Metropolis Is Actually Chicago Proudly Presents a Guest Post by Nick Philpott!
There is a problem in comic books today, and that problem has a face.
And that face is The Flash.
The Scarlet Speedster. If you ask anyone who their favorite Justice Leaguer is, you will probably get either Batman or Superman as an answer (my feminist friends skew toward Wonder Woman hate because "she doesn't wear any damn pants"). You rarely hear someone say, "You know who the baddest motherfucker in the Justice League is? The Flash. That motherfucker is fast." Because while it is valid that he is fast, that is all he ever seems to be.
I'll let you insert your own dirty jokes about what he is fast at. Yes, I ended that last sentence with a preposition.
The only time I can recall being particularly moved by the Flash before sitting down to write this article/retrospective/disorganized ramble was probably the only time 90% of comic book fans have felt strongly connected to him: the one time four years before I was born when he died by running too fast. I'm just gonna let that sink in for a bit. Also, let's remember, that, while noble, Barry Allen's sacrifice happens in like, the third month of twelve in Crisis on Infinite Earths. It was a stumbling block for the Anti-Monitor, but only a stumble.
I think Barry Allen is a good place to start with why I hate the Flash. Every fucking person in those books is related to everyfuckingbody else. Barry Allen and Professor Zoom/Reverse Flash/That Asshole From the Future Who Won't Pick A Name are in-laws, for Christ's sake. Which is not to discount the inherent villainy amongst in-law relationships.
The first independent Flash book I read (independent as in, it was not a Justice League team-up, and I was not under the impression that Batman would show up) was Geoff Johns's The Flash: Rebirth, because I loved what Geoff had done with Green Lantern in the same fashion. Say what you will about him, he is a man who knows what makes a superhero a superhero to everyone and what they need to deal with to come back from the dead after a couple of decades, etc.
ANYWAY, Flash: Rebirth. For the first issue and a half, let's say, I felt like I had gotten lost in some freakish family reunion of the Wests and Allens, with "Aunt Iris Allen" and "Linda Park-West" and "Bart Allen," the grandson that was born to Barry's children that he and Iris had in the 30th century. after he died in the Crisis, somehow (this kind of time-hopping, trip-happy near-paradox is why most people find comic books to be, in a word, retarded).
On the whole, though, I thought Rebirth was fantastic. Seeing the Flash and Reverse Flash explicitly shown as two sides of the same coin in an electrical sense, a temporal sense, etc., was pretty excellent. They're a battery, and one side can't function without the other to function against. The unstoppable force and the immovable object, if you will. And the notion of Barry actually being the Speed Force. Brilliant. It's these kind of humongous gestures that make comic books the most endearing medium to me, because they know no budgetary limitations, there is no derision for bad CGI, it is whatever the artists and the writer can wrangle from their brains. Sometimes, it's incoherent drivel, but sometimes, you get a glimpse of genius.
So I thought, "Hey, a book where I actually cared about the Flash, and the fact that he was pretty fast. Maybe I should do some research." And sure enough, one of the biggest Flash-fans out there , Sarah Bowden (author of this blog!--Ed.), had several volumes on-hand that she wanted me to read. I will not pretend that reading Rebirth and the two books she gave me make me a Flash-factmaster, but they gave me enough to articulate (with evidence!) why I think 98% of Flash stories can die in a fire, and how that is representative of the stagnation endemic to comic books as a larger medium.
The books she loaned me were The Return of Barry Allen by Mark Waid, a saga from the early '90s, which notably pre-dates the Speed Force and therefore the notion that Barry Allen was merely a part of the Speed Force (or the Speed Force itself), and The Human Race by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, which is actually two smaller stories in one volume. I will go ahead and say that, while in general, I'm a Grant Morrison fanatic, a casual fan of Mark Millar, and a person who would like to see Mark Waid just retire before he be allowed to ruin things any further, but Sarah assured me that I would find Return of Barry Allen (which I have been assured is not only a classic of the Flash canon, but comics in general) enlightening, Flash-wise, so I held my tongue, checked my mental baggage and dove into it headfirst.
