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The Golden Age Flash gets some deserved attention in Brave and Bold #13 when he teams up with Batman.  Jay Garrick is one of the few people who can put Bruce Wayne in his place, which he does several times in this story.  I love this panel with Garrick running alongside the Batboat, after rejecting Batman's offer for a ride: "No thanks, I'll provide my own transportation!"  Jerry Ordway's art is really nice in this issue, and I will envy the collector who gets to buy this particular page.  Garrick talks to Wayne about being a mentor to several DC heroes and asks him if he would ever let Dick or Tim take over as Batman.  The answer is a cold NO.  But certain signs are pointing to the Batman RIP storyline, that Bruce Wayne might stop being Batman for a while and let one of his sidekicks take over.

Mark Waid was recently interviewed on Word Balloon about a number of topics, one of them being his Brave and Bold run.  He was pleased with how it turned out, but their attempts to plugin popular guest stars misfired.  Waid thought the new Blue Beetle in issue #2 would be a big draw, and his final issue features Superman and Catwoman--who just had her own series canceled!  With this series, his recent Flash run, and his Legion of Super-Heroes team that looks to be pushed aside for the Levitz-Giffen era, Waid is the Peter Parker of the DC Universe.  But you just can't help but love the guy for trying his best.  Nuff said.

Link: Mark Waid Word Balloon Interview (May 2008).

TNT (Tune in TwoMorrows, not the cable station) published a very fine interview last week with Keith Dallas, author of the forthcoming The Flash Companion.  TwoMorrows has Chris Marshall (from Collected Comics Library) doing the interviews now for TNT and he pulls a lot of interesting tidbits from Dallas, who did a stunning amount of research into the history of all four Flashes.  You'll hear comments about Mark Waid, Wally West vs Barry Allen (especially relevant for Final Crisis), Bart Allen's Shortest Run of All Time, and more.

Given my name, I've naturally pre-ordered this one from Amazon.  I loved the previous books in this series from TwoMorrows, especially the Titans Companion and the Legion Companion. Nuff said.

Flash Companion Podcast Interview with Keith Dallas.

I was so bored to tears by DC Universe #0.  Sure, it has some nice art, but it's basically a big cocktease to entice you to buy a dozen other DC books coming out this summer/fall, including Final Crisis.  It's only 50 cents, but I was expecting something on the order of Countdown to Infinite Crisis.  What the heck--the Final Crisis Legion book looks superb, with a terrific 2-page spread by George Perez.  Batman RIP is previewed by Batman watching the Joker play cards and getting creeped out.  Morrison's Joker is cool.  The Green Lantern preview was pretty obtuse; I am excited but I don't get it.  The Spectre thing looks like crap.  Wonder Woman has no big reveal either.

I get to the last page and yawn...then I read this article on CBR.  Holy shit, that was in DC Universe #0 and I missed it?  Spoilers after the jump...

Hokey smokes, the Flash has gone from the top of my reading pile to the very bottom, so I only read The Flash #6 just now. The writing is terrible; Bilson and Demeo seemed to get worse with each issue instead of better. There's nothing really written into Bart's character that makes me want to accept him as the Flash. I could go on and on, but this issue does have a surprise at the very end. If you've read Infinite Crisis and Justice League of America #0, you may have noticed hints that there is a new parallel Earth in the DC Universe. From the time I saw it in JLA #0, I always believed we would find Wally West tucked away on this world. Flash #6 proves that is true. Not only are Wally, Linda, and the twins there, but there is an alternate version of Jay Garrick. There's a scene on that Earth set just after Superboy broke out of prison, which looks like it was hooked up to a number of Red Sun generators. Wally passes the ring to Bart and sends him packing back to DCU Earth-1, loaded up with all the Speed Force in the world. Let's hope eventually Wally gets it back. Nuff said.

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I was highly disappointed by the new Flash #1. The writing was clumsy as well as the artwork. I didn't quite grok that Bart getting "the Illyana treatment" (instantly aged into a young adult) was a permanent change. I didn't initially review Flash #1 because I had hoped that Wally would turn up as the Flash later on in the arc. Sad to say, this is not longer the case, as Didio explained at Heroes Con:

Responding to a question about the Flash and Bart Allen becoming the new Flash as a result of Infinite Crisis, Didio said that he felt a change was needed with the character as he stood because, as he said, there was something very generic about the Flash. Themes were repeating, he said, and he wanted to bring a new generational aspect to the forefront again. In noting that Bart is the Flash for this new generation of the DCU, Didio added that Wally West is gone, but not forgotten.

I can't see anything generic about Wally West as the Flash. He had a great run under Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, and Geoff Johns. He discovered the Speed Force and became the only man to merge with it and come back to reality. I suspect the real problem was the one writers faced back in 1986: the Flash is powerful that they cannot come up with threats deadly enough to threaten him. Witness the awful last arc by Joey Cavaleri that closed out the Flash's second volume.

