that it needed to be in a film about one of our culture's best known fictional heroes trying to replicate his most serious mistake to avoid the destruction of all reality.

But the Bat-Kite? THAT made me burst out laughing.  
Batman is funny. Batman has always been funny.
Flash is not funny. Flash has never been funny. And if you DON'T believe that, buy a Golden Age Flash Archive and see how many Jay Garrick stories you can stomach.

The plot was simple and easy to follow with nothing that seemed extraneous, which I appreciated.  I will wryly note that DC eliminated the multiverse in 1986 ostensibly because it was "too complicated" for readers.  However, just like Flash's, their attempt to rejigger their timeline backfired and resulted in more multiversing than ever, not just for the DCU, but for...everything. You can't make a Trix commercial nowadays without the Trix rabbit fighting his dark counterpart from another universe.

I mean... even the Bablyon 5 animated movie is multiversal madness.  
Silly Vorlons; multiverses are for kids.

The action was good, the BATMAN action was awesome. Truly.

Batman is SO awesome, in fact, that he casually explains all of time-travel, retrocausality, and the character of the multiverse in seconds using nothing but pasta. Because he's Batman.

I liked the special effects, no matter how many people bitch about "The CGI being terrible".  I've been watching movies for over 50 years and someone is ALWAYS bitching that The CGI Is Terrible (even when it was SFX and not CGI).  I thought the "chronobowl" was especially innovative and intuitive.  Oh, and to all those people bitching about "Miller's weird running style": shut up. You've obviously never skated or at least not WELL.  He's speed-skating through time/speed force. If you actually saw his little legs moving zippy-zip step-by-step it would look Road-Runner ridiculous.

Did I say "little legs"? I take that back.  At first I thought they'd overdone it a bit on Flash's suit being too faux-muscley. Then I noticed how Miller was straining at his civilian seams and then came Miller's (many) shirtless/(all-but-frontal) nude scenes and I recanted.  Gratefully. Jeez, he looks like he put on 35 pounds of muscle. Not sure how needed that is for The Flash per se but... well, it wasn't my least favorite part of the film.

Silly Ezra; twinks are for kids.

The cameo parts, well, yes, they were a bit cheesy but they weren't CRINGEY.  And, yes it seemed dumb that we didn't see a hint of Grant Gustin or John Wesley Schipp, which just seems like respect due.  But Gustin and Schipp have had LONG runs and got a lot of traction from their roles; a few seconds in this film wouldn't have helped them. But it certainly wouldn't have hurt the director/producers in the eyes of fans of the character.  

I thought the Latina version of Nora was an interesting choice; if nothing else, it explains why Barry Allen looks like Ezra Miller in this universe.  Actress was great; loved her in the role. The father? Eh. No.  Why they passed up the opportunity to say "Run, Barry, Run" rather than just "Run, Barry"... well I suppose that would have struck too close to home (the TV show). 

Anyway, I had fun watching it.  I hope you do, too.

The Most Ouroborotic Man Alive

Well, The Flash, history's longest-running live-action DC superhero show, 

Oh my god, he's IGNORING "Smallville"!

is wrapping itself up and at last we have finally seen "our" Barry save his younger self from Reverse-Flash the night his mother died.

He's up against Matt Letscher as the Reverse-Flash who, although he is the "real" Eobard Thawne (appearance-wise) and is more believably petty and obsessive than Tom Cavanagh (who was always hard to believe was wasting his time and talent fussing with goober Barry Allen), simply lacks MENACE.  He's more like some **** at the office who ate the last cruller, saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, did you want that? Somebody's havin' a bad day!" After nine years, it's still not possible to believe Letscher and Cavanagh are playing the same character (a problem that Zach Levi and Asher Angel don't appear to have solved in the big screen Shazam films, either).

I'm not entirely certain they weren't told they were doing a new '"Freaky Friday" series.

It was certainly satisfying and surprisingly well done, especially considering that much of this final season has left fans, ahem, underwhelmed, to say the least. Many have theorized that the beginning of the season was crappy precisely because the show-runners were focused on the wrap-up tetrology, but I'm not sure I subscribe to that zero-sum analysis of production quality.

It was, I suppose, how the show had to end. 

You're a closed circuit, Barry;
you're got the answers in the palm of your hand.

