Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #3 Review

Recently reviewed by me at CBR: Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #3, about which I write the following sentences: "Johns has become a master of the tightly-paced, character-rich superhero event, and 'Rogues' Revenge' is a worthy successor to his best 'Flash' stories of yesteryear. The only downside here is Scott Kolins art, which does a nice job capturing the energy of the story but looks sloppy in individual panels. As he's shifted away from his clear line style toward more crosshatching and thicker line weights in the past year or two, Kolins has actually ruined what made his work so interesting. All his new style does is emphasize his awkward sense of anatomy and adds a stiffness to his characters that wasn't as problematic when the texture was left to the colorist. Kolins can still compose thrilling pages, though, even if the single panels don't quite work as drawings."

Read the entire review HERE.

Mike Baron's Coked-Up Heyday

From TwoMorrow's The Flash Companion, edited by Keith Dallas:

KEITH DALLAS: The late 1980s were a particular heyday for you. At the time you started writing Flash in 1987, you were also writing Nexus, Badger, Robotech Masters, and Marvel had you on The Punisher.

MIKE BARON: I was a busy boy.

DALLAS: [chuckles] Can you describe your career at that point? What was it like writing all those titles?

BARON: Well, there was a lot of confusion.

DALLAS: How so?

BARON: [pauses] Keith, at the time I was making a lot of money, and I was doing a lot of cocaine.

DALLAS: Really?

BARON: As a result, my work was not the best that I could have done. I have gone through a lot of changes since then and I look back at that period with mixed feelings.

The cocaine definitely contributed to my "over-writing." I don't think I was taking my writing subjects as seriously as I do now. However, I took Flash very seriously and that's the reason I stopped writing the series [after issue #14] because I just ran out of ideas and I couldn't vamp it.

DALLAS: It was around this time that you were nominated three years in a row for an Eisner Award for your writing on Nexus.

BARON: My work on Nexus has never suffered.

When you do cocaine, you think you can do any damn thing. Often, I just would grab a sheet of paper and start telling a story and make it up as I went along, panel by panel. But you can't do that really. You need a real solid idea and solid characters to build a story around.

For the record Baron's work on that Flash overlapped with Nexus #33-46 and The Punisher #1-9. I think his work on those two runs, and on Flash were actually the BEST work of his career. Maybe because he was "over-writing" instead of "over-thinking." Much of his later work seems to suffer from being worked to death and drained of all improvisation.

Drugs are bad, kids. But am I wrong in thinking that Baron's self-proclaimed cocaine phase was also the time when he did his best work?

A Few Thoughts on the Flash

I've been thinking about the Flash far more than normal lately. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it's just one of those things taking up an inordinate amount of brain space these days, probably because (a) Barry Allen has returned in Final Crisis and (b) I finally got around to reading the entire Geoff Johns Flash run, which has been sitting on my shelf in tpb form for months--I'd completely missed everything but his last dozen issues, because of Mark Waid burnout and my apathy toward superheroes when Johns took over the series.

• The Barry Allen Flash is Grant Morrison's favorite superhero of all time, so is anyone really surprised that the character has returned in Final Crisis? Apparently, based on what Dan DiDio has said, Barry Allen has something the heroes need to defeat Darkseid, but he's just one piece of the puzzle. He's not the anti-Libra. Personally, I'm more of a Wally West guy myself, if I had to choose, but I have read all the Flash Archives and I like the Infantino art and think the Rogues are brilliant. In fact, the Rogues overshadow Barry Allen so much, that it's hard for me to even really grasp what Barry Allen's personality is supposed to be, other than a straight man for the Rogues.
• Of course, the other thing about Barry Allen's return is that it's the final bit of undoing the Wolfman/Perez Crisis. The multiverse is back (basically). Supergirl is back. Now Barry Allen is back. And the death of the Flash was supposed to signal the end of the Silver Age, which is what Crisis on Infinite Earths brought about (although, in retrospect, it was the end of the Silver and Bronze ages). So, now that everything has been undone, is Final Crisis going to bring about a new age? I doubt it, but we'll have to wait and see.
• If Barry Allen stays in the DCU, and if he gets a new series after Final Crisis--which seems likely--will he stay true to his science-based roots? The Wally West Flash was always about the human beneath the costume, but the Barry Allen Flash was all about using science to defeat bad guys. Will a new Flash series try to Wally-ize Barry Allen?
• In Geoff Johns's Flash run, he made the Rogues an essential part of the book, which was a brilliant move, since its what made the Silver Age Flash work so well. But since he was writing Wally West, for a different generation, his take on the Rogues was quite different but quite good. I like what he did with Hunter Zolomon in particular--creating a new Rogue that acts as a legacy character and is frightening in his own way.
• Howard Porter's work on Flash was ten times better than his JLA work. I really like what he did with Johns on the series.
• Johns made great use of Identity Crisis, using the Dr. Light mind manipulation idea as the reason why the Top ended up so crazy and the Top as the reason that so many Rogues had decided to go straight (and how inconsistent they were at going straight, really--depending on the writer).
• Johns had Hal Jordan as the Spectre mindwipe the entire planet so Wally West could regain his secret identity. It was handled well, leading to the weird Alberto Dose-drawn noir stories of Wally West not even knowing that he's the Flash. And really pissing Batman off. Was anyone at the time up in arms about Johns using magic to make Wally West's secret identity reappear? Or is that kind of thing more palatable in DC rather than Marvel?
• I met the Flash at Six Flags with my family last week, but he was wearing the television show version of the costume. Why?