Joshua Williamson has spent the last almost 4 years on “The Flash” over at DC Comics. This week the title is hitting an anniversary milestone celebrating #750 issues and kicking off a new arc for the book spotlighting an all new villain. We sat down with Williamson at C2E2 (Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo) last week to talk all things Barry Allen, what to expect for ‘Flash Age,’ what’s coming as the book begins its descent to the end of Williamson’s run, and a little about his other book “Batman/Superman.”
Well, Josh, thanks for taking the time to talk to us at Multiversity Comics. So you’re 96 issues into your “Flash” run at the moment.
Joshua Williamson:Yeah, of the main book. I mean, I’ve written three annuals plus a special. So technically I’ve written 99. By the time we get to June, I’ll have done a hundred issues in four years. A lot of comics.
You’re also the only writer I believe to still be on the same book since Rebirth began.
JW:That is not true. Dan Jurgens is still on “Batman Beyond.”
Oh, that’s true.
JW:And Scott Lobdell is still on “Red Hood.” But I’m the only one that double shipped.
Right, right. So what’s it feel like then to be in the tier of the last people standing in that sense?
JW:Super weird… I mean I thought I would be off the book early. It was one thing that I really wanted to stay. I mean you have to, you can’t just say, Oh I want to stay. You got the interest story, you got it. You got to come at them and say, I have something to say and there was a moment where I almost left the book and I wasn’t ready. I knew I wasn’t ready yet. I looked out, I was like, “No, I’m not done. I haven’t done this, I’ve done this, I haven’t done this,” and I was able to go and say this is what I want to do next and that’s what led to like ‘Perfect Storm.’ That’s what led to ‘Flash War,’ and everything I’ve done since then and I think that got me over that hump. Once, I got past #50 then it was like, I think I want to stay on to #100 you know, at the very least to get that far. That was my goal. Now we’ll see. I think I’m gonna end up past a hundred so yeah, super weird.
You know, I don’t think about it too often cause I have work to do. I still got to write. I think about for a minute and go. “Yeah, I guess I’ve done that. ” Got to get back to work. [Laughs] Back to typing.
You said you wanted to get to a hundred issues. How much “Flash” do you think that you have left in the tank?
JW:I’m closer to the end than I am closer to the beginning. I mean, I think if you’d asked me a year ago, I would’ve been like, never. But now I’m like, no, I know the ending. I know what I want to do. There was a couple of little things. It’s more about how can I finish what I want to say about the Flash but still be able to pass the baton to the next person? It’s more about that for me now. I’m making sure I finish the story I want to tell in a way that I can still give it to somebody else and say, “Go,” and then my hope is whoever does after me does something completely different from me and takes it and really runs with it. Because my run is so in honor of what Mark Waid and Geoff [Johns] did. You can see it because I love their runs. So obviously I, reference it all the time.
My hope is the next person is just like, “I’m taking this out a whole new door. I’m going with it, “you know?
Yeah. So in that vein, we’re celebrating next week, 750 issues of “Flash, “and the book is returning to legacy numbering.
Continued belowJW:Yeah, That’s crazy.
How do you feel like your run is going to reflect that change?
JW:I mean in #750 we’re picking up the story where we left off at #88 anyway because we were already planning that. But I think there is a tone change. There’s a scene, where Barry’s talking to Iris because you know we, have throughout the issue it’s about how people see the Flash and they don’t really know and they don’t know Barry, they know the Flash, how they see him and they see him as this hero. Even Godspeed sees him as like a miracle. They’ve seen this person on a pedestal almost.
But Iris knows Barry. There’s definitely a scene where Barry is like, “I’m not sure if I can be the person they want me to be.” It kind of gets a little down and Iris is like “Stop it, no more that no more Emo Barry. We’re moving on and you are that hero.” Then they start joking and then we have action after that. But to me that was me really saying, and there’s a lot of stuff in that issue where I’m basically telling people that stuff is now over. We’re moving beyond some of the stuff we’ve done and we’re moving into, this new era for the book.
A lot of stuff with that and me saying, these pieces of story that we’ve been doing are over and now is about moving forward. So I think people will pick it up when they read #750 you’re going to see that we’re definitely saying we’re going a new direction.
