It rarely fails that when one builds up a
particular thing in memory, the reality of that thing cannot live up to the
building. We call this nostalgia. I’ll admit that part of my love for Waid’s Flash is nostalgic. The early parts of
his run are not quite the superlative superhero comics that I fondly cast them
as in memory. What we’re seeing here is a writer beginning his first immersive,
ongoing title, his first extended take on what it means to be a superhero. We
give much credit to comics writers like Kurt Busiek and Grant Morrison for
their explorations (though in very different directions) of what it means to be
superhuman, and unfortunately not much to Mark Waid. Where Busiek tries to find
the human in the superhuman, and Morrison the god, Waid does something
different yet again, though something also intrinsically connected to those two
other vectors: he tries to find the person in the superhuman. By the end of the
run, we don’t think of the character as “The Flash,” we think of him as Wally
West. Or more properly, we cease to see a divide between the two. Waid explores
the impact of superherodom on a person, and also the impact on a person of
having a public identity. Where Clark and Superman, Bruce and Batman, are
treated, by the characters themselves, as separate, Wally and the Flash never
have that divide. An illustration of the progression of that amalgamation can be seen in the opening lines of this run of comics, the earlier of which read "I'm the Flash, and I'm the fastest man alive," and later which say ""I'm Wally West, and I'm the fastest man alive."
But it takes a while for us to get there. I
start off this second part of my analysis with Flash Annual #5, a part of the “Eclipso: The Darkness Within”
crossover. It was fashionable, both at DC and Marvel, during this era to have
extended storylines run through the annuals published each year. In some ways
this was a good idea, in that it kept crossovers from impacting too much on the
ongoing series, something that can be frustrating when a crossover interrupts a
writer’s flow. However, it seems that the crossovers in the annuals, at least
in the nineties, were places where substandard storylines were utilized. Far
from something intriguing and sinister like “Secret Invasion,” or
universe-spanning like Marvel’s 2015 “Secret Wars,” the annual storylines were bland,
lacking in suspense or intrigue. The reason for this is simple: much as the
stories did not impact the main series, the stories did not impact the main
series. I’m not just repeating myself there. Since the ongoing titles were,
well, ongoing, it was fairly obvious that any repercussions of the annual
crossover were going to be temporary at best, and completely non-invasive to
the main series. This annual is a perfect example. Eclipso is a strange
god/demi-god character in the DCU who possesses people through a black gem
within which he is trapped. Every now and again he’ll somehow break free and
jump from character to character for some nefarious purpose. For example, at
the end of this issue, he jumps into the Flash and speeds away into the
subsequent issues of the crossover. But as far as I can tell, this incident is
completely unacknowledged in the main title. At the same time that this
crossover was going on in the annuals, Wally is also facing Abra Kadabra in the
main title. While this is not an uncommon occurrence, nor would it be a problem
if the story had simply taken place in a regular issue and continued either in
the next issue or elsewhere, the fact of its being presented in an annual, as
part of a major crossover, intimates that it is an important, perhaps even
fundamental, moment in the character’s life. Surely that’s the point of
large-scale crossovers, to shake things up. Well, that’s the theory, at least.
The troubles with non-impacting crossover series is something we’ll have to
consider elsewhere, another time.
What this annual does do well is give us Waid’s
first look at the Rogues, the villains of Central City who have antagonized the
Flash, both Barry and Wally, for years. There are some nice moments where the
rogues (Trickster, Weather Wizard, and Captain Boomerang, in this case) discuss
the differences between Wally and Barry, an interesting perspective to have on
these heroes. The inclusion of these characters also reinforces the hauntedness
of the title by Barry Allen. These criminals all debuted during his tenure as
the Flash, and though their opinion may matter little to Wally, they still hold
him up and contrast him to Barry. The criminals wax nostalgic for a simpler
time, a simpler hero. Thus this annual, though a bit of a throwaway, engages
nicely with the nostalgia and haunting that is coming to be a major motif in
Waid’s work.
