#first one is from the velocity comic tie in btw

[vamprnce]

the way they got Peter to visit and vent to May and Ben like twice now got me so depressed :(

[jcogginsawriter]

Hand to Hand: Mark Waid’s Flash

I have been a fan of comic book characters for a long time. I started with the cartoons, and as I got older, I began doing deep dives into wikis, reading fanfiction, and participating in that shallowest of internet past times, the vs debate. I dabbled in writing fanfic for myself, but I spent far more time thinking about writing fanfic instead. I would come up with all these ideas about what I would take from the various different versions of the characters, and don’t get me started on the idea of Crossovers.     The point is, I knew a lot of what happened in the comics, but I never read many comics. I didn’t know where my local comic shop was, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have had the money to spend on them. The comics that I did read were usually fan translations of manga. I did read a few comics, big name stories like Death of Superman or Crisis on Infinite Earths, but they were few and far between.

Recently, I’ve begun to change that. I now follow several comics as they come out, most notably the current X-line. This change sprang in part because I began reading a lot more comics criticism. In particular, I followed the blog of a certain Superman fan, and began to eagerly digest his various takes. I wanted to be able to ask him questions about new comics without looking like an idiot (This is how 90 percent of my interactions on comics twitter go, BTW) and that was a kick in the pants for me.

After getting into a steady habit, I decided to look into reading some of the classic runs I’d read so much about throughout life. To go from knowing them second hand, to knowing them first hand. After a bit of hemming and hawing, I’ve settled on Mark Waid’s legendary run of Flash Comics to start off with.

(Spoiler Warning for some 30 year old comics, by the way)

As of this writing, I have read up to the final issue of his story arc Dead Heat, wherein Wally does battle with the speed cultist Savitar. Before we get into things like plot and characters, I want to discuss the art, because no discussion of comic books is really complete without talking about the art. Unfortunately, the art in this run hasn’t done much for me, but that’s not really it’s fault. I read this comics in manner that they were not created to be read, digitally and zoomed in. These comics were drawn with physical issues in mind, and I don’t doubt that they’re good in that format. It also doesn’t help that I’ve read far more manga than I have American comics. American comics have never clicked with me the way manga does. Even now, I still find the layout of manga more legible than the layout of an American comic. That’s not a value judgment, it’s just my personal experience.

I do distinctly recall thinking that the art was better up to issue #79 (The conclusion to the Return of Barry Allen storyline), than it was after. I prefer the less exaggerated character designs, and lighter inks, though it could very well be a case of me having gotten used to the initial style and not liking the change. One thing that thing I can say about the art is that it helped me grasp how Wally’s costume differed from Barry’s. Before this, I was incapable of separating them in my mind, but seeing them side by side made it clear to me how different Wally’s Costume was colored and shaded.

Now, onto the writing of the run, we’ll start with the lead, Wally West. My previous touchstone for Wally was the Justice League series from the DCAU, which I watched a lot as a kid. The Wally in these comics comes off as more serious that his DCAU incarnation. Not too serious, he still cracks jokes, but he’s more on the ball. He takes his adventures as seriously as any hero would, rather than the more carefree attitude I recall his DCAU version having. This is not unsurprising, Wally here is the lead whereas there he was part of an ensemble cast, and here we get his internal monologue which gives us a much more thorough sense of his headspace. Not to mention, the DCAU version was voiced, so we know with no ambiguity what tone his dialogue’s in. In text, tone is more up to interpretation.

Perhaps the biggest thing that set Comic Wally apart from DCAU Wally is that the Wally in the comic was more consistently angry and frustrated. While his DCAU incarnation had hidden depths, I can’t recall a time when he got seriously angry. This Wally is frequently irritated, usually by things which are enitrely understandable. On occasion, his irritability causes him to be rougher with the bad guys than he could be, and that feels uncomfortable sometimes, though thus far he hasn’t gone too far.

Going into this, I knew that one of the issues that Wally had to overcome was his mental block about surpassing Barry, and to my surprise, it wasn’t as much of a through-line as I expected. I was expecting it to be a reoccurring issue that was solved by the Return of Barry Allen storyline, but in reality there are only one or two times something like it comes up, usually in the context of him not being able to do the vibrating through walls trick. In the Return of Barry Allen, it feels more like an issue introduced in that story than a long running plot line. Granted, it may only feel this way because I’m solely reading Mark Waid’s Flash. I didn’t read the issues prior to his take over, so that storyline could have been more apparent there for all I know.

Moving on, starting with Waid’s run had another knock on effect, that being that the character introductions aren’t introductions. I came into this expecting to see when Wally met Linda, when he met Jay Garrick, when Pied Piper redeemed himself, but all of that happened before Waid took over the book, so they’re already part of the cast from the start. Again, not a flaw of the work, it’s just a result of my personal experiences. Now, let’s take a look at some of these characters.

I’ve heard a lot about Linda and Wally’s romance, and so far it’s not bad. I wouldn’t rate it as one of the best of all time, but I haven’t gotten to most of the major moments yet, so that’s not a huge surprise. One thing that’s very apparent is the Lois Lane DNA in her character. Some of that is to be expected, which the love interest to your superhero is a reporter, but I see a lot of similarities in their personality as well. There’s a lot of the same fire in her. Fortunately, the fact that Wally’s identity is public lends a very different arc to their relationship than what you see with Lois and Clark, so Linda doesn’t come off as a Lois rip-off. Linda’s concerns that there’s no place for her in Wally’s wild superhero life is the kind of relationship hurdle that isn’t present in Lois and Clark’s Relationship.