I'm going to skip to the end, without summarizing the book, and say that I hated it, with a fire that I reserve for few things. One of things about the Flash that I found admirable, if not particularly interesting per se, was that when the Flash Family died, they capital-D Died. After Barry Allen outran the Anti-Monitor's gizmo, he was Dead. When Professor Zoom vibrated his hand into Iris' head, she was Dead. That generation was gone, and it was time for Wally and Linda to shine, albeit with an occasional hand from Jay Garrick, who is just too goddamn lovable to keep down (like a grandpa that just will not take a goddamn nap). The Return of Barry Allen came out in 1993, just shy of a decade after Barry's death. Granted, in superhero-time, eights months is an eternity, so the fact that they made it a whole year, much less eight, is laudable. Hell, Superman was only dead for like, seven months and Captain America and Batman were more accurately gone than dead. But regardless, it was only eight years. Infinite Crisis was only six years ago, to put that in perspective.
This isn't to say I was anti-Barry Allen returning. I've got no beef with Barry, mostly because I never knew him. I've got a beef with comic book writers feeling slighted because they never got to tell "their" stories with their favorite superheroes (see also: the return of Jason Todd, people who still write Justice Society of America books), so they resurrect them, usually by cosmic coincidence or convenient amnesia.
I mean, come on, people. There has to be a line between comic books and soap operas, or else, what has this all been about?
So there's Mark Waid, bringing back Barry Allen. The whole point of the arc was a noble one. Making Wally overcome his limitations to be faster than Barry opened up a whole 'nother side of of Wally that was pretty rad to explore, as far as temporal/spatial distortions and faster-than-time-travel. My problem lies with Waid's methods. Because not only did he feel like he needed to bring "Barry" back, but he's made Professor Zoom's hatred of Barry rooted in a fucking time paradox. (Author's note: I fucking hate time paradoxes.)
Summary: basically Zoom grows up in the 25th century (or some fuckin' nonsense) idolizing Barry Allen, has plastic surgery to LOOK like Barry Allen, (this part is fuzzy, it might just be a clever mask), buys the Cosmic Treadmill at a thrift store, makes himself super fast by doing future experiments of some indeterminate but painful sort, runs back in time, but far enough to meet Barry, goes to the Flash museum to mope, finds out that Barry's nemesis Zoom is actually himself and that one day in his future/the Flash's past, Barry Allen will snap Zoom's neck for generally being a complete and total bastard. Wally has a battle of wits with Zoom in the Flash Museum and gets Zoom to run back into the future on the Cosmic Treadmill, which somehow erases his memory because that's convenient. Oh, and Zoom read all about Barry's biography in a book called THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE FLASH by -- wait for it -- Iris Allen.
This summary seems like it is haphazard , but I assure you, it was written less than a week after reading the book.
ANYWAYS, The Return of Barry Allen. Aside from the fact that Zoom hates the Flash because Zoom hates the Flash (metaphysics, people, it's not hard), the endgame of the whole saga is (a) yes, Barry is gone, (b) yes, Professor Zoom is still a dick, (c) Wally had the power all along, he just had to believe in himself (gag), (d) I don't think Johnny Quick's "Speed Formula" makes any goddamn sense, mathematically or otherwise, (e) even I was shocked at the rampant objectification of women in the book [Come on, Linda, no one cooks things at the stove for dinner in just their panties {especially not bacon. That grease will spatter and it will burn you.}], and (f) I have no idea why Mark Waid keeps getting work, but I also know exactly why he keeps getting work. He only deals with the familiar, which is the gateway to my larger thesis.
