With Blackest Night more than halfway over, Flash: Rebirth one issue away from being published in trade, and Blackest Night: Flash finally started up, we’re that much closer to having the brand new Flash series by Geoff Johns with art by the fantastic Francis Manapul. I figured then that it would be entirely appropriate to look back on Johns’ original run on Flash from 2000 to 2005. Along with JSA, this book caused Johns to start to continually win the Wizard’s Fan Choice award for best writer. It was also the run, along with Waid’s run, that helped define Wally West as the definitive Flash for an entire generation of readers, as well as helped to revitalize a lot of different elements about the Flash mythos, such as the importance of the Rogues and Wally West’s role as the Flash.
So without further ado, let’s dive in!
The Flash has never been a top tier character for me. I found that him alone wasn’t intriguing enough of a character to make me want to read the books. However, with the aforementioned books, as well as Rogue’s Revenge and Countdown To Final Crisis, I found that the world that the Flash inhabits is really quite intriguing. And the more I read about the Rogues and some of the general stories of the Flash, I figured that the runs of two runs could probably be pretty good for me. At first I grabbed Morrison/Millar’s run on the Flash, and that simply opened the door a crack, bringing enough intrigue to cause me to want to tackle Johns’ epic run, and I’m more than glad that I did. It’s through this that I found, and firmly believe, that the reason Flash stories are so good is because the world he inhabits is so incredibly vibrant with intriguing villains, allies, and even theoretical science.
So what’s some of the stuff that Johns did during his 5 year reign on the Flash-world? Well, while starting off small, the very first thing that Johns attempted to do was revitalize the rogues as a whole force. Along with introducing a new Trickster, he brought back Captain Cold to a state of prominence among Flash’s villains, redesigned the Weather Wizard and gave him a son, made Mirror Master a coke head, and brought several villains back to a more full time state in the Flash’s gallery, such as Tar Pit, Heat Wave, the Pied Piper (both of whom had reformed), and Murmur. He brought in brand new villains like Brother Grimm, Cicada, and most notably, the new Zoom. In fact, Zoom is probably one of the most memorable things Johns did aside from the final arc. In reimagining the idea of the Reverse Flash, Johns turned the current Rogue specialist Hunter Zolomon into a speedster that operates on the scale of time, making him faster than the Flash, and also giving him the ability to snap his fingers in order to create a sonic boom. Zoom, after dealing with repeated disappointments and failures and tragedies in his own life, believed that Flash needed to undergo a great tragedy in his in order to make him a better hero. This led to the biggest personal attack on Flash, against his wife Linda, and the eventual retconning of Wally West’s identity being public during a final deal with the Spectre/Hal Jordan.
And of course the stories were no thing to snuff a nose at. The very first arc featured Wally trapped a mirror universe with Captain Cold and Mirror Master, which was a fairly entertaining romp that actually helped to casually introduce characters that Johns would be further using through out the remainder of his run. Following this, Johns wrote the cult of the Flash saga, which featured a villain named Cicada who believed he was touched by the Flash personally and that Flash was here to save not only their lives but their souls. What’s interesting to note is that right here, in what is known as the first real entry into Johns’ flash run (Wonderland, the first arc, is considered “volume 0”), Johns had already begun planting the seeds for outcomes to come much later, such as the various organizing of villains which resulted in positively calamitous battles against the Flash, much in the way that Invincible lays the seeds for further events much earlier in single pages and lines of dialogue. It makes for very entertaining and rewarding story telling when you see how it all comes together in the end. There is one arc I’m not crazy about, and that was the Identity Crisis tie-in, but it helped set up the final and greatest arc, Rogue War, so I’m okay with that.
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But you couldn’t have a good story without an engrossing hero, and as much as the Flash has always been entertaining, Johns really fell right at home in writing the character. Through out the run, Wally West continues to redefine what exactly it means to be a “hero”, both in the eyes of himself, his family, and the public. Due to being one of the few heroes to have a public identity, West has to continually deal with threats to his wife, and it leads to a really interesting arc of personal drama between West and his wife and dealing with identity issues. As much as a good romp ’em stomp ’em arc is needed in every good super hero story, the characterization is just as important, and West really comes into his own here. It’s arguable as to if it’s Waid’s run or Johns’ run the truly set the bar for personal growth, but due to the collective retcon of West losing his public identity and unique connection to the Speed Force which forces him to go back to using the ring, I would argue that Wally, in being forced to completely redefine his herodom – even going so far as to debate whether or not killing the new Zoom (in parallel to what Barry Allen did) was necessary – definitely showed the largest amount of character growth for West, and helped define him as the definitive Flash for a whole generation of readers.
I would like to point out as well that, while the art changed towards the end, there were two artists that had a large and long standing impact on the book which helped to make it so great: Dave Gibbons and Scott Kolins. Gibbons did not do any interiors, only covers, but in them he created unique pictures and portraits of the Rogues, or helped to foreshadow the events to come in the book. He brought a very classical style to his covers that definitely felt like a throwback to the previous generation of comics, especially the cover to the (left, right). Then you open the book and there is Scott Kolins. Scott Kolins had a more modern style than Gibbons, borderline cartoonish, but it still managed to completely define the temper of the book. It was light hearted enough while still very clearly being serious story telling with realistic expectations for it’s characters. It’s actually an incredible balance to be able to maintain when you think about it, and Kolins would actually go on to continue to be the “definitive” Flash artist for Johns to work with, reprising his role on Rogue’s Revenge and Blackest Night: Flash. It’s that sort of artistic impact on a book with both the writer and the fan base that helps define a book as a whole, and to be honest, as soon as Kolins was off the title following the Zoom arc, I just couldn’t look at the Flash the same way based on how used to his style of art I was at that point.
Unfortunately for those of you who have not already bought it in issue format and/or trade format, you’re a tad out of luck. I have found that, in searching for trades, some are so out of print that in looking for them online I’ve found they can go anywhere up to $1,000! It’s kind of insane, really. DC has reprinted 4 out of the 8, but you of course miss a big chunk in the middle that you’ll have to find through other means. Either way, I can guarantee you that this run of the Flash will most likely play the biggest role in Johns’ future run, which will star and co-feature Barry Allen and Wally West, respectively. But if you have the time to go treasure hunting, I’d highly recommend going out and finding these trades and/or issues. It’s a very entertaining read, and definitely some of the best Flash stories I’ve ever read.
