Did Flashpoint ruined the Flash and the Flash family ? Can it be undone ?

[docmidnite]

Not really, no.

The speed force retcon made everyone dependant on Barry, with the added crap bonus of including Barry as the origin of Jay's powers and effectively undoing every milestone of Wally's career speed-wise. Max was never seen again. The only story where Wally appeared and was not playing second fiddle to Barry was an issue of Magog. These characters never again interacted with each other with the one exception being everyone waking up in the middle of the night because Speed-Force engine, creator and God almighty had a bad dream. Wally was down right mandated out of all books. We never seen Impulse Iris in anything. Jesse's costume was crap.

Flash Rebirth ruined them all, Barry included IMHO. Flashpoint just discarded them, but the damage was already done.



This is incorrect, I don't know why people repeat it so much.

Neither Didio nor Lee were demoted. Didio got the job of publisher taht was previously Levitz's, which has his boss. He was promoted. Lee had sold Wildstorm a long time ago and already had that money, then he gained the highest executive position possible at DC comics itself.

Diane Nelson was in to oversee DC as it connected to WB, in the hopes of making it more like an ip-farm. Her position was new and connective to the mother-company.

Okay. Understood. But she was still became their boss and they took their orders from her just like she was taking orders from the former WB executive that forced Vertigo, Wildstorm and DC to be consolidated into only one imprint.

[BohemiaDrinker]

Okay. Understood. But she was still became their boss and they took their orders from her just like she was taking orders from the former WB executive that forced Vertigo, Wildstorm and DC to be consolidated into only one imprint.

Ok, this is a real derailment, but just to clear things up:

Yes, Diane was brought in as Didio and Lee's boss (In fact, technically, it was her that promoted them both, even though truth is obviously more complicated). That is correct. However, this was almost 2 years before the New52. Neither Nelson's nor Jeff Robinov's (who she reported to at the time) position probably had anything to do with Vertigo or WildStorm. Whatever the deal with WS was, Jim Lee was probably in on the decision. As for Vertigo, Dan Didio had been fighting with Karen Berger for control of those properties for years before this whole shebang. It's said - but not confirmed - that Levitz shielded Karen from a lot of corporate ****. Which checks out, because once Levitz fell, Berger fell too.

So neither Vertigo nor WS mergers with DC seem to be forced top to bottom.

As ofor the Flash, which is the theme of the thread, yes, it's quite possible that the "streamlining" come from up-top, eager to make a movie without having to explain anyone else, etc, or it may have come from Johns himself, who was then CCOP and had as part of his job to "sell" these characters to the execs as viable cross-media properties. Regardless of the motive or of who's to blame, though, Flash: Rebirth is indeed the moment where everyone else goes to ****.

[Chubistian]

Green Lantern: Rebirth was not really a retcon because Green Lantern: Rebirth was GENIUS in its use of already established continuity.

Johns first used the Moore/Gibbons’ “Tygers” prophecy from Tales of the GLC Annual #1 1984 (where the Guardians first erased their memories of all of the pain, suffering and emotional stress they endured after a thousand years of torture by the Empire of Tears during the war between Orderly Science and Chaotic Magic at the dawn of time) to explain why the Guardians had no memory of the Yellow Impurity that had been inside of the Central Power Battery for thousands of years (and the reason why the rings couldn’t work against anything yellow) also being the Parallax Entity (because after their first initial encounter and subsequent fight against the Parallax Entity the Guardians defeated it, imprisoned it in the Central Power Battery, and then erased their memory of it because their fight was the first time the Guardians had felt “fear” since their torture by the Empire of Tears)

Then Johns used GLC #221-224* where Hal first entered the Central Power Battery to fight Sinestro from the dead and reveal that the Yellow Impurity that bonded with Sinestro's ghost inside of the Central Power Battery after his execution and that Hal had been exposed to in GLC #221-224 during their fight inside the original Central Power was also SENTIENT/the Parallax Entity.

From there, Johns uses that encounter in GLC #221-224 to explain away any erratic behaviour and/or out of the blue changes to Hal between GLC #221-224 and Green Lantern: Rebirth as being infected by the Yellow Impurity/Parallax Entity.

Yeah GL: Rebirth, brought back and exonerated Hal Jordan, but it also brought back Sinestro from the dead, made Guy Gardner a GL again and brought back the entire GLC with a HUGE BANG after 2 big time miniseries (Rebirth and Recharge) that were selling in the hundreds of thousands!
The best thing to me, though is the effective use of continuity.

*Also, GLC #221-224 was the same story that O'Neil used to plot his version of Emerald Twilight that Marz scripted. That's why Rebirth made perfect sense to us long time GL fans and why I don’t even think of it as a retcon.