Each person who has to write an ongoing comic series essentially agrees to two things: (1) I have this cast of characters who do these set things, and within that framework, I will do as I please, and (2) I will not fuck with that which has come before, unless it can be fixed before the end of the arc. Everyone who signed on to write Green Lantern Pre-Rebirth knew that he could make anything he willed out of his ring, he had an oath to say to recharge his ring in a battery, and his ring did not work on things that were yellow. Good writers, like Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison, take these parameters, figure out a reason why they're there, and subvert them into something new, i.e., Parallax, the yellow impurity, Superboy-Prime escaping the pocket universe to "fix" ours.
Sub-par writers, like Mark Waid, Tony S. Daniel, and Judd Winick (to name a few, and risk burning some bridges), take those confines and do what they can without stepping on any tails. People have said that Mark Waid is too nostalgic for Silver-Age comics to be writing a current ongoing series, and I'm hard-pressed to come up with evidence to the contrary.
Therein lies my problem with the Flash: writers who are willing to go different places with the Flash are few and far between. For example, it shouldn't be groundbreaking to me that because Wally West can run at the speed of light, he can time travel, because that is basic relativistic physics. But it is groundbreaking for me, and that's exactly what I loved about the Grant Morrison/Mark Millar Flash arcs.
In the second arc in the book (I think the arc itself is called "The Black Flash" or "Death Comes to Wally West" or something in that vein. Regardless, it was self-explanatory), Mark Millar takes Wally to his limits by killing Linda in the first issue and making him literally beat Death in a race.
Sidebar: I think it's fair to say that the Black Flash is one of my favorite comic book characters and I have literally no idea why. That's a whole other article, honestly. Double sidebar: why is there no Flash/Black Flash The Seventh Seal parody?
ANYWAY, in this arc, instead of having it revealed that a character is still alive (and somehow in the 30th century, setting the stage for a really awkward reunion), the removal of Linda forces Wally to redefine himself as a person and as the Flash. All the growth of character in The Return of Barry Allen happens in the last issue in about five pages while Zoom relishes how evil he is and how soundly he has beaten Wally (even though that was a Mark Waid story, where the good guys can't lose). In the Black Flash arc, Wally grows a little bit in each issue, until it builds to a very satisfying conclusion where, (HERE THERE BE SPOILERS) he races Death to the end of time and then voluntarily runs into the Speed Force to retrieve Linda (END OF SPOILERS).
This is remarkable on several levels. Beating Death is impressive, but depending on how fast you define Wally to be, it's something that could easily be written. In this case, it's a measure of Wally's tactical skill and not his speed. He knows he can't just keep running from the Black Flash forever, so he runs to the end of time, when there IS no forever, and where there can be no Death because there is no Life by which to measure it.
Also, before this issue, the speedsters had discovered the Speed Force, but it was still largely foreign to them, with Max Mercury hyper-meditating and getting even closer to it, but never entering it fully. Wally, who several issues before was wallowing about being powerless and alone forever, about being a useless, overgrown child with more in common with a track team than the Justice League, has gained such confidence in himself and his abilities that he runs in to the Speed Force to retrieve Linda, because he knows he can run back out.
In the final analysis, what I'm saying here is this: there is an ever-expanding group of writers who are afraid to tackle comics for what they can be, to touch on fresh, and frankly, mature ideas. The industry is at a similar place to the early '80s, where by and large, the books have no depth, and are there merely to continue to grind on sworn fans. It is time for another revolution, now that Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore have sort of fallen off the radar.
What makes writers so afraid of the unknown? What better place is there for narrative experimentation than a comic book? Hell, Grant Morrison's Final Crisis was about the entire universe realizing that they were all fictional characters and fighting against the enemy, which was a blank page.
How fucking rad is that?
I'm sorry for singling out Mark Waid and naming other names, but honestly, they're going to get a paycheck this week for writing comics, and I'm not, so I don't feel too bad. It'd just be nice if this blog reminds writers at large that there's no reason to run the book into the unknown. Because you know you can always run back.
Nick Philpott is a playwright and comic book fan/sometimes author living in Athens, Ohio. His best time for the mile is 12m 36s, and he's fucking proud of it.
POST SCRIPT: For the other side of the debate coin, re: The Flash, check out Siskoid's blog about The Return of Barry Allen (8/1/07) ...