But it does highlight a problem with the show and with the Flash in general that I have discussed before. Specifically: the Flash is about...

itself.

Pardon me that tautology, which seems like a stupid statement of the obvious.  What I really mean is that Flash stories are inordinately inward-looking and their subject matter is the Flash mythos itself, rather than external threats and situations.  Batman, Superman, et al.--they deal with threats that arise outside of them and that threaten people and things other than them.  On average, they are not the cause of the problems they have to solve and the problems they have to solve are problems for OTHER people, not merely themselves.  

For example, most of the icons in Batman's rogues gallery (the Joker, the Penguin, Catwoman, Riddler, et al.) are presented as pre-existing, operating criminals whom Batman steps in to put a stop to.

Two-Face's origins are bit more...
complicated.

Similar lists of villains could be made for most heroes. Even Lex Luthor, a villain who is famously obsessed with enmity for Superman, didn't start that way.  He was just a classic mad scientist, whose schemes Superman kept foiling. His later obsession with Superman was rooted in a retcon in Superboy story, twenty years after his first appearance.

Adventure Comics, #271 (1960)
BTW, fire extinguishers were invented in 1819, Lex.

How often is it mentioned "How Great Lex Could Be If Only He Weren't Obsessed With Superman?"

Answer: very often.

This, I'll mention in passing, is why I always so disappointed (angry, really) when fans and writers try to apply this template to the Joker (of all people).  

Frank Miller is to blame for this.
And quite a lot of other things, truth be told.

As if the Joker would be so weak as to be obsessed with ANYONE other than THE JOKER.

The Joker #7 (1975)
I can't believe I'm saying this, but ELIOT S! MAGGIN shows here a more sophisticated and deeper understanding of the Joker and Lex Luthor than most modern, pretentious writers.

In fact, most of Flash history was written like all the other heroes.   His classic foes

Unimaginatively called "The Rogues"

follow the traditional model of "existing crooks whom the heroes intervenes against".  Their particular flair or gimmicks may be informed by the fact that they have to face a superhero, sure.  But that's not their GOAL. It's neither their origin nor their purpose.  They aren't ABOUT the Flash.

That's this guy's job.

That's the Reverse-Flash's literary function. He has NO other origin or purpose other than messing with Barry. It's right there in the name.  He was DESIGNED to be what Luthor evolved to be: a perfect "anti-fan", but one who is also a mirror version of the hero.  Luthor is very much NOT Superman.  

Usually.

Other heroes have such villains, of course.   Batman has a score of them, most obviously Catman.

Deadshot, with his mean-girl taunting action, will always be my favorite.

Just kidding! No one can EVER replace Killer Moth in my funny bone of funny bones.

But Eobard Thawne is way better than all of those poseurs, and there is a reason. The Reverse-Flash is the combination of FOUR separate concepts: the Hater (the character who was created to and exists to hate the hero); the Stan (the character obsessed with the hero); the Competitor (the character designed to be the hero's threatening competitor); and the Anti-Hero (the character designed to be the opposite of the hero).  It's like somebody made Superman a smoothie out of Lex Luthor, Jimmy Olsen, Vartox, and Ultra-Man. 

Which would still smell and taste 100% like Vartox, by the way.

Eobard Thawne's a triple-espresso with cane sugar and any character in any of those categories is going to pale in comparison; "Sure, but he's no Reverse-Flash!"

So, you can't fault the Flash Mythos for having one villain who is its hero's perfect counterpart and using him as such.  Flash may have more powerful villains but none can possibly be more symbolically resonant.

The Reverse-Flash is where it started. But just as Eobard Thawne became increasingly obsessed with Barry Allen/the Flash, so too did Flash storylines. Over time they became more about Barry Allen and his twins and descendants and Iris and his supporting cast and persecution by Thawne and Iris's murder and Barry's trial for his murder of Thawne (with its own absurd outcome, absurd even by Flash standards).  When Wally became the Flash, it was really more of the same because, naturally, Wally was... another obsessed Flash fan, worried about his legacy and THEN... the SPEED FORCE concept hit, and ...

Well, since THAT, it's been a runaway train to see how far and how fast and how frequently the Flash can shove his head up his own mythos.  

Often an impressive feat.