The
subsequent issues, numbers 67 and 68, continue the trend of re-introducing
canonical, and traditional, Flash villains, with the reappearance of Abra
Kadabra. The typical superheroic fisticuffs are an interesting backdrop to a
couple of far more interesting things that go on in these comics. First and
foremost, in issue 67, faced with the prospect that he cannot stop Kadabra from
killing a stadium full of people, Wally ponders whether he has it in him to
kill the mad magician. This is a moral conundrum that we often see explored in
superhero comics, but for the thoughts to come to someone who is,
traditionally, as light-hearted as Wally West throws into sharp relief the
kinds of thought processes that a superhero, be they grim or merry, must deal
with on a regular basis. He is fortunately saved the choice by the last minute
appearance of a Peregrine, a hunter, from the future from which Kadabra hails.
As is usual with The Flash (as we’ll
see), Wally is sent hurtling, along with Kadabra, into the 64th
century, a time when the movements and activities of all human beings are
regulated by the “central clockworks.” Here we see two of the fundamental
themes of the series being played out. Of all of the major DC heroes, Wally
West, specifically in this era of the title, is the most likely to have time
travel adventures. Really, it comes of his powers. Theories about time travel
revolve around the ability to move faster than light, so a character who
channels the universal force of speed is a likely candidate for these sorts of
adventures. In this one he’s a little unsettled, but, trust me, Wally will
become accustomed to such travels. However, while he’s here, he commits a
crime, though from his relative moral standpoint, it’s an act of liberation.
2400 years into the future, the Flash decides that the way society is running
is wrong, and goes out of his way to upset things completely. In doing so he
realizes that Abra Kadabra, in his own context, is a hero, fighting against a
mechanized clockworks that controls all of humanity. This kind of relativity
with regard to temporal morals will be explored further down the line in this
run, but here it offers us a couple of interesting perspectives on the
superhero. From one point of view, there is an arrogance attached to this
character, in that he believes his way is the better way, regardless of how
society has evolved over the course of almost 2.5 millennia. It’s kind of a
reverse of the ways in which colonial powers considered the “primitives” that
they tried to “civilize” from the 17th to early 20th
centuries. As such, Wally engages in an act of colonialism, in that he
privileges the way he sees things over the way the natives of the era see
things. From another perspective, however, Wally engages in the kind of decision
that these demi-gods of the twentieth century are often expected to make. If we
consider the superheroes from the Morrisonian stance taken in the JLA series, these characters, both as
characters we read about and as people inhabiting a fictional world, are
avatars of the big ideas we crystallize in our gods. And this, in some ways,
places them on a moral level that is neither place nor time dependent. We could
consider this as Wally utilizing the eternal morality of the divine. Though I’m
not sure he’d necessarily see it that way.
Here’s
the part where I have to make a bit of a confession. There are two comics that
I am missing that constitute a re-reading of the Waid era. They are both issues
of Green Lantern, numbers 31 and 96.
It’s 31 we’ll unfortunately be missing today, though with the early nineties
propensity for recaps at the issue’s beginning, we’re not missing that much. Green Lantern 30 and 31 and Flash 69 and 70 constitute the “Gorilla
Warfare” crossover, in which Gorilla Grodd and Hector Hammond team up to
destroy humanity. It’s best not to ask why. It’s just a thing supervillains do.