And that face is The Flash.
The Scarlet Speedster. If you ask anyone who their favorite Justice Leaguer is, you will probably get either Batman or Superman as an answer (my feminist friends skew toward Wonder Woman hate because "she doesn't wear any damn pants"). You rarely hear someone say, "You know who the baddest motherfucker in the Justice League is? The Flash. That motherfucker is fast." Because while it is valid that he is fast, that is all he ever seems to be.
I'll let you insert your own dirty jokes about what he is fast at. Yes, I ended that last sentence with a preposition.
The only time I can recall being particularly moved by the Flash before sitting down to write this article/retrospective/disorganized ramble was probably the only time 90% of comic book fans have felt strongly connected to him: the one time four years before I was born when he died by running too fast. I'm just gonna let that sink in for a bit. Also, let's remember, that, while noble, Barry Allen's sacrifice happens in like, the third month of twelve in Crisis on Infinite Earths. It was a stumbling block for the Anti-Monitor, but only a stumble.
I think Barry Allen is a good place to start with why I hate the Flash. Every fucking person in those books is related to everyfuckingbody else. Barry Allen and Professor Zoom/Reverse Flash/That Asshole From the Future Who Won't Pick A Name are in-laws, for Christ's sake. Which is not to discount the inherent villainy amongst in-law relationships.
The first independent Flash book I read (independent as in, it was not a Justice League team-up, and I was not under the impression that Batman would show up) was Geoff Johns's The Flash: Rebirth, because I loved what Geoff had done with Green Lantern in the same fashion. Say what you will about him, he is a man who knows what makes a superhero a superhero to everyone and what they need to deal with to come back from the dead after a couple of decades, etc.
ANYWAY, Flash: Rebirth. For the first issue and a half, let's say, I felt like I had gotten lost in some freakish family reunion of the Wests and Allens, with "Aunt Iris Allen" and "Linda Park-West" and "Bart Allen," the grandson that was born to Barry's children that he and Iris had in the 30th century. after he died in the Crisis, somehow (this kind of time-hopping, trip-happy near-paradox is why most people find comic books to be, in a word, retarded).
On the whole, though, I thought Rebirth was fantastic. Seeing the Flash and Reverse Flash explicitly shown as two sides of the same coin in an electrical sense, a temporal sense, etc., was pretty excellent. They're a battery, and one side can't function without the other to function against. The unstoppable force and the immovable object, if you will. And the notion of Barry actually being the Speed Force. Brilliant. It's these kind of humongous gestures that make comic books the most endearing medium to me, because they know no budgetary limitations, there is no derision for bad CGI, it is whatever the artists and the writer can wrangle from their brains. Sometimes, it's incoherent drivel, but sometimes, you get a glimpse of genius.
So I thought, "Hey, a book where I actually cared about the Flash, and the fact that he was pretty fast. Maybe I should do some research." And sure enough, one of the biggest Flash-fans out there , Sarah Bowden (author of this blog!--Ed.), had several volumes on-hand that she wanted me to read. I will not pretend that reading Rebirth and the two books she gave me make me a Flash-factmaster, but they gave me enough to articulate (with evidence!) why I think 98% of Flash stories can die in a fire, and how that is representative of the stagnation endemic to comic books as a larger medium.
The books she loaned me were The Return of Barry Allen by Mark Waid, a saga from the early '90s, which notably pre-dates the Speed Force and therefore the notion that Barry Allen was merely a part of the Speed Force (or the Speed Force itself), and The Human Race by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, which is actually two smaller stories in one volume. I will go ahead and say that, while in general, I'm a Grant Morrison fanatic, a casual fan of Mark Millar, and a person who would like to see Mark Waid just retire before he be allowed to ruin things any further, but Sarah assured me that I would find Return of Barry Allen (which I have been assured is not only a classic of the Flash canon, but comics in general) enlightening, Flash-wise, so I held my tongue, checked my mental baggage and dove into it headfirst.