Everything is about a problem WITH or FROM the Speed Force, or a threat to IT or the Flash (or his supporting cast).  Almost to a point where an objective observer would step back and say "you are not the solution, you are the problem; if the Flash and everything associated with him went it away, everyone else would not only be fine but much better off" (which is really not a situation you want your hero to be in).  Unsurprisingly, the show wound up having the same problem the comics did.

I'm fond of many things about Geoff Johns' approach to mythic consolidation, but his retcon of Barry Allen's origin contributed enormously to this problem.  In case you don't already know, "Reverse Flash killed Barry's mother and framed his father who went to jail which is why Barry became a CSI and thereafter the Flash" is a wholecloth invention of Geoff John's Flash Rebirth.  It has zero pre-Crisis precedent.  Pre-Crisis Barry needed no tragic backstory.  He was on the police force and got superheroes, so of course he fought crime; what ELSE would you do with a superpower?!  The only hero who needed a tragic backstory was Batman, because it gave him a reason to develop his "powers".

But Johns's retcon turned the Flash mythos inward-looking tendencies and now set the baseline at "fetidly inbred".  Reverse-Flash and the Flash created each other.

Where on earth did a young Geoff get such a ridiculous idea?

I mean, yeah, if there is any two characters for whom it's in character it's Flash and the Reverse-Flash but... that's the problem.  It's an ouroborotic mess that makes for a lovely sci-fi short-story, but as the basis for a superhero mythos it's constricting.

"Ouroborotic" is a Classicist polite way of saying "self-fellating".

There are various interpretations of What the Myths of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, et al. symbolize. I've discussed many such theories myself.  But none of them have been "two comic books fans pissed off at each other about which one has their favorite hero right" which is pretty much what Barry (fan of Golden Age Flash) versus Eobard (fan of Silver Age Flash) is about.

Now every time I try to check in on what's going in Flash comics it's an impenetrable wall of Speed Force / Flash Legacy /Speedster Character jargon that I shut down.  

Nobody writes comics like THAT any more.

I still remember that issue of the Flash, even though I read it 30 years ago.  How many of the comics you've read lately (Flash or otherwise) will you be able to say that about...?

Always remember...

If you keep digging you'll almost always find that...

Barry is to blame:

Flashy Art

I've been waiting to post until the much-anticipated "Rebirth" of the DCU.  Little reason to fuss over the details of DC digging its universe out of the mud it drove it into in just five years.  Better to wait until after it's been through the car wash.

But I have been seeing good signs about what's coming, I am heartened by most of them.  In Batman, limbs have been sewed back on and the Bunnyman suit is in a glass case in a darker corner of the Hall of Trophies.

"If only we weren't all drawn by Curt Swan, we might be able to recognize him!"

Green Lantern will be getting by in its time-honored way: avoiding Hal Jordan, and focusing on someone else instead.

He's a car thief with a gun obsession; she's a paranoid crime vicitm. 

Together they fight crime as if they're on a '80s teevee show.

There's a plan for putting Superman back on track; it's weird, but then again, Superman stories are ALWAYS weird, when you come right down to it.

Don't knock it till you've tried it, Lo-Lo.

Wonder Woman is back in the hands of team that made her enjoyable for me, and frankly, I don't care how ridiculous you may think it is.

Rule 41, baby.

Green Arrow is, well, Green Arrow will still be stupid, but at least recognizably so. 

We don't know either, Ollie. Something about werewolves.

Let's just all move on, shall we?

Lord only knows what will become of the Martian Manhunter.  Maybe they're going to let me write him and their email to me got lost; yes, I'm sure that's it.

If so, you WILL see Mr. Moth again. 

Possibly in a team up with Dr Light or Killer Moth.

But the real current surprise for me is that the previews for Flash have OVERWHELMED me.  And in a way completely uncharacteristic of me:

The art.

Comics are a marriage of two media, drawing and writing (plotting, really).  As comics goes, I'm a 'writer person' not an 'artist person'.  It's not that I don't LIKE art.  I used to work in an art museum, in fact.  It just seldom makes as big an impression on me (in comics) as the writing does.

Well, the forthcoming issues of the Flash are a strong and welcome exception.  

The art matters in all comics. But it matters more in some than others.  It's easy to imagine just reading a text story about Batman, Superman, or even Aquaman. But Flash?  No; superspeed is a power you need to SEE.

