Good day folks!
Welcome back to another Weekly sit-down with yours truly. A pleasure, as always, bringing comic thoughts to you.
I was going to write about a new madcap series in an effort to top last weeks Kill Shakespeare piece which Ive actually been told was enjoyed by more than a few – but at the last minute decided to shelve that till next week because there’s something I really want to talk about NOW!! (While there’s still time…)
Those of you who saw the previous post here by our venerable leader himself know have read DC comics announcement of the relaunch of all DC title post August when the latest event “Flashpoint” by the nigh-legen-waitforit!-dary Geoff Johns comes to a close.
What I want to touch on is a little more of a readers perspective on the event itself and the aftermath. I have to admit right off the bat that my eagerness for this series is predicated on three points primarily:
- I love alternate world titles, some of the best ever have been in this genre!
- Im a MEGA fan of Booster Gold, even more so since DC’s iconic “52” event and how that has tied into this event! 🙂 Love it!
- And finally, because the teams of writers and artists working this event… I dont think Ive been this awed by the writing talent in a LOOOOOOONG time!
Don’t believe me about the guys behind it? Check it out then in this handy-dandy list of all things Flashpoint! (for the sake of keeping things interesting, the list is at the end of this whole thing!
So we have a basic alternate reality created through the actions of one evil sonofagun (hey, Im trying to be family friendly here!) named Professor Zoom a.k.a. The Reverse Flash who is one of the sickest b******s (key word being ‘trying’) in the DCU(niverse), his history with The Flash (Barry Allen) was that he was a future born villain who ‘loved’ Flash and then realised he (Zoom) was destined to become a villain and went nuts, powered himself up and even made himself look like Barry, then made Flashes life hell and eventually killed his wife by vibrating his hand through her head when she rejected his advances! BUT WAIT! There’s more! He then came back and kept at it and then later tried to kill wife #2 on their wedding day but Flash snapped his neck before he could. There’s even more still because don’t forget that between time-travel mechanics and this being a fictional story – he doesn’t stay dead (obviously!) and does a WHOLE lot more – leading up to now, this mega alternate reality.
Not a bad resume if you’re going for the whole “Maniacal arch-villain” thing.
So anyway, in Flashpoint we have The Flash of the DCU proper waking up to find himself without his costume or anything in a strange new world where Wonder Woman are Aquaman married and the kingdoms of Atlantis and Themyscira waging war on the rest of the world including killing 30 odd million folks in Europe and sinking a country – or something to that effect…
Then we find Superman never existed because (it seems) when he crashed as a baby he was found by some secret agency/group and has been living in contained conditions ever since and turns out to be this super-powered malnutrition-ed looking kid-thing because he was never allowed to develop or his growth was retarded – your guess is as good as mine! Oh and for those that don’t know this, all rights to this character revert to the original creators family in 2013 and they can literally take it to a new publisher and tell DC to jump off a cliff if they want to so I wonder if DC is planning for this possibility?
On top of that we have Batman now being Thomas Wayne (Im still trying to figure that out!) who watched his wife and son die – I imagine logic would make him 70 years old so maybe he uses Lazarus Pits? Oh and he runs ‘Wayne Casino’ in Vegas and is a bit of a douche-bag.
And there’s a whole load of other madness with Villains and familiar characters not being what we know them as at all, good is bad, bad is good, new faces formed from old and some that we don’t even know anymore coming back to the light. I think its going to be a total wild ball and all fans of superhero comics will likely love the no limits renditions of this familiar and almost family-like world that is the DCU for so many of us who’ve grown up with it.
Next of course we must move on to the aftermath!
As you all know by reading the DC announcement that Manks kindly posted up – with Flashpoint shutting shop in August, every title in DC is being relaunched with a brand spanking new #1 and not just that – DC is literally recreating the DCU in a way that is totally unprecedented and even more so for a line of characters and books with this much back-story. They’ve played around with continuity and events for decades both here and at Marvel, but this magnitude of change is truly a deadly gambit!
On the one hand the potential for this being just what DC needs given how theyve been massively over-burdened by continuity and history and all the baggage that theyve built (unlike Marvel who have that sliding timescale thing going) up since the first real big event – the now legen-waitforit-dary! CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. If you haven’t read it, go now. I mean it. Go and read it. Folks tend to overlook how amazing the older stories are sometimes amid the flood of comics and stories we get today.
