ConnEr Kent flies. ConnOr Hawke has a bow. Batman's kid is named DamiAn.
To do spoiler tags, use [ spoil ] at the start of the sentence and [ /spoil ] at the end, without the spaces. You're welcome!
Come on. Holt could have collected Terrific Tales comics as a kid. That's how they did it in the silver age, with Barry. But now that Jay Garrick belongs to Earth 2 again does that mean we're back to him being a comic book character in Prime Earth? Oh great, now I feel a headache coming on...
Is the next issue coming out on time or is a Doomsday Clock going to happen last second?
"It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does? - Gaff Blade Runner
"In a short time, this will be a long time ago." - Werner Slow West
"One of the biggest problems in the industry is apathy right now." - Dan Didio Co-Publisher of I Wonder Why That Is Comics
Gerads has enough juice these days that he doesn't need to take a job if he fundamentally disagrees with. By the way, he just mentioned on Twitter that he'd love to draw a Wally ongoing sometime in the future, which would be another strong indicator that the character isn't going to irrevocably warped into a mass murderer and killed off.
Now, of course the more cynical among you will dismiss that as Gerads lying in order to please his fiendish corporate overlords, but I tend to approach these things from a more hopeful and optimistic point of view because I try to follow the example of the characters I read
Kind of off topic, but the worst thing about it is people interpreted as him naming his son off shipping Iris and Barry in the TV show rather than just off of Wally and Barry. But yeah, Gerads has proclaimed that Wally is one of his favorite characters for quite some time now. Which makes HiC all the more unusual. But he does not have creative control of it and Tom is his close personal friend so he might be too close to it.
Dozens of creators have expressed interest in writing or using Wally. They were all denied. Heck, Shaner talks about loving Wally and wanting to draw him and has for years and he still hasn't. Manapul wanted to include Wally, at all, in the Flash comic and was reprimanded for it and had an editorial vice on his work not to allow it. Talking about artists wanting to do something is trivial because artists opinions don't count unless they have Didio or Lee's ear. I don't think Gerads is lying, that'd be silly. I just think King is his friend and convinced him of the veracity of the story. But Tom King is not our friend and isn't going to talk through each thing he's thinking or showing in his story with all of us.
Brett Booth is the biggest Wally fan of the bunch and he presided over New 52 Wally. Something I think all of us can agree was blasphemy upon the character. Yet he spent every. single. month. defending the comic while he was drawing it on twitter. It is the company line. Hell, when Gerads was responding to fans recently he didn't even say he liked what was going on. He said, and I quote, "Often as storytellers we have to tell stories of where the character is going not where we want them to go." This is not where he wants Wally to go, it's where he had to go. This is not some glowing review of the direction of the character.
Mitch has said he wanted Wally to be happy. But he said he can't impose his wants on the character. So I don't like abusing Mitch's involvement in the story as tacit compliance of its quality of the character. He's stated he thinks it's in character, but hell they rewrote Wally's history in this story so what is in character if you're willing to undo his life to suit the story? I love Wally West but I can't write for shit and you'd probably hate whatever Wally comic I'd write. Love does not equate quality.
Last edited by Dred; 05-02-2019 at 07:40 PM.
King does a pretty good job discussing his stories in his regular interviews on Word Balloon Podcast. I'd absolutely recommend them to anyone out there who thinks King is just doing this story as a hatchet job for editorial. On the last one he did, he discusses Heroes in Crisis in pretty good detail and tries to explain his thinking behind the choices he made. This was a few months ago, so it doesn't go into the most recent issues, but his love for Wally sounds pretty genuine.
Love for a character is not a qualifier for writing well. Again, Brett Booth loves Wally and expressed his love for Wally far before any of these fellows and he was drawing New 52 Wally. It means nothing. It says nothing. King "loves" Wally so much that he rewrote his entire life. I don't know what kind of love that is, but you'd think if you loved a character you would care about their history at all instead of rewriting them into the character and history you prefer to fit your story. Don't you think?
Everyone loves the character they're writing when they're writing them, anyhow. I'm sure this will be brushed off to the past for King once it's all done.
I don't think Brett Booth, who is a moderately popular artist, and Tom King, who is one of DC's top 3 most powerful writers, have quite the same level of pull with DC Editorial. I mean, King was reportedly able to get his editor replaced on Batman.
I suppose we'll see what happens on May 22nd. I'm keeping an open mind. I understand other's skepticism, but I always try to be hopeful for the best.
I still don't get how that explains him doing stuff like literally rewriting Wally's inner monologue since he came back or rewriting his wedding to Linda which was literally Mark Waid's swan song on The Flash. I guess King loves his bad poetry more than he loves Wally. And if he loves that more, I imagine all the other things he loves more than Wally (like depression, suicidal themes and execution, and violence) take precedence, too. And that's why we are where we are.