And these Flash pages are so full of genius, it's hard for me to discuss, because I feel that, as a non-artist, I may not even have the talent required to understand how good they are.  Obvious high points are the mastery or framing and composition within each panel and across them.  The clever use of panel sizes and color in the second page.  The intentional 'swipe' of the Flash's classic on-the-run pose. The amazing tricks used to distinguish background from foreground in a more realistic yet artistic way than I have ever seen in comics.  Most important is that all the elements are not gratuitous artistry; they are clearly being used to tell the STORY.

Carmine DiGiandomenico and Neil Googe, my hat is off to you.  I look forward to your upcoming work on The Flash.

Flash Museum!

In case you don't already know, the next big set of DC Heroclix is a "Flash" set. 

I don't know what maps they plan on releasing with it. But to prepare I have made a map depicting the entrance to the Flash Museum, which includes the attached gift shop and movie house, a Jitters (tm) brand coffee cafe and nice garden.

Manapul Plaza

Oh, it's been too long since I posted a new Heroclix map!

Batman, Superman, and Green Lantern have done very well in Heroclix.  Each has had own set, mini set, or some such.  As a result, there are many versions of them to play, plenty of allies to put on teams with them, and enough of their villains to give them a fair challenge.  

But Flash? Poor Flash.

Sure, there are plenty of versions of Flash (both Barry and that kid who used to be his sidekick who no longer exists and whose name escapes me).  But his foes?  Frankly... they suck.

By that, I mean, their Heroclix figures suck.  The Rogues themselves---well, I've never been their biggest fan.  Still, whatever their failings, they are one of the most famous Rogues Galleries in comic books.  And the Flash (both in comic books and Heroclix) deserves foes who can give him a run for his money.

Take the Weather Wizard.  He was the first of the Central City Rogues to be 'clixed', and was in the very first set of DC Heroclix some eleven years ago.  But as a result, his dials are so underpowered as to make him completely unusable.  Heck, at one point on one of his dials his Attack Value is 5 and his Defense Value is 11, which is about what you would expect from, say, a clix of Aunt May in the hospital on a respirator (and even then she'd probably have Willpower).  And yet, unlike many, many characters, the Weather Wizard has never been remade.

In such cases, Flash fans like me have had to resort to re-dialing the figure using a more modern, appropriate dial from some other figure.  For the Weather Wizard, I made the obvious choice: I gave him a "Storm" dial from Marvel Heroclix.  Here's the custom character card I made to go with it:

Mirror Master's not as bad as Weather Wizard, but he's still bad enough to warrant a re-dialing.  I actually made two different versions of Mirror Master, one based on the Dr Manhattan/Silk Specter duo from the Watchmen set and another on the Mysterio (whose illusory/fake copies of himself are very similar to Mirror Master mirror duplicates).

Sadly, some original Rogues, like the Trickster and the Pied Piper, don't even have their own clix figures at all!  It's criminal, and I'm hoping that Wizkids, the makers of Heroclix, will find some slots in upcoming sets to correct such injustices.  

When they do, I've taken the liberty to create some Flash-oriented maps to play them on.  I have posted here before my Flash Museum map and my Central City Police Forensics Lab.  But I've missing the most characteristic venue for Flash battles: a large empty plaza of the kind that seems to be the principle constituent element of Central City urban design.  In fact, I've long suspected that LeCorbusier was actually a Central City escapee, come to our world through of the myriad extradimensional portals that pop up in Flash stories all the time.  Because no person from a normal world could possibly have his viewpoint on urban design.

Now to make an accurate Central City -style plaza,  you'd have to double the size of normal Heroclix map and put on it, well, nothing at all, because Central Plazas are always utterly featureless except for vast expanses of unpeopled sidewalk.

That, however, would make for a boring Heroclix game.  So I created a plaza map (below) with a few features like pools and a statue (of the Flash, of course), and some street commerce.  I call it "Manapul Plaza":

The yellow and red is in case you forget who the map is for, by the time Wizkids makes some decent Rogue clix for Flash to fight.

Flash is faster than Writing and Art

As I recall, a new issue of the Flash comes out today.  This is my attempt to convince you to buy it.

I know I’ve already discussed how pleased I am with Flash recently, but I feel the need to unpack that a bit. It’s not just that the writing is good and that the art is good (although they certainly are). Those are wonderful things! But they are fleeting. They adhere in each particular story, but by themselves they do not necessarily improve the character in ways that help future creators.