But by the same token a change like this can be disastrous – Marvel tried something similar once called Heroes Reborn. Man was that utter crap! I mean really, it was some of the worst re-imagining of things and left such a horrid taste with most folks that it was left behind and the reboot got rebooted back! Of course I hold far greater hope for this new one seeing the talent behind it unlike that reworking which was headed by the one man I would never let near a comic if I had my way – Rob Liefeld. But I’m not going to talk anymore about him lest I lose my famous cool and start tirading! (yes I know thats not a word…)
In any case, back to the matter at hand – There is no clear answer as to what will happen to the characters.
Will Batman be Bruce, Dick or someone else?
Will Superman still be who is and will he still be married to Lois?I doubt it. more so given the very recent teaser of Kal-El and Diana getting *ahem* together in some fashion…
What happens to the Green Lanterns and the Martian Manhunter?
What happens to the various Flashes? Who takes up the mantle now that they are all back and which ones will survive Flashpoint?
All these and more are among the swirling mass of questions that have been on my mind the last couple of days and the scale and impact of this on these books and characters. Some of them could do with some modification and others would be better served left alone.
I wonder what this means for titles like Batman Inc.? Will the JSA be majorly affected? (I hope not because its been consistently the best team book on DC lineup since this current run began – though I will be happy to see Guggenheim get taken off it!) Will the fantastic recent runs on Action Comics and Detective Comics (the numbering of these two is uncommented on…) be changed too? This last one I really hope not because between Paul Cornell and Scott Snyder they have made these two arguably the best books DC is putting out right now. Excepting of course this cruddy Doomsday thing theyve shoehorned into Cornells otherwise impeccable run on the title!
We have a new JLA (as seen below) with J’Onn replaced by Cyborg, all redesigned by Jim Lee – who normally I like but he has limitations and it shows in things like his cyborg design which is cheesy 90’s style overkill in my view and details like all the guys having that V-cut in their collars and of course that crotch cannon he’s given GL here!
Im just kidding, there are always flaws but I have to admit that overall I hold great hope for this event because unlike all the Crisis’ that came before this leading up to the recent “Final Crisis” (yeah right…) this one actually seems to be likely to change the world and reboot the history and the potential for DC to get it right this time and not get mired down by all the heavy luggage that hampered its previous events – plus an actual desire to change it all – I think feel it could be great.
A DCU which can tell fresh stories, recreate characters and play with EVERYTHING almost like wiping a slate – or at least most of it. The potential for awesomeness is epic! Of course we can all expect the hardcore nuts (Id rather just call them that then names like fanboy which just make the rest of us look bad) who will be up in arms about Wonder Woman not having the right colour underwire on her bustier or Clark Kents glasses being shaped wrong or maybe even Power Girls boobs being the wrong size – I think its better to skim the surface of their clamor for valid angst, ignore the din, enjoy the good books as they come and if there’s something truly heinous *COUGH*One-More-Day!*COUGH* then the fans can make some noise and honestly, if you dont like – DONT BUY IT!
Thats what I do… at the end of the day, if there are enough fans who will happily shug out for some of the crappy stuff Ive read in Spidey books, Super-book, Bat-books, Rulk and X-books in the past… well they’ll keep making them! So Id rather not burn my money or my brain cells on them, buy the ones I truly like or think are worth seeing more of to add to their sales, enjoy the book and hopefully do my part to keep some of the good ones going as long as possible.
So here’s hoping that this event is all we hope it will be! See you all on the other side! (Umm, yeah, I mean of course that I’ll be back on Flashpoint after the event but I will be back next week!) Cheers till next time Wayfarers!
…OH! and here as promised is the list of books you can look forward to the next few months, many with some great cover artists like Francis Manapul attached as well!…brought to you faithfully by this wacky wayfarer:
– Flashpoint: Batman Knight of Vengeance #1–3, scribe Brian Azzarello and artist Eduardo Risso– Flashpoint: Project: Superman #1–3, scribe Scott Snyder & Lowell Francis and artist Gene Ha.
-Flashpoint: Kid Flash Lost #1–3, scribe Sterling Gates and artist Oliver Nome with covers by Francis Manapul.One-shots