I'm going to skip to the end, without summarizing the book, and say that I hated it, with a fire that I reserve for few things. One of things about the Flash that I found admirable, if not particularly interesting per se, was that when the Flash Family died, they capital-D Died. After Barry Allen outran the Anti-Monitor's gizmo, he was Dead. When Professor Zoom vibrated his hand into Iris' head, she was Dead. That generation was gone, and it was time for Wally and Linda to shine, albeit with an occasional hand from Jay Garrick, who is just too goddamn lovable to keep down (like a grandpa that just will not take a goddamn nap). The Return of Barry Allen came out in 1993, just shy of a decade after Barry's death. Granted, in superhero-time, eights months is an eternity, so the fact that they made it a whole year, much less eight, is laudable. Hell, Superman was only dead for like, seven months and Captain America and Batman were more accurately gone than dead. But regardless, it was only eight years. Infinite Crisis was only six years ago, to put that in perspective.
This isn't to say I was anti-Barry Allen returning. I've got no beef with Barry, mostly because I never knew him. I've got a beef with comic book writers feeling slighted because they never got to tell "their" stories with their favorite superheroes (see also: the return of Jason Todd, people who still write Justice Society of America books), so they resurrect them, usually by cosmic coincidence or convenient amnesia.
I mean, come on, people. There has to be a line between comic books and soap operas, or else, what has this all been about?
So there's Mark Waid, bringing back Barry Allen. The whole point of the arc was a noble one. Making Wally overcome his limitations to be faster than Barry opened up a whole 'nother side of of Wally that was pretty rad to explore, as far as temporal/spatial distortions and faster-than-time-travel. My problem lies with Waid's methods. Because not only did he feel like he needed to bring "Barry" back, but he's made Professor Zoom's hatred of Barry rooted in a fucking time paradox. (Author's note: I fucking hate time paradoxes.)
Summary: basically Zoom grows up in the 25th century (or some fuckin' nonsense) idolizing Barry Allen, has plastic surgery to LOOK like Barry Allen, (this part is fuzzy, it might just be a clever mask), buys the Cosmic Treadmill at a thrift store, makes himself super fast by doing future experiments of some indeterminate but painful sort, runs back in time, but far enough to meet Barry, goes to the Flash museum to mope, finds out that Barry's nemesis Zoom is actually himself and that one day in his future/the Flash's past, Barry Allen will snap Zoom's neck for generally being a complete and total bastard. Wally has a battle of wits with Zoom in the Flash Museum and gets Zoom to run back into the future on the Cosmic Treadmill, which somehow erases his memory because that's convenient. Oh, and Zoom read all about Barry's biography in a book called THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE FLASH by -- wait for it -- Iris Allen.
This summary seems like it is haphazard , but I assure you, it was written less than a week after reading the book.
ANYWAYS, The Return of Barry Allen. Aside from the fact that Zoom hates the Flash because Zoom hates the Flash (metaphysics, people, it's not hard), the endgame of the whole saga is (a) yes, Barry is gone, (b) yes, Professor Zoom is still a dick, (c) Wally had the power all along, he just had to believe in himself (gag), (d) I don't think Johnny Quick's "Speed Formula" makes any goddamn sense, mathematically or otherwise, (e) even I was shocked at the rampant objectification of women in the book [Come on, Linda, no one cooks things at the stove for dinner in just their panties {especially not bacon. That grease will spatter and it will burn you.}], and (f) I have no idea why Mark Waid keeps getting work, but I also know exactly why he keeps getting work. He only deals with the familiar, which is the gateway to my larger thesis.
Each person who has to write an ongoing comic series essentially agrees to two things: (1) I have this cast of characters who do these set things, and within that framework, I will do as I please, and (2) I will not fuck with that which has come before, unless it can be fixed before the end of the arc. Everyone who signed on to write Green Lantern Pre-Rebirth knew that he could make anything he willed out of his ring, he had an oath to say to recharge his ring in a battery, and his ring did not work on things that were yellow. Good writers, like Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison, take these parameters, figure out a reason why they're there, and subvert them into something new, i.e., Parallax, the yellow impurity, Superboy-Prime escaping the pocket universe to "fix" ours.