Building off that then, so in #750 you’re also kicking off this new arc “Flash Age,” which seems to kind of be tying together all these threads from your run, from Godspeed returning, to ‘Year One,’ to then finally unveiling, Paradox as this big new villain. How long have you had that story in mind?
JW:I would since the beginning pretty much. Once we started getting around to ‘Flash War,’ when I was in the middle of writing #27. I knew what was coming by that point. I knew by the time I got around to the end of the first year what I wanted to do in the big story, I wanted to tell, and that’s the first mention of Paradox is in…they don’t call him Paradox, but there’s a scene in the “Flash Annual” that came out in January 2018. There’s a moment in there where Commander Cold is talking about who is locked up in Iron Heights and how Reverse Flash put them there. And that was the beginning of me saying, “This story has got to come eventually.” It took two years but we got there.
And now we can do it in a really big way. But there’s some stuff that we’ve been doing since the beginning. Like if you go back and look at issue #1, you go back and look at the “Flash: Rebirth” issue, and then issue #9 which was the first issue that had Wally and Wallace, Kid Flash and then Wally, in the same issue, there’s a ton of clues in that issue of what we were going to be doing. I mean if you go back and look at it, there’s definitely stuff there that will start paying off now. I mean you can literally, there is dialogue repeated in “Flash” #9 that is repeated in $750 and there’s a reason that’s connected. So you’ll start to see that I’ve basically been trying to tell this big story the whole time.
So what makes then Paradox an interesting foil for Barry?
Oh I think it’s interesting. Like I think he definitely looks at Barry as a monster, right? Like I think he looks at everyone…So I got the job on “The Flash” and the moment I got that job, everyone wanted to tell me who the Flash was and who he wasn’t right? Like immediately, this Paragon of Hope, this perfect superhero, all of these different things, the martyr, all of this stuff. Right? And I found that really fascinating it took me a minute to realize not only do the readers feel that way, I feel that way in a lot of places, so do people in that universe. So do people who look at Barry and what they expect from Barry, what they expect for the Flash family within the universe. But there are some people who don’t like Barry. They don’t like the Flash family, particularly Barry, because some the things that Barry has done and how Barry has made selfish decisions at times, especially since he’s come back. And I wanted to have a character who would call that out and really come at him.
Continued belowThere’s a scene in #751 where Paradox is just pummeling Flash. I mean, it’s no contest he’s beating the crap out of him. It’s brutal. And there’s this moment where he’s just like, I don’t know why people love you. And he says, “But, I know why” he goes on this whole thing. But he says, “I know why you’re special because you saved the multiverse. You’re the savior. You’re the martyr”. He goes on this whole thing. But then he says, “What good have you done since you came back?”
And it goes into this whole thing about Barry and I felt like there is people out there that do you feel that way? I wanted to have a voice of that and that’s what Paradox is to me is he’s the voice of those people. And even I get frustrated. I’ve had moments with Barry, it’s about how he’s a real person, but I’ve had moments with Barry where I’ve been like, well you know he did this and this even before I came in the book. You know, cause like “Flashpoint” is, it’s an incredibly selfish act and I wanted a character to really vocalize that. Because Wally does a little at times, especially during ‘Flash War,’ but I wanted someone to be angry and that’s what Paradox is.
Very cool. So then shifting gears a little bit to “Batman/Superman,” you just wrapped a story focusing on the Infected and then tying into Year of the Villain. How is the book going to go into this next new phase?
JW:Well now we’re going into kind of these smaller arcs. We’re going to be doing the Ra’s al Guhl/Zod arc, which is a lot of fun. It’s with Nick Derrington who is a friend of mine and we just kind of were talking about ideas we wanted to do and he is obsessed with the Fortress of Solitude and he’s obsessed with the Bottle City of Kandor. And so we start having all these conversations about it. He actually has a little bottle that he’s made of the Bottle, City of Kandor in his office. He’s trying to turn his office into the Fortress of Solitude. It’s awesome. But Nick is great. And so we started having all these conversations about those two characters and what they would do? Then we’re just trying to find like what would happen if Zod tried to throw all the dead Kandorians into the Lazarus Pits, what would happen? And that’s what that story is. And then Ra’s course being like, no, no, no, nobody’s allowed to use Lazarus Pits but me. It gets, it gets messed up.
