A recent Pearls Before Swine strip. Remember, no matter how rude, obnoxious or insulting someone is, you can’t be mad at them if they include a winking smiley emoticon.
Tag: Comics
I wouldn’t say I’m considering getting a tablet for the DC relaunch
I wouldn’t say I’m considering getting a tablet for the DC relaunch, but I have added it to my list of other reasons I’m considering a tablet.
As much as I like print comics, I have to admit that I don’t re-read most of them, and I have a lot of long boxes. The idea of buying digital monthlies and then printed collections of the books I want to reread has a strong appeal.
DC only seems to have room for three main Flashes at a time
DC only seems to have room for three main Flashes at a time: Past, present and future. Sometimes that shakes out as Jay, Barry and Wally, sometimes as Jay, Wally and Bart, and most recently as Jay, Barry and Bart. They’ve got four major Flash characters to work from, and they want Barry in the “present” role…and now that they have a chance to rewrite history, they can get rid of the “extra” character.
That suggests two likely possibilities:
1. They erase Barry Allen’s grandson and reset his nephew to being Kid Flash.
2. They erase Barry Allen’s nephew and keep his grandson as Kid Flash.
I’m tired of reading stories *about* continuity
I’m tired of reading stories *about* continuity, instead of stories that, over time, *become* continuity.
We’ve basically gotten ONE Flash story that’s *just a Flash story* out of each run since 2005
I feel like I’m Charlie Brown, DC is Lucy, and the promise of a Flash series that actually gets off the ground and *goes* somewhere is the football.
We’ve basically gotten ONE Flash story that’s *just a Flash story* out of each run since 2005. Everything else has either been setup, wrap-up, or a side story for an outside event.
That two-parter with Bart vs. Mota. Tom Peyer’s “Fast Money.” Maybe Geoff Johns’ “The Dastardly Death of the Rogues.”
Long-form writing only works if you follow through on it. I love reading novels, but I’d much rather read 20 short stories than 10 first chapters and 10 last chapters.
My dream Flash writing team
My dream Flash writing team is Grant Morrison writing Barry, Mark Waid writing Wally, and Geoff Johns writing the Rogues.
So yes, a legacy character *can* be done in a movie.
Easier, yes…but not necessary. Anyone remember a Zorro film from about 10 years back with Anthony Hopkins as retired Zorro and Antonio Banderas as new Zorro? It did well enough they made a sequel.
Other characters have legacy built into the concept, like the Phantom (maybe not the best example, because the movie tanked).
Maybe a better example: a big part of the first Pirates of the Caribbean film hinged on Will Turner following through on his father’s legacy, but Bootstrap Bill didn’t appear at all until they did the sequels.
Or, heck, Harry Potter – it’s all about this boy growing up and living up to the legacy of his parents and their generation who fought in a war. Harry’s parents are absolutely critical to his story, but they’ve been dead for 10 years when the first movie gets going.
So yes, a legacy character *can* be done in a movie. It may be *easier* to tell a story about the first guy, but it’s not *necessary.*
Barry’s been back for THREE YEARS
Barry’s been back for THREE YEARS. He’s been the focus of a Rebirth miniseries, had a major part in last year’s Big Event(tm), and had his own ongoing book, plus guest spots all over the DCU.
And here we have a gigantic, sprawling Flash-centric event (the first ever, I might add) with 5 oversized issues telling the main story, plus 16 miniseries and at least 4 one-shots telling side stories.
And DC is saying that nowhere in all of that could they find room for the guy who was The Flash for more than two decades? And you’re saying this is perfectly okay?
I don’t like to use the phrase “slap in the face” — it’s really overused IMO — but I think it applies here.
I never bagged and boarded them to preserve resale value.
Yes. I never bagged and boarded them to preserve resale value. I bag and board them to keep them from getting creased, bent or torn for the next time I read them. The comics that are in good condition stay in good condition, but it’s almost more important for the old ones that are falling apart – it keeps them from getting worse when I look through the boxes and pull things out.
I think it depends on what you consider to be a multiverse.
I think it depends on what you consider to be a multiverse. Does it only refer to a rigid structure like the modern 52-universe DC multiverse, or does it include more fluid concepts like Hypertime or Michael Moorcock’s body of work?
I think as fans we tend to overanalyze and categorize things, and the industry is essentially run by fans these days. So there are people out there for whom it matters that Young Justice takes place on “Earth-16” and not simply in the Young Justice continuity. And fans overwhelmingly rejected Hypertime, which was designed not to impose a structure on the DC Multiverse but to describe how it actually works.
I do think there’s value in, as you say, being able to open the door between worlds. One of the oldest tropes of the super-hero story is the crossover. Whether it’s Superman and Batman teaming up, or two versions of the Flash, or Batman and Captain America, it’s a trope with tons of story potential.
If you have a chance, I’d recommend the trade paperback “Planetary: Crossing Worlds” by Warren Ellis. It includes a Batman story in which the team ends up jumping through the multiverse, meeting different variations on Batman (including both the Adam West and Frank Miller versions).
Reply to “DAE think that the multiverse explanation of variations on the same story unnecessary?” On Reddit
Least Favorite Retcon
Barry Allen being the source of the Speed Force.
It just feels like a cheap gimmick to make him more important than all the other Flashes, not just for now (like Wally discovering new ways to use the Speed Force or Bart absorbing it), but forever. No one can ever be better than him, no one can ever surpass him, no one can really succeed him without being second-rate, because hey, being a Flash is all about Barry Allen!
It’s like two kids trying to one-up each other in a bidding war, and one pulls out, “well, I bid infinity!” When it’s a kid, you laugh at that sort of thing. When it’s the Chief Creative Officer of the company, it’s canon.
Crazy ideas aren’t the problem.
