Remember the Last Time?

   So, Flash: Rebirth #3 is out today (or tomorrow in Canada) and that got me wanting to re-read Mark Waid's run. Waid's Flash was one of my gateway drugs into comics (partly because a good friend of mine traded me almost the entire run up to that point, around from #62 - 100, for the #13s of the Heroes Reborn stuff. I don't know if I've ever been so close to theft in my entire life.)

   By the time it's finished, Geoff Johns's miniseries will be the same length as Waid's story (discounting the cliffhanger at the end of #73, "The Return of Barry Allen" ran from #74 - 79). By the end of #75, a reader is pretty sure that this isn't Barry Allen after all. The thematic purpose of the story was to establish Wally as a worthy successor for Barry precisely because he is a different character. Zoom, the crazed Flash fan and a clear precursor to Johns's Ur-Fanboy Superboy Prime, idolizes Barry and wants to be exactly like him. His attempts are futile, and in a bit of time-travelly confusion, they actually create the psychotic Zoom that would/had menace(d) Barry in stories already told. To stop Zoom, Wally has to move on from his own idolization of Barry and accept his role as the Flash. It's all very pop-psychology, with just enough Freud to make things the tidy motivations a little messier. Far from being a love-letter to the Silver Age, Waid's story is a pretty stirring embrace of a new character.

   What Johns's seems to be doing is a little different. For one thing, he's actually bringing Barry Allen back. If he follows his road-map from Green Lantern: Rebirth, as he has admitted in interviews, then he's planning to keep all the Flashes around but put the Silver Age version back in the title role. Johns has made the doubts about bringing Barry back into the plot of the series, as characters express a variety of opinions about what his return means. It's all very meta. He wants to, like Waid did with his story, focus on why the man in the red tights should be wearing them ... he's just arguing the opposite point that Waid did. At the same time, he's trying to preserve Wally as someone special. He wants to re-establish Barry Allen as the Flash, but keep Wally West around as something other than a junior side-kick. What Waid did was prove that the new guy deserved the job. What Johns's is doing is trying to show that the new guy didn't do anything wrong, but that he's going to be replaced anyway. It's not him ... it's us.

   It's not that I anticipate Johns is going to do a narrative disservice to Wally West. Far from it, I would guess. But, unlike the Green Lanterns, there doesn't seem to be any real publishing desire, or mythological infrastructure, to support so many Flashes. Jay gets a pass because he mostly keeps to himself over in the Justice Society. But look at Roy Harper and his Red Arrow persona. Granted, the JLA book has been a supreme mess lately, but having what amounts to two versions of the same character (in slightly different costumes) doesn't work. Sure, Wally can hang out with the Titans, but that book has too many insurmountable problems, and will just get canceled again. He'll pop up here and there in the main Flash comic, and might even be a regular supporting character, but he'll be pushed to the background.

   This stuff happens in publishing. Eventually, if a character is published for long enough, something has to be done to keep him or her fresh. It's OK to put Wally on the shelf for a while, and give Barry some air again. But I'm still convinced Ted Kord's coming back, so maybe I'm just a silly optimist.