Didio must think he's going to pull off the same trick as DC did in the 80s with Wally appearing in Flash #1. There are some parallels--Wally wasn't a very likeable character in the first two or three dozen issues. He took money to deliver a heart to the West Coast and slept with every bimbo in sight. As the series went on, Wally became a better person and a more reliable hero. I think we stuck with Wally as readers, because we had a two decade history with him. We had already invested a certain amount of time, from Wally as a teenager in the Flash to a college student in Titans. Bart has had only a decade or less. I could actually see sticking with Bart if they hadn't made him into a sucky dude drinking in pubs. It might have been better to have him learn how to control his Impulse-nature into something more mature. The big question is whether this new Flash will lure in any new readers than Wally West. Nuff said.

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This is the week I've been both looking forward to and dreading at the same time. Flash Volume 3, Number 1, will be in comic stores this Wednesday, June 21st. Can a couple of TV hacks really reinvigorate this character? Will the Flash turn out to be Bart Allen or Jay Garrick or Wally West? I'm betting that things will start off leading us to believe the former and wind up with the latter at the conclusion, just like Wonder Woman is doing with the Donna Troy business. I have no doubts about Ken Lashley on the artwork. Blog @ Newsarama tipped me off to this article about Lashley on the Canadian MetroNews site. There's also a review of Flash #1 which doesn't really say anything, except to indicate that the first arc is another example of decompressed storytelling. Can't wait till Wednesday. Nuff said.

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A lot of people who are reading Infinite Crisis are not hardcore DC fans; even if you are a DC fan, you may not have read the Flash for the past 20 years. What is the Speed Force and who were those guys in Infinite Crisis #4? To answer that, we are going to go back to the beginning-to Barry Allen, the Flash of the Silver Age of comic books.

Barry Allen always assumed that his origin was tied up with a bolt of lightning striking his laboratory. The chemicals that splashed over his body supposedly transformed him into the scarlet speedster. But in a flashback shown in Speed Force Special #1 (1997), we could see that Barry started to doubt this theory. After an encounter with a villain called Cobalt Blue, who seemed to withdraw the speed power from both Barry and Wally West (Kid Flash at that point), Barry suspected a greater force was at work.

Everyone knows by now that Barry Allen died in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths mini-series. He went out like a hero, running circles around the Anti-Monitor's machine in order to destroy it. However, what most new fans won't know is that this is only half of the story…

In 1988, DC published Flash Annual 2 (Vol. 2), featuring the Secret Origin of Barry Allen. It was written by a wonderful writer named Robert Loren Fleming and drawn by Flash's co-creator, Carmine Infantino. In this story, which actually covered most of Barry Allen's life, we see at the end that he transformed into a creature of pure energy…

…and eventually became a lightning bolt, going back in time and striking Barry's lab full of chemicals. In effect, he created himself. Who knows if DC's current generation of writers remembers this annual? Is it still canon? But I like it, only if I can say that the lightning bolt is not an endless, repeating loop, and that it eventually goes to the Speed Force. We would have to wait seven years to ask these questions...

In Flash #1 Vol.2 (1987), we see that Wally West is making good on his promise to become the Flash (which he stated at the end of Crisis). His speed power is nowhere near Barry's, as he can barely match the speed of sound. A trip across America to deliver vital supplies takes an hour and Wally's so exhausted at the end that he has to scarf down a ton of fast food to restore his energy.

Wally's quest to regain Barry's speed was a recurring theme in the new Flash's first 90 issues. When Mark Waid took over, Wally's scientist friends kept telling him that it wasn't possible for any human being to run as fast as Barry. After a trip through time, (courtesy of Zero Hour) Wally runs past the speed of light-but he pays a price. In Flash 95, Linda stumbles through a doorway to find that Wally is becoming a being of pure energy!

To make matters worse, Wally's seen a glimpse of the future-that he will die saving Linda-dissipating into pure energy. Despite all of Wally's best efforts to avoid his fate, it comes true at the hands of Kobra. In Flash 99, Kobra fires an energy weapon at Linda. In order to stop it, Wally must run faster than ever before. He saves Linda and explodes in a flash of light.

In Flash 100, Central City has a big problem. It is sealed off from the rest of the DC Universe, and Kobra's terrorist cell is in control. Linda Park proves she is no pushover and manages to survive on her own. Just as Kobra finally corners Linda and gets ready to kill her, Wally returns, surrounded by bolts of lightning. He defeats Kobra using speed powers we've never seen him wield.

According to the Comics Continuum, Justice League Unlimited is back on Cartoon Network this Saturday. The new episode is called "Flash and Substance". Yum, yum, an all-Flash episode with his Rogues Gallery: Mirror Master, Captain Cold, and the Trickster are slated to appear. Plus they worked Linda Park in there. Now, what is really funny is that over on Ain't It Cool, people in the UK are watching the penultimate episode of JLU already! For once, our friends across the pond get to watch something ahead of the United States. This means...that all these JLU episodes are already torrented. Yep. Nuff said.

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