December 21, 2009
So…DC’s latest
20 Questions with Dan Didio video has some bad news for fans of the extended Flash family. He answered my question about the
Flash and
Kid Flash books, explaining that they’ve decided to go back to “the original game plan” and
focus on a single Flash book starring Barry Allen.
Wally West’s backup stories, by Geoff Johns & Scott Kolins? “On hold.”
The
Kid Flash book by Sterling Gates? “On hold.”
He goes on to say, “Your Flash fix will be Barry Allen, pure and simple, for 2010.”
Congratulations, Dan.
You’ve just lost yourself a reader.
I’ve been hanging on through
Flash: Rebirth hoping I would see something in it that would convince me that I might actually want to read stories with Barry Allen, but I just haven’t seen it. The announcement of backup features starring Wally West gave me something to look forward to. The Kid Flash book starring Bart Allen was something I wanted to read. The lead stories with Barry? I was
hoping they’d grow on me.
But you know what?
I just don’t care anymore.
Honestly, at this moment, I don’t care about reading the conclusion of
Flash: Rebirth. I don’t care about the new series. I don’t care about the Secret Files. It’s even killing my enthusiasm for
Blackest Night: The Flash, which I actually
liked.
Dangling the Carrot
Barry’s fans have complained about DC “dangling the carrot” of Barry’s return for years and never delivering. You know why I didn’t want Barry to come back? Because I knew that if he did come back, his fans — both inside and outside of DC — wouldn’t be satisfied just to have him back.
The DCU would have to be all Barry, all the time. Congratulations, BASHers! You got your wish!
So now DC has dangled the carrot for both Wally West’s and Bart Allen’s fans. We were promised a whole series starring Bart, and a backup feature starring Wally, but both of those projects are “on hold.”
Try it, You’ll Like it!
I’ve given DC
a year and a half to make me care about stories starring Barry Allen instead of Wally West.
Is that long enough? It’s longer than Bart was the Flash, certainly. And if DC hadn’t announced the Wally West backups and then yanked them away,
I would have given them another 6 months. But at this point I have no interest in any new Flash stuff coming out in 2010.
After 4 years of being jerked around, enough is enough. I don’t feel like sticking around another year just in case a character I actually want to read might show up.
I’ll probably finish out the rest of
Blackest Night: The Flash. Who knows? Maybe those issues will finally convince me. If they don’t, well…
With
Flash as my
last DC Universe book, DC may have to rely on Vertigo to get my money next year.
