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By Jason Bourgeois
The controversy du jour, or at least of a few years ago, was DC's decision to at long last bring back Barry Allen, the Flash. And this time, they meant it! For reals! Not an imposter or imaginary story! I was never particularly against it myself, so long as we got to keep Wally, as he had developed into a character in his own right over the last 20 years, and that should not be ignored. As long as Barry was brought back, and the history of all the characters was respected, so be it. The DC universe has four (main) characters (from Earth) named Green Lantern, and there's already two Flashes. We can have a third.
I certainly get nostalgia. We all have characters whose deaths we remember. Sometimes more than one death per character! Any comic fan has ideas of how to bring back their fan fave character back. I have several myself. How many people reading this have wished they could work in comics JUST to bring a beloved character back? It was almost inevitable that Barry Allen would return one day. Credit where credit is due department: DC waited 20 years. That is not insignificant, and worthy of note.
In some ways, it is a surprise they waited this long. Barry always had the best get out of heaven free card. There was always an undisclosed amount of time which he spent in the future just before his death, and that was just begging to be used. Some writers did indeed use it, but it was always for special guest appearances, and never used to fully bring Barry back to the fold.
That all changed during the garbled mess known as Final Crisis, when Barry fell out of the Speed Force and back to reality. It was some time before the miniseries that actually dealt with Barry's return started; Flash: Rebirth. Fortunately, Grant Morrison was nowhere near it, and instead it was written by DC's wunderkid, Geoff Johns, who had previously revamped the Green Lantern franchise with great success starting with Green Lantern: Rebirth. Notice a pattern here?
Rebirth was, in my opinion, a bit of a garbled mess, again. Poor Barry, always stuck in the quagmires. It wasn't bad by any stretch, unlike FC, but there was almost too much going on, and it was hard to follow. I won't dwell on it though, since the miniseries was plagued with some lengthy delays, and it may be a lot more clear if and when I sit down and read it again in a time frame that doesn't span across a New Years.
Still, it put many pieces in place for the new status quo, set up all the Flashes and their families, and even got the big bad, Professor Zoom, back in circulation. As almost everything Johns does, the writing was rock solid, and Ethan Van Sciver's art is always a treat to view. The book was packed, but the overall plot, the broad strokes, were good. Barry was back, his archnemesis was back and wreaking havoc, and the Speed Force was tweaked and redefined for the new era, and new fans. All well and good.
And so it was finally time to try once again to put a Flash in an ongoing series. DC has had very little luck in this department lately, as each attempt received very poor sales, that just got worse over time. They needed to give the Flash title a rest, and they did that. The question is, did they give it enough time? Or would Barry Allen and the interest in him be enough? Could nostalgia overcome a name with a lot of baggage? Or could a name with a lot of clout, like Johns has, also break the trend?
The jury is still a little out on that, but things are definitely looking up. Time will tell, naturally. This raises the question that always enters my mind when a big name creator comes onto a book for a time, and reinvigorates it. Is it the title, or the creator? And clearly, to begin with, it is usually the creator. But what happens when they leave? Johns' previous Flash run went well, and then it went downhill steadily after he left, and just got worse. Can Flash be a viable property without Johns? He can't stay on the book forever. What happens then? This question is natural to ask with any well selling book, but all the more important here, with the Flash's track record. That is a rant unto itself though, and better saved for another day.
One of the things that has always interested me about the Flash is that he's a legacy character. DC has a lot of them, but the Flash legacy is so vast, so huge, it even reaches throughout time, and into the distant future. Barry's life has touched so many, and inspired so many, that there will always be a Flash. They've tried that before with others, most notable the DC One Million event awhile ago, but it never felt as true with anyone more than it did with the Flash. That's thanks to Mark Waid's work on the title before Johns, and Geoff is building even more upon that in the new book.
Naturally, a lot of time is being spent re-establishing Barry's civilian life, and his supporting cast, but as always, there are also the Rogues. The Flash's villains are one of the biggest and best in all of comicdom, and Johns became known in his original run for fleshing them out into real characters, and giving them depth, so of course they would be a presence this time around. He's also gone so far as to have them inspire their own legacy, the Renegades, a team of temporal police from the 25th Century, all modeled after the Flash's current foes, and serving as adversaries against Professor Zoom and other villains of the future. It's a nice touch to turn things around. Zoom is an evil speedster, so have his contemporary good guys be opposites of the Rogues. Good stuff, and makes sense.
That's a strength of Johns. He takes what's there, and while he isn't opposed to changing things to suit his stories, he will often take what is already exists and build upon it in very logical ways that make you question why no one thought of it before, and he's doing that already with the new Flash title.
So, the Renegades have traveled to our time to arrest Barry for the death of one of their own, a crime he has yet to commit, but they're here to arrest him anyways. The story is still ongoing, but the book is so solid and definitely worth a look, I figured it was time to talk about it. Watching Barry as the ostensible bad guy in this story, and its the Rogues (Or their counterparts in this case) coming after him as a force of good, it really sets an interesting tone and is something different to do with Barry.
I'm not sure it had to be Barry in these stories, or if Wally wouldn't have been just as good, but the writing is solid enough that whichever Flash they stick behind the mask is all well and good. Fortunately there are plans for Wally down the road, and I guess with his family aspect, the stories would have taken on a different tone.
Another cool thing that Johns likes to do is the teaser, and I am a sucker for these. He's done it before in the GL books to build up Sinestro Corps, and Blackest Night, and also in JSA and Booster Gold to tease events in those books as well. He did it again at the end of the Flash, teasing the upcoming event, Flashpoint. I have no idea what it is going to be about, but the teaser certainly piqued my interest, and they will be using the build up to that event to start a second Flash title, much like GL did with Green Lantern Corps building towards Sinestro.
GLC has done well enough without Johns, and he seems to have built such a solid foundation under that franchise that it would probably survive his departure now. Hopefully, when he is done with the Flash and related books, he will have build up an equally rich mythos that Barry Allen, Wally West and all their friends will have a firm mythos to stand upon.
But no Flash stands still for long, and I'm eagerly racing to the next issue to see what he brings next.
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