I still think of it as a retcon, but we agree that it was genius in its use of previous continuity and one of the greatest things that have happened to the GL franchise

[OpaqueGiraffe17]

A simple question and yeoin my opinion it’s similar to Marvel and how they took Spider-Man and OMD. Yet as fans of the Flash and his extended family: What do you think of it and why ?

I mean, I voted yes, because besides Barry, they did all get expunged from canon via Flashpoint. But that was a long time ago. The Flash 'family' now is very different now with different successes and problems that it did in 2011. A lot of those characters that went away with Flashpoint are back, some aren't, there are some new ones. There's a tv show and a movie coming out. Flashpoint probably wasn't entirely worth it per se, in hindsight (maybe it was saleswise?), but it was a decent story on it's own merits.
As far as the actual Flash family goes, I don't envy writers. There are a lot of good characters in there, but writing stories with up to like 7 of them has got to be a task. I was glad when Wally came back. I do like him more than Barry, and I like Barry! But I can see why they went back to basics with the reboot.

[Lee]

Going back to basics was absolutely the right decision in the context of a reboot.

The problem was that they didn't go back to basics with Batman, Green Lantern or Teen Titans. It made for a very lopsided DC Universe, with little forethought put into it. For all the reboots DC has had, they've never had the confidence or commitment to wipe the whole slate clean.

[married guy]

I clicked yes, but the issue began with Barry's return.
There was a very sizable shift in focus from the 'Flash Family' to 'Barry Allen - one and only'.
It started gradually, but once Flashpoint rolled around, it was all over red rover for the Flash Family.
And the book has been mired in mediocrity ever since.

[Robanker]

I voted "yes" but it wasn't really Flashpoint, it was Barry's return. Barry himself isn't responsible for this, but once he came back no one else in the family mattered.

At one point we had Wally, Bart, Jay, Max, and Jesse, with regular guest appearances by other Flash dynasty members like XS and John Fox, and we had the West twins too, towards the end. That was a big family of heroes, each with their own distinct skills and talents and personalities. But once Barry returned, everyone faded into the background. I mean, once when the Flash would meet a Flash from the future, it was a descendant or someone; somebody new. When Barry post-return would meet a Flash from the future....it was just him.

To a point, I get that. DC wanted to establish that Barry was back on top and didn't want the other guys challenging his popularity (and Wally and the others were very popular). So putting everyone else on time out and giving Barry the focus for a while, yeah that's okay, I get it.

Then Flashpoint hit, and more importantly the reboot DC piggybacked off it, and the family either no longer existed or had no connections to the Flash, Allen or West families at all. It was a huge demotion for the entire franchise, I think.

As for Barry, the dead mom thing sucks. It changes his motivations into something we've seen a million times, it's trite, it's base, and it's selfish. But I don't think it's done serious damage to the character, it's just made his origin a little bland.

Flashpoint itself, in a vacuum, is a pretty fun story. Zoom breaks time, Barry tries to fix it but messes it up, and then has to fix his mistake on top of dealing with Zoom. Fun idea, fun story, and it's always cool to see alternate takes on familiar faces. And Barry isn't even really to blame for the New52 either, that was Pandora. So Flashpoint itself isn't so bad (and I love their version of Cyborg) but that whole era from Barry's rebirth to Flashpoint just set the entire franchise on a downward decline.

ALL OF THIS.

I will add that the dead mom thing actually ruins Barry's death in CoIE for me; it was the one person who, above all else, had no real reason to be there. He had a happy life, grew up reading comics, was even-tempered and overall just wanted to do the right thing. He was you, dear reader. And for all the destroyed planets, murdered parents and so forth, it was the everyman who took one for the team. Pretty powerful stuff. But hey, why be unique when you can join most the JLA in the Orphans club.

[Adekis]

If the Flash family was ever ruined, I think it was during Flash: Rebirth, when Barry came back. But I don't know that it was even ruined at all, even now. Sure, it's not in a great place, but that's the thing about comics. Even when things get really obnoxious and just nothing like what you want, the things you like are still not really gone. They're just sadly not on the shelves right now.

[Lee]

In the run prior to Final Crisis Barry was dead, Bart was dead, Max Mercury was gone and Jesse was Liberty Belle (no longer appearing in The Flash). The online fandom was very vocal about how much they hated Wally's kids and wanted the book to be about him, not his family.

[BohemiaDrinker]

In the run prior to Final Crisis Barry was dead, Bart was dead, Max Mercury was gone and Jesse was Liberty Belle (no longer appearing in The Flash). The online fandom was very vocal about how much they hated Wally's kids and wanted the book to be about him, not his family.

All of this is true.

