Asides

Re: Why do you like THE FLASH?

The first comic I really collected was the New Teen Titans, and the first storyline I read was the second Trigon story (at the beginning of the deluxe series). So I’d read about Wally as Kid Flash (he had a prominent role in that story) there and in Crisis, so I thought I’d pick up the Flash. What I liked the most, especially early on, is that you have here an ordinary guy who’s a super-hero. He’s not billionaire Bruce Wayne, he’s not from another planet, he’s this regular guy who has powers, but has to deal with everyday problems like his parents, his girlfriend(s), his rent, etc. After that it was watching him slowly come out of Barry’s shadow, and in the last few years the core of the book has been his relationship with Linda – again, not a storybook one, but a real one, where they disagree, they argue, and they have to deal with how they differ just as much as with how they’re similar. The other key this series has is its focus on the Flash legacy. There are very few series where the hero’s predecessors are as important as Jay, Barry, and even Max and Johnny are with Flash – there’s the two present holders (Wally and Jesse) and the future in Bart and, to some degree, in Iris West II (whether she’s part of the “main” timeline or not)

That said, I do miss a lot of the older supporting characters. Mason, Tina and Jerry, even Chunk and Argus.

Re: Impulse Cancellation

I’m not sure if it applies here as well, but in campaigns to keep TV shows on the air they always have some recommendations:

  • letters on paper are always given more weight than email. 100 emails could come from one person with a mail bot, but chances are that 100 letters were sent by 100 different people (since you’d have to spend $33 on stamps – and never mind international postage)
  • If you can write legibly, it’s better to write it by hand in blue pen. That way they know for sure it’s not a photocopied form letter.
  • Keep it short and to the point. Maybe two paragraphs, and start out by telling them that you like Impulse and don’t want to see it cancelled. You can go on to say why you like the series, but don’t go on for pages extolling its philosophical implications. They probably won’t read anything that long.
  • Don’t send it to the Impulse lettercol – if it was their decision, the series wouldn’t be in danger. You want to send your “please don’t cancel the series” to the higher-ups at DC. The lettercol is the place for your philosophical treatise.

Anyone want to organize a letter-writing campaign? I don’t have the time to run it myself, but if someone else wants to run it, I’d be happy to put up a link to the info if you want to put it on your own site, or you can send me a page and I’ll put it on my own server. I get enough hits on my site that it’ll be a good gateway to get people to notice it.

Names

Found these on BehindTheName.com

WALLACE (m) “Welsh” or “foreigner” (French). Sir William Wallace was the Scottish hero who briefly expelled the rule of England from Scotland in the 13th century.

WALTER (m) “rule people” or “rule army” (Teutonic). Composed of the elements wald “rule” combined with either heri “army” or harja “people”. Sir Walter Scott was an novelist from Scotland, the author of ‘Ivanhoe’.

WALLY (m,f) Short form of WALTER or WALLACE (masculine), or VALESKA (feminine).

LINDA (f) “beautiful” (Spanish) or short form of BELINDA or MELINDA. It can also mean “snake” or “serpent” from Teutonic linde. The serpent signified wisdom in Teutonic legend.

ANGELA (f) “messenger” from the Greek word angelos.

I especially like the contrast between Wallace (who felt like an outcast in his own family) and Walter (who is the more ruthless of the two). “Linda” representing wisdom fits with what Wally said about her teaching him everything he knows about being an adult. Angela as a messenger, though… that’s an interesting idea.

Super-Speed Perceptions

Replying to Minyon’s post:

has anyone ever wondered how he staves off the boredom. I mean at the speed he processes information, a normal conversation would seem to take forever. I actually remeber a story in one of the annuals where the whole thing took place from Wally’s POV, and the entire story was resolved in the time it took for an elevator to fall 2 floors. Normal life must be a real DRAG for the man.

Wally’s perceptions have changed from time to time. In the first issue, he runs several miles past Vandal Savage before the image even registers on his retina – which doesn’t make sense, because if that were true, how could he possibly run around things and dodge obstacles? Then in #30, there’s another story from Wally’s super-speed perspective. He and Connie go to a movie, and everything is taking place in normal speed, when suddenly the picture stops on one frame, and everyone in the theater (including Connie) freezes. He can’t figure out what’s going on, until he notices a pressure at the back of his neck. he turns around, and there’s a bullet hanging in mid-air. Suddenly he realizes his speed has reflexively switched on, and he goes around the theater looking for other bullets and stopping them before they actually hit anyone. He notices after a while that the picture’s moved to another frame (though realistically, the screen should’ve gone dark between frames), and decides he’d better hurry up. Once he’s confident he’s caught all the bullets, he goes over to the gunman and switches his perceptions back to normal speed (at which point a bullet he missed hits the exit sign). So at as far as William Messner-Loebs was concerned, Wally could switch from normal to hyper-speed perspective at will.