There’s a few interesting moments in these crossovers. We really begin to see Waid’s
take on the idea of the DCU as a generational place in these issues. Green
Lantern Hal Jordan was Barry Allen’s “best friend...both noble...brave...and
hopelessly, tragically unhip.” In an interesting assessment, even Wally notes
how uncool the two were, perhaps a nod by Waid toward the nostalgia with which
we view these characters. Jordan is portrayed here with silver hair at his
temples, and is probably in his early forties (take it from someone in his
early 40s – the silver hair is there). Wally, by contrast, is in his mid-twenties,
representative of the coming new wave of heroes exemplified by Kyle Rayner
Green Lantern and Jack Knight Starman. Further resonances to Allen’s pervasive
presence come in the history Grodd shares with the Flashes. In fact, since the
beginning of this run of Flash, I don’t
think Wally has faced anyone his Uncle didn’t face before him. With the return
of each of these villains, we see that Wally doesn’t simply live in the shadow
of Barry’s successes, but also his failures.
As
a bit of a call back to the series that began this read through, Flash and Green Lantern: The Brave and the
Bold, the “Gorilla Warfare” storyline functions to show the allegiances
that can surmount generational divides in superhero storytelling. Wally, simply
by being The Flash, has an ally in Green Lantern. And when Hal is no longer
Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner, simply by being Green Lantern, has an ally in The
Flash. Well. Almost. It takes them a bit of time.
So
just when it seems that poor Wally West is doomed to simply face Barry Allen’s
prodigious rogues gallery, a brand new one shows up. Well. Sort of. A villain
sharing all the hallmarks of classic Flash villain Dr. Alchemy shows up and the
Flash is tasked with protecting a state’s witness from him. Interestingly, on
the cover the new villain is called “Doctor Alchemy,” but inside the comic he
himself calls himself “The Alchemist.” It’s something that I wondered about in
the first season of The Flash
television shows, the nicknames that Cisco gives to each of the metahumans. Who
claims the right to name a hero or a villain? Lois Lane is famous for having
coined the term “Superman.” In the TV series, Barry Allen names himself, via
Iris West. What happens in the case of a villain? Do we accept what they call
themselves, afford them the respect of acknowledging their choice of names, or
do we name them, in order to demonstrate how they stand outside of “civilized”
society?
This
story doesn’t answer any of those questions, but it does give yet another
perspective on the generations of metahumans that populate this universe. Here
we have a descendant of an old Flash villain, rather than Wally, the descendant
of a hero.
The
final issue of today’s column, #73, is the first one that starts to read and
feel like the Flash comics I
associate with the Mark Waid years. Wally and Linda sit down for a Christmas
celebration with Jay and Joan Garrick. Jay “the original Flash” Garrick, that
is. With Hal Jordan, we saw the generation of heroes that emerge in the Silver
Age, the father and mother-figures, so to speak, of the latter generation of
which Wally is something of a herald. The heroes of the Modern Age, perhaps.
Jay Garrick, however, represents the “grandparent-ly” generation, the ones who,
ostensibly, did it all before anyone else. This generational framework places
Waid’s story into an interesting position with regard to its consideration of
families. As we’ve been introduced to Wally’s biological family in the Year One
stories, over the course of the last few issues we’ve been introduced to his “superherological”
family. There are generations of Flashes, stretching back into history,
generations of Green Lanterns, the bachelor uncles of the Flash family. There
are wives in the persons of Joan Garrick and Iris Allen, who haunts the series
only slightly-less than Barry. The clashes, both between and within these
families, provide Waid and his co-writers with a way of considering the
families we are born into and those that we choose. That this particular story
also involves the Flashes saving a family from making a terrible mistake simply
underlines the focus of the issue, and in many ways the series.
I
should have mentioned earlier that one of the “The (Dr.) Alchem(y)ist” stories
featured another Waid-esque moment, as a mysterious figure appears in the
background in a flash of electricity caused by the storm through which the
Flash fights his elemental foe. The figure is given two panels and then
staggers off into the shadows. We’re not sure who he is, yet, but a massive
clue appears at the end of this issue, just as everything is wrapping up in a Christmas-y
moment to rival the end of It’s A
Wonderful Life, in the person of Barry Allen.
What
happens when a ghost ceases to be a ghost, ceases to haunt a location or a
person, and comes back to resume life instead? We’ll find out next time.
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