And a case can be made that the family started to be dismantled by the end of the first Johns run. Interviews from circa 2005/06 had Didio stating many times that after Final Crisis "there would be only one Flash" (I guess this was when he still thought he'd bring Barry back right away), and a policy of "non-redundancy" was being applied across the line: Nightwing was also to be killed, the excuse they given top the creative team for cancelling Cass Batgirl book was to avoid redundancy with the then imminent Batwoman book (heh) and so on.

However, most everything done during that period of time was easily fixable: Bart coming back, maybe Max, Jesse regaining her powers, could all be handwaved (and it actually was, later on Flash: Rebirth). Those characters were in limbo, sure, and they were there already by mandate, but all you had to do was lift said mandates and everything could be fine and dandy.

Flash Rebirth, OTOH, created a status quo that had all these characters existing, but smaller and less important than they ever were. And it also mandated some of them to oblivion again, or at least, out of Barry's way.

[achilles]

I think Flashpoint ruined a whole lot more than just the Flash family. They'll be dealing with the damage done by that for many years IMO.

[Lee]

All of this is true.

And a case can be made that the family started to be dismantled by the end of the first Johns run. Interviews from circa 2005/06 had Didio stating many times that after Final Crisis "there would be only one Flash" (I guess this was when he still thought he'd bring Barry back right away), and a policy of "non-redundancy" was being applied across the line: Nightwing was also to be killed, the excuse they given top the creative team for cancelling Cass Batgirl book was to avoid redundancy with the then imminent Batwoman book (heh) and so on.

However, most everything done during that period of time was easily fixable: Bart coming back, maybe Max, Jesse regaining her powers, could all be handwaved (and it actually was, later on Flash: Rebirth). Those characters were in limbo, sure, and they were there already by mandate, but all you had to do was lift said mandates and everything could be fine and dandy.

Flash Rebirth, OTOH, created a status quo that had all these characters existing, but smaller and less important than they ever were. And it also mandated some of them to oblivion again, or at least, out of Barry's way.

Wally was sidelined, but Jay, Bart and Jesse were as active as they were before Infinite Crisis.

Flash: Rebirth was, and still is, the biggest Flash Family story Geoff Johns has ever written. Biggest multi-speedster team-up since Chain Lightning.

[BohemiaDrinker]

Wally was sidelined, but Jay, Bart and Jesse were as active as they were before Infinite Crisis.

With absolutely no interaction among themselves, aside from Blackest Night, a Bart focused issue on Road to Flashpoint and that horrible, horrible intervention issue. Further, beside Wally being sideline, we've never saw either Iris Impulse or Max again doing anything, really.

Flash: Rebirth was, and still is, the biggest Flash Family story Geoff Johns has ever written. Biggest multi-speedster team-up since Chain Lightning.

Which is exactly the problem being discussed here, no?

[Mr.B]

Eh 5G wil have Wally disappearance shorter in history. And his own history restored maybe.

[caj]

Green Lantern: Rebirth was not really a retcon because Green Lantern: Rebirth was GENIUS in its use of already established continuity.

Johns first used the Moore/Gibbons’ “Tygers” prophecy from Tales of the GLC Annual #1 1984 (where the Guardians first erased their memories of all of the pain, suffering and emotional stress they endured after a thousand years of torture by the Empire of Tears during the war between Orderly Science and Chaotic Magic at the dawn of time) to explain why the Guardians had no memory of the Yellow Impurity that had been inside of the Central Power Battery for thousands of years (and the reason why the rings couldn’t work against anything yellow) also being the Parallax Entity (because after their first initial encounter and subsequent fight against the Parallax Entity the Guardians defeated it, imprisoned it in the Central Power Battery, and then erased their memory of it because their fight was the first time the Guardians had felt “fear” since their torture by the Empire of Tears)

Then Johns used GLC #221-224* where Hal first entered the Central Power Battery to fight Sinestro from the dead and reveal that the Yellow Impurity that bonded with Sinestro's ghost inside of the Central Power Battery after his execution and that Hal had been exposed to in GLC #221-224 during their fight inside the original Central Power was also SENTIENT/the Parallax Entity.

From there, Johns uses that encounter in GLC #221-224 to explain away any erratic behaviour and/or out of the blue changes to Hal between GLC #221-224 and Green Lantern: Rebirth as being infected by the Yellow Impurity/Parallax Entity.

Yeah GL: Rebirth, brought back and exonerated Hal Jordan, but it also brought back Sinestro from the dead, made Guy Gardner a GL again and brought back the entire GLC with a HUGE BANG after 2 big time miniseries (Rebirth and Recharge) that were selling in the hundreds of thousands!
The best thing to me, though is the effective use of continuity.

*Also, GLC #221-224 was the same story that O'Neil used to plot his version of Emerald Twilight that Marz scripted. That's why Rebirth made perfect sense to us long time GL fans and why I don’t even think of it as a retcon.

Agree with all of this.

Barry's return ruined the Flash family for me. But Flashpoint didn't help either.