That elevator story– does anyone remember which annual it was in?

Re: DC shutting down web pages

I’ve been out of town all weekend, and haven’t had a chance to catch up with the whole discussion, but I have *some* info on this. About a year ago, DC shut down a Superboy website (I forget the title, but I think it was fly.to/superboy ) that had lots of unpublished stuff and images and such. They didn’t actually shut it down so much as say “you can’t have anything on this list,” and he decided that there wouldn’t be anything left of his site but an article or two (like my Les Mis page now consists of one article and a FAQ), and pulled it down completely. Last I heard he’d opened a new site based on the developing relationship between Superboy and Wonder Girl, avoiding the stuff they were complaining about.

Around the same time at least one other site, a Secret (as in Young Justice) website, got a similar letter. Actually it was an identical letter; someone had sent it to her, apparently as a mean-spirited prank, so she took her site down until she discovered that it hadn’t actually been sent by DC, then put it up again.

There may have been one other site, which I think may have been Hawkman-related, around the same time, but I don’t recall the circumstances of that one at all.

—

Another poster asks if my site will be okay

I think so. The only thing I’d be worried about would be the images. The articles certainly, and probably the bios, should fall under the research/reference/review category, though I’ll have to qualify this with IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer).

Re: You Don’t Know Jack! (Flash spoilers)

So who or what is this Jack reference about? Is this some other (no not again!)hypertime version of Wally?

Hope not… things are complicated enough as it is. However, perception is built into the Hypertime concept – i.e. you can find yourself remembering an alternate timeline that you didn’t live (this would explain things like finding your shoes next to the couch when you’re absolutely certain you left them under the bed – one of your hypertime duplicates did in an alternate timeline, but you remember it anyway). Since Wally’s crossed zillions of possible timelines, it’s easy for his memory to have picked up bits from another one, just as in the past his eyes have appeared blue (like Walter’s) in other series.

Somehow, I have this feeling that they won’t be willing to keep it that simple.

On rec.arts.comics.dc.universe

Triangles

As many people have said before, the presence of a triangle does not necessarily indicate interconnection (someone mentioned LSH/Legionnaires), and interconnection does not necessarily indicate serialization (see Superman in the early days of triangles).

As an example of nonserial interconnectedness, look at the DC One Million issues of Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Resurrection Man, and one of the Superman titles (I forget which one). Plots in these four issues are quite connected, and if you want you can follow from GL through MM, Supes, and Resurrection man. But the only comic that requires you to read anything else is GL – it ends on a cliffhanger. So he’s falling to Mars at the start of MM. You don’t need to see how he got there any more than you need to see how Captain Cold got to the Central City bank. So Resurrection Man heads off to Mars at the end of Supes – you only have to read it if you want to, otherwise, you can follow Superman into DC One Million #4, which tells you anything important that you would’ve missed in Resurrection Man. Or if you want to start with RM – you don’t need to know anything from the Superman issue to follow it. The only backstory needed is in the core DC1M books and maybe the JLA issue.

In the back of each issue is a list of all the DC1M issues, *in order* (with details on that week). It’s not on the cover, but it tells you what order to read the issues you picked up. If you like reading stories about green people, and you bought everything at the end of the month (and by some miracle managed to *get* the first week of DC1M that late), you now know to read Green Lantern before you read Martian Manhunter.

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Continuity

how important is continuity?

what if someone was to write a sequel to a famous book and in the process retconned a certain aspect of the original for the sake of the sequel?

In Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 (the book), the monolith is found orbiting Saturn. In the sequel 2010, it’s around Jupiter. By the fourth book, the original mission from 2001 is said to have taken place around 2030 or so.

In Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, Malcom dies at the end. He proved such a popular character in the movie that he showed up again in The Lost World (the book), alive and well.

Larry Niven completely changed the supposed background of the Ringworld in the second book of the series – instead of being built by on character’s humanoid race with cheap matter transmutation, it was actually built by Pak Protectors with a hell of a lot of resources (though this doesn’t really count – it was background, not story, and the person was lying.)

what if in Return of the Jedi (I know – it’s a movie, but bear with me) we learn that Vader wasn’t Luke’s father, he lost his hand in a farm accident while helping his uncle many years ago and all appearances of Han Solo were actually appearances of a bounty hunter named Deckerd?

This already happened. In Star Wars, it’s explained that Luke’s father was killed by Darth Vader. In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader tells Luke he *is* his father. Until Ben confirms it in Jedi, you can assume Vader’s lying – I mean, who are you gonna believe, Darth Vader or Ben Kenobi?

(Heck, while we’re at it in movies, there’s practially zero continuity from one James Bond film (or at least actor) to the next. I don’t see that hurting the series.)

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