It’s a lot of fun though. It’s a lot of fun. I mean, the thing about when you’re writing some of these villains you have to do what you know they would do. It’s a fun two issue arc and after that we’re doing an arc with Atomic Skull and with Ultra-Humanite. I’d always liked Ultra-Humanite from the Golden Age on. I just wanted to use that character a little bit so we’ve been basically playing with him. We have a lot of fun stuff that’s coming. There’s just kind of like these cool adventures between Batman and Superman that we can kind of explore and explore their friendship and the things that they’re going through and how they see each other.
Because it’s interesting, let me ask you this question. So this is going to sound silly. It’s a trick question. Why are Batman and Superman friends? Do you know why? Because they’re the most popular characters in the world. When you think about it this is the real reason they put them together. They’re like, “Well of course we’re going to put these two guys together.” Then when you think about like the meta reason, the real world reason is we’re going to take these two people, they’re our most popular superheroes, we’re going to make them friends. Right?
It’s up to us now to figure out why they’re actually friends. Because it’s a manufactured relationship. You know, it’s something that was kind of thrown together because of their popularity back then. Of course they’re going to meet, because they’re so different as well. Right? They’re going to play off each other because of the light and the dark, but they were not made to be this way. When you think about it, they were not made, they were not engineered to be the opposites of each other. But they are and they’ve grown so much more into those roles over the years. But now it is up to us. When you’re writing these characters, you find those things of them and why they’re actually friends. And that is something that, I get to play around with a lot, is that friendship between the two of them and try to find a real human reason for these two characters to be friends that can find each other to trust each other. It’s a challenge at times, you know? It’s interesting cause they’re so different, but they’re not and the things that they want for their lives and the things that they want, their methods, might be different at times. I mean I think they both just want the same things.
Continued belowSo finally, and you may not can say a whole lot about this, so you were announced as one of the writers on DC’s “Generation” one shots. Is there anything that you can tease about that project and the future of the DC Universe for us?
JW:No. It’s really early to talk about it. I will say it’s too early to talk about it.
Alright. Well then one more question. So you’ve gotten to work with a ton of superstar artists at DC in recent years. David Marquez, Howard Porter, Derrington, Rafa Sandoval. What’s it like collaborating with all these different folks?
JW:Oh, it’s awesome. With Rafa I’ve liked Rafa’s art for a really long time and so he was somebody that when he came and was an option to work on the book, I didn’t beg, but I was like, “Yes, I like him, I like his work, please, please, please.” And so I like what we’re doing a lot. He brings a lot of really good energy to the book. David Marquez and I are friends. David used to live in Portland too. So I used to hang out with David and Derrington the three of us, we would just hang out with each other and talk about comics and stuff and talk about storytelling. And they were two of my buddies to hang out with in Portland and so getting a bill stories with them it has been awesome. David is awesome. He’s an amazing artist and he brings a lot, like I said, to go on both Nick and David in particular they definitely bring a lot because they have a lot of opinions on the story. And so you’d bounce things off with them and then sort of talk about what you want to do. They bring a lot to the table.
You know Howard, I love Howard. Howard is one of my favorite artists from even when I was a kid. I started reading him when he was on “The Ray.” Which was like his first job. He Was on “The Ray” and then he did “Underworld Unleashed.” I actually met him when I was in high school and he did a bunch of sketches for me of characters who were in his “JLA” run like Hourman and Zauriel and stuff. I’ve actually shown him that stuff cause I’m like, you don’t remember me. But I was like 16 years old and you drew these for me. But you know, he’s one of my friends now and we get on the phone and we talk about stuff and before I write anything, I call him when we talk about it and we talk about what we want to do and I get his ideas for it. A lot of that went into ‘Flash War.’ A lot of it went into ‘Year One’ and the stuff we’re doing now, we just bounce ideas around and talk about.
Well, thank you. Is there anything else you’d like to promote or say that we didn’t get to?
JW:I mean, I would just keep reading what we’re doing. We have a lot of cool stuff that’s coming. I think we’re, we’re moving things in a direction that I think will be a lot of fun and people will be happy.