Crazy ideas aren’t the problem. Comics have always been about crazy ideas. It all comes down to the execution.
“Get this: a farm boy discovers that his long-lost dad was a space wizard, and he goes to rescue this princess from a space station run by this evil space wizard…and they BLOW UP A PLANET!” When you put it that way, Star Wars doesn’t sound so great, does it?
It’s easy enough to only buy the parts that look interesting.
It’s easy enough to only buy the parts [of Flashpoint] that look interesting. If that means all of them, fine. If that means none of them, it’s really easy. If that means somewhere in between, cool.
Pleasantly surprised by a fun adventure story with great art.
I’m enjoying it [The Flash] a lot. I really wasn’t expecting to – I’m a Wally West fan myself, so Barry Allen’s return felt forced and unnecessary. Yes, the series was broken post-Infinite Crisis, but in the words of another Geoff Johns story, just because something’s broken doesn’t mean you throw it away.
Worse, Flash: Rebirth really annoyed me on a lot of levels. I was at the point where I figured if the new series was going to be like Rebirth, I wasn’t interested in reading it. Fortunately I gave it a chance, and was pleasantly surprised by a fun adventure story with great art.
After they defeated the Adversary, I completely lost interest in Fables.
Responding to a thread about which long-running comics you’ve stopped reading.
After they defeated the Adversary, I completely lost interest in Fables. I tried to keep going. I think I read another four issues or so, about to the point where someone released the Sealed Evil In A Can, and kept buying them for a few months after that. Once I realized I wasn’t reading it anymore, I dropped it entirely.
Continuity
I had a longer comment, but I think it all boils down to this:
- Long-term fans like to be reminded of the stories that got us hooked (our own personal “golden age.”)
- A lot of the writers, artists, and editors making comics started out as fans, especially since the 1980s.
- The industry does not want to lose readers. (Maybe they don’t know how to replace them with new readers, or don’t want to chance it, or maybe they’ve just prioritized keeping the current readership over bringing in new people.)
That said, some stories are a lot more accessible than others – even with the same character and the same writer. Geoff Johns’ Flash: Rebirth miniseries was steeped in 60 years of Flash mythology. His first story arc on the new ongoing pared it down and made a point of establishing everything you needed to know for that story as if it were just being introduced for the first time.
If you’ve been watching Lost, these are great. If you haven’t, they probably won’t
If you've been watching Lost, these are great. If you haven't, they probably won't make much sense. (Kind of like the show itself, come to think of it….)
Heck, one *line* of script could bring Cyclops back.
Heck, one line of script could bring Cyclops back. “Hey, I’m back. Sorry for skipping out on you all, but I was just so depressed. What’d I miss?”
Crisis and Retconning
There’s an easy way to keep things simple: Either build on earlier stories without changing them (or change only the obscure stuff), or start over.
Retcons are like epicycles, the sort of secondary orbits that astronomers invented to explain discrepancies in planets’ motions when they thought the planets all had circular orbits and revolved around the Earth. The epicycles got more and more complicated until enough people noticed that you could get rid of most of them if you assumed the planets revolved around the Sun. Then they realized that you could get rid of the rest if you assumed the orbits were elliptical instead of circular.
If you *totally* reboot a series, like Wonder Woman after COIE or Legion of Super-Heroes after Zero Hour and again last year, things are simple. It’s just like launching the Justice League cartoon — it’s a totally separate continuity from the previous version, so contradictions aren’t a problem.
When you revise *parts* of history, things get complicated. Wonder Woman herself might have had a simple reboot, but the Justice League and Wonder Girl (Donna Troy) were still around, and their histories had to be revised. Donna has gone through *how* many origins since then? Origin-wise, she’s hardly recognizable. They actually did a better job with Power Girl by saying “Forget all the retcons, she really is the cousin of Earth-2’s Superman”
Sorry about the rant…
Bart/Impulse/Kid Flash
Paul Ewert wrote:
What does the list think of Bart assuming the “mantle” of Kid Flash over in the TEEN TITANS book?
I’m actually kind of disappointed by it, although it makes sense under the circumstances – especially given that (a) Wally’s disappeared, and (b) Bart’s probably spent the entire issue trying to remember Wally’s name and face.
As Impulse, Bart had his own identity. Yes, he was yet-another-speedster – but he wasn’t a sidekick, he wasn’t the second or third Kid Flash – he was Impulse.
What’s bugging me is that they’ve taken someone who, despite his youth and naivete, really was his own hero, with an original name and costume, and turned him into a sidekick – and a sidekick with a hand-me-down name and costume.
BTW, has anyone else noticed that Geoff Johns now has control of *all* DC’s speedsters:
Jay – JSA
Wally – Flash
Bart – Teen Titans
Jesse – JSA
Max – possessed by the Rival, Jay’s enemy, and as such a JSA villain.
Mike Koehler wrote:
Didn’t bart remember Linda when everyone else forgot her, what keeps him from doing this here?
That’s why I said “probably” – at this moment, we don’t really know who *does* remember. In fact, I’d expect Bart and Iris remember at least Barry’s career, if not Wally’s.
I’m assuming the JLA, JSA, classic Titans, etc. are all affected, or someone would have showed up at Wally’s front door in the past 2 months and said “Hey, Keystone is falling apart – put that costume on and *do* something about it!”
If Bart’s forgotten, then the switch to Kid Flash makes even more sense, especially if the Flash has been out of action for two months.
On the other hand, it’s not clear how much time has passed since the “I’m not sure if I believe in him” scene (which IIRC took place after Wally defeated Zoom, but before Hal and Barry showed up). This whole storyline appears to take place over the course of a single weekend, which would place it 2 months *before* Ignition begins. In that case, it’s only been a couple of days, and might even take place before the mass-amnesia hit.