Next, let’s take a look at the first Flash, Jay Garrick. Within this series, Jay is perfectly pleasant, and by no means unlikable, but he also comes across as...kind of superfluous? There are three elderly male speedsters in this comic, and of all of them Jay is by far the least defined and has the least role. Max Mercury is the Wally’s mentor in the ways of speed, the one with the most knowledge of the Speed Force. He’s basically what I expected Jay Garrick to be going into this. The third of the group is Johnny Quick, a speedster who is the father of another speedster, Jesse Quick. Jesse is also very skeptical of Max Mercury’s teachings, which veer from the scientific into the mystical.

Because Johnny takes the role of skeptic, Jay is left without a role in the narrative because being the nicest of Wally’s friend group. Veering over to Hollywood for a second, whenever a book gets adapted into a movie or TV Show, minor characters get lost in the transition. Either they get composited with other characters, or they get cut entirely. Game of Thrones is the most prominent example in recent memory. I bring this up because, if Waid’s Flash were to go through that process, it’s hard to argue that Jay wouldn’t get the ax. Despite being the most important of them in the context of the universe at large, Jay is the least important Speedster in this narrative. Of course, Jay’s importance in the context of the larger universe means that in this hypothetical adaptation, he probably be composited into either max or Johnny. More likely Max, since mentor is the logical position for the first Flash to take in the Third Flash’s narrative.

I mentioned Jess Quick there, so let’s talk about her. Thus far, her most prominent role in the narrative has been to call Wally out and be his critic, though she does have very good reasons to be angry. In the Terminal Velocity storyline, Wally believes he’ll die soon, and tells the Flash Family that Jesse will be his successor, but it turns out to be a lie in order to motivate Bart Allen to take things more seriously. Jesse has remained angry with Wally since then, though it hasn’t seriously impacted her hero work. That’s good, because her continued competence lends legitimacy to her anger within the narrative. She’s not being punished for being mad at Wally for mistreating her. Hopefully it stays that way going forward.

Now let’s take a look at the character Wally chose over Jesse, Bart Allen AKA Impulse. I’ll say up front that I’m not reading Bart’s solo series during this read through, as I didn’t want the hassle of going back and forth between books. As such, the only issues of it that I’ve looked at are the ones that tie into the Dead Heat arc. I feel it’s important for me to say this, because I’m basing my opinions of Bart primarily on his showings in Wally’s book, not his own. In Wally’s book, Bart’s character flaws are more on display.

Bart is a character deliberately designed to be obnoxious, and such characters are a hard tightrope to walk in fiction. Gotta be annyoing enough to get the point across, but not annoying enough to turn people off from the work. Bart in Wally’s book isn’t perfectly balanced, and tends toward the too much pile. Not to an egregious extent, but a little bit. I found myself echoing Wally’s frustration with Bart more than a few times. In Bart’s defense, Wally does share some of the blame here. He doesn’t do a very good job as a mentor, and handing those duties off to Max is probably for the best.

I find it interesting, that a character like Wally who is so defined by inheriting a legacy is a poor mentor, to both Bart and Jesse. He makes different mistakes with both of them, but he still fails both of them. I’m eager to see how that plays out in the future issues.

Now that we’ve discussed the supporting cast, let’s discuss some of the book’s villains. We’ll start with the one who is most infamous, Eobard Thawne. Thawne’s spends the majority of his time in this book thinking he’s Barry Allen, and if I’m being honest, he’s more effective under that guise that he is as Eobard. The scenes where what appears to be Barry Allen turns evil out of jealousy of his successor are powerful, more so than the more traditional villain Eobard displays after the reveal. Not that it would have been a good idea for it to actually be Barry, of course. Much as I prefer Wally to Barry, having Barry go full supervillain would have been very out of character. In any case, this run had a profound impact on Eobard’s character going forward, solidifying him as an agent of toxic fanboyism, making him a dark mirror of Wally West.

The next major villain of the run is the cult slash terrorist organization Kobra. That might bring thoughts of GI Joe to your mind, and you honestly aren’t far off. So far as this run goes, the biggest differences between DC’s Kobra and Hasbro’s is A) DC’s version prefer green over blue, and B) Hasbro’s version has more in the way of distinct characters. Kobra thus far is more of a plot device than  anything else. They’re generic terrorists with little to make them distictive. Their storyline, Terminal Velocity, is more notable for it’s introduction of the Speed Force, Wally preparing for his upcoming ‘death’, and Linda going on a revenge quest after said ‘death’. All things that Kobra is incidental to, any villainous organization would have sufficed.

The final, as of my current point in the run, major villain is Savitar. Savitar was formerly a soviet test pilot who gained a connection to a the speedforce, gave himself the name of Hindu god, and started a speed worshipping cult. It says a lot about my mind that my immediate thoughts upon reading Savitar’s origin were. “Huh, an AU where Hal Jordan became a Speedster the same way would be neat.”. Savitar is in some ways an improvement on the Kobra Cult from Terminal Velocity. This time the Cult has a more direct connection to the Flash and his mythos. Dead Heat is by no means a retread of Terminal Velocity, but if you wanted to mesh them into one story, it wouldn’t be hard. And it’d improve on both, in some ways.

One of the things I like to do in my fanfic ideas is connect the other speedsters to Thawne’s theme of Toxic Fandom, and it wouldn’t be hard to do that with Savitar. His entire motivation is to deprive those he considers unworthy of their speed, and that can easily by played as a metaphor for gatekeeping.

Over all, while the run is far from perfect, I must say I’m enjoying these comics a good deal, and if you’re like me and have read a lot about comics without actually reading them, I don’t think you’d regret jumping into them.