In short, great art and great writing make for a great story, but they don’t necessarily make the character greater. But choices about what to do with a character and their central elements can make them great—even in the absence of great writing and great art.

 For example, I know some of you do not think Geoff Johns is a great writer. I like his work, but I will still concede that he tends to use gratuitous graphic violence, his good guys seem to win mostly because they’ve reached the point in the story where he needs them to, and he has trouble ending a story. But whether you think his writing is great, there is little question that his authorial decisions succeed in making the characters greater, as the long list of characters (many considered irredeemably toxic) he has revitalized makes evident.

Certainly, as we saw last week during “Wolf Week” here at the Absorbascon, great art does not make a character greater. Neal Adams’ overwhelming genius depicted in gorgeous, unforgettable detail just how stupid the Stupid Bronze Age Batman was.

 

But, even in the absence of great writing and great art, an author can still be remember for doing great things with (or for) a characters. James Robinson’s Starman series comes to mind. The art was always blocky, crude, murky, or just plain off. Robinson had a lot of trouble plotting the series consistently and often seemed to lose his way amid the details of the Starman legacy and the fictionopolis of Opal City. But, oh, what glorious details they were! And that is why his work on Starman is remembered so fondly, not because the prose, or the plotting, or the pictures were so stellar, but because Robinson’s character choices and world-building were so powerful and unforgettable. Heck, I never did figure out what was up with that dwarf; it was all very Twin Peaks there for quite some time.

When I complained in 2006 about how tedious and misguided the Flash series had become because its concepts were so far off-base: a commenter replied, “I think the concept is the least of the current Flash comic's problems. The writing and art are just plain bad.” I respectfully (still) disagree: if there is a problem with the concept of a character it is NEVER the least of the character’s problem. If the writing and art are bad, the fix is not complicated: get a better artist and a writer. I am NOT saying that it is easy to get good writers and artists; but the solution is not a complicated one. Melpomene knows, some of our most enduring characters in modern literature were launched in horrible books with awkward plotting, turgid pacing, and painful prose.  

One year, as a horror movie fan, raised by a horror movie fans, it hit me: I had never read the original version of most of horror’s classic monsters. So I sat down and read Frankenstein, Dracula, the Invisible Man, Dr Jekyll & Mr Hide, the Phantom of the Opera. And you know what? They were, on the whole… bad. Tedious. Painful, even. These classic monsters survived, thrived, and grew in fame was not because they were written particularly well, but because the underlying concepts were so incredibly powerful.

Fixing the underlying concepts of a character is therefore more important to the character’s longevity. You know how many Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman stories are either badly written or badly drawn? MOST OF THEM. But their underlying concepts are strong enough to withstand poor handling by creators.

And what Francis Manapul is doing is not just bringing great writing and brilliant artistic vision to his depiction of the Flash; he’s fixing the Flash’s underlying concepts and in two very specific ways.  

One: he’s created a “mental power” for the Flash in the form of his “augmented cognition”. Having a mental power of some type is almost essential to having a well-rounded iconic heroic. Superman is super-smart, Aquaman has his telepathy, Green Lantern has his willpower and imagination, Shazam has his wisdom, Wonder Woman has her lasso of truth (essentially a mental power rather than a physical one), Batman is the World’s Greatest Detective, even Spider-Man has his spider-sense. And now Flash has his augmented cognition which allows him to use his mental super-speed to see all possible outcomes of a situation. 

Two: Manapul has been very cleverly limiting the Flash’s power… without limiting the Flash’s power. Face it, one of the issues in writing the Flash has always been that his power is so great that it can make him seem unbeatable. Flash’s augmented cognition comes with a downside: option paralysis and loss of perception of the “Now”. As for Barry’s ridiculous physical speed… he still has it, but it now comes with a downside: the rifts in space-time he creates if he generates too much “Speed Force”. And these are just the intrinsic limits to his power. He’s also crafting new villains “immune” to Flash’s speed (Mob Rule’s ability to be in many more than one place at a time) and giving old villains the ability to nerf Barry’s powers (such as Captain Cold’s new dampening of kinetic energy in his surrounding area).

Manapul’s writing is great. His art is fantastic. And what he’s doing with the Flash is even better.