Sub-par writers, like Mark Waid, Tony S. Daniel, and Judd Winick (to name a few, and risk burning some bridges), take those confines and do what they can without stepping on any tails. People have said that Mark Waid is too nostalgic for Silver-Age comics to be writing a current ongoing series, and I'm hard-pressed to come up with evidence to the contrary.
Therein lies my problem with the Flash: writers who are willing to go different places with the Flash are few and far between. For example, it shouldn't be groundbreaking to me that because Wally West can run at the speed of light, he can time travel, because that is basic relativistic physics. But it is groundbreaking for me, and that's exactly what I loved about the Grant Morrison/Mark Millar Flash arcs.
In the second arc in the book (I think the arc itself is called "The Black Flash" or "Death Comes to Wally West" or something in that vein. Regardless, it was self-explanatory), Mark Millar takes Wally to his limits by killing Linda in the first issue and making him literally beat Death in a race.
Sidebar: I think it's fair to say that the Black Flash is one of my favorite comic book characters and I have literally no idea why. That's a whole other article, honestly. Double sidebar: why is there no Flash/Black Flash The Seventh Seal parody?
ANYWAY, in this arc, instead of having it revealed that a character is still alive (and somehow in the 30th century, setting the stage for a really awkward reunion), the removal of Linda forces Wally to redefine himself as a person and as the Flash. All the growth of character in The Return of Barry Allen happens in the last issue in about five pages while Zoom relishes how evil he is and how soundly he has beaten Wally (even though that was a Mark Waid story, where the good guys can't lose). In the Black Flash arc, Wally grows a little bit in each issue, until it builds to a very satisfying conclusion where, (HERE THERE BE SPOILERS) he races Death to the end of time and then voluntarily runs into the Speed Force to retrieve Linda (END OF SPOILERS).
This is remarkable on several levels. Beating Death is impressive, but depending on how fast you define Wally to be, it's something that could easily be written. In this case, it's a measure of Wally's tactical skill and not his speed. He knows he can't just keep running from the Black Flash forever, so he runs to the end of time, when there IS no forever, and where there can be no Death because there is no Life by which to measure it.
Also, before this issue, the speedsters had discovered the Speed Force, but it was still largely foreign to them, with Max Mercury hyper-meditating and getting even closer to it, but never entering it fully. Wally, who several issues before was wallowing about being powerless and alone forever, about being a useless, overgrown child with more in common with a track team than the Justice League, has gained such confidence in himself and his abilities that he runs in to the Speed Force to retrieve Linda, because he knows he can run back out.
In the final analysis, what I'm saying here is this: there is an ever-expanding group of writers who are afraid to tackle comics for what they can be, to touch on fresh, and frankly, mature ideas. The industry is at a similar place to the early '80s, where by and large, the books have no depth, and are there merely to continue to grind on sworn fans. It is time for another revolution, now that Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore have sort of fallen off the radar.
What makes writers so afraid of the unknown? What better place is there for narrative experimentation than a comic book? Hell, Grant Morrison's Final Crisis was about the entire universe realizing that they were all fictional characters and fighting against the enemy, which was a blank page.
How fucking rad is that?
I'm sorry for singling out Mark Waid and naming other names, but honestly, they're going to get a paycheck this week for writing comics, and I'm not, so I don't feel too bad. It'd just be nice if this blog reminds writers at large that there's no reason to run the book into the unknown. Because you know you can always run back.
Nick Philpott is a playwright and comic book fan/sometimes author living in Athens, Ohio. His best time for the mile is 12m 36s, and he's fucking proud of it.
POST SCRIPT: For the other side of the debate coin, re: The Flash, check out Siskoid's blog about The Return of Barry Allen (8/1/07) ...
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