To Better Know a Hero: Green Lanterns

So Green Lantern has been in the news a lot lately, the "real" news, even, thanks to DC's recent reveal of the character as gay. However, as is usually the case, non-comic book news site don't quite know/aren't telling the whole story, so I figured now was as good a time as any to create a Green Lantern primer. Because, as is usually the case with comics, nothing is ever that simple...

Countdown to Christmas #3: Christmas Trees

After Santa, the Christmas tree is perhaps the most recognizable secular symbol of Christmas. As a kid, I always got excited when the Christmas tree was setup because it was fun place to play with my GI Joes (Christmas tree lights make great lasers). As my brother and I got older, my mom got picky about what kind of ornaments went on the tree, so we each got a small three foot fake tree for our bedrooms, on which we could hang our handmade and fun ornaments.

A Rainy Sunday at Microcon

Microcon was held a few Sundays ago at its now-usual venue at the State Fair's Progress Center. I'm not sure if the steady rain kept people in or kept them away, but it was a mad house inside, at least for the two hours or so I was there. If the show keeps growing at this rate, it'll soon outgrow the Progress Center. As it was, I have nothing but sympathy for the creators, dealers and volunteers that had to manage the throng of people all day.

In my zeal to get out the door early and pick up my brother, I managed to forget my camera and my want list (which made shopping a little trickier and more memory-based) so no fun pictures. Needless to say, the costumed folk were out in force once again, from MCBA's regular Superman to a full compliment of Star Wars characters, including a neat looking Clone Trooper in and amongst all the Stormtroopers, and an impressive Jango Fett.

Arriving shortly after the doors opened my brother and I, slightly soggy, made a beeline for the Half Price Books table. My brother was looking to pillage their discounted Manga inventory as he had done at Fallcon last year. In moments, he had dropped fifty bucks on $300 worth of Manga. While he ravished the Manga, I picked up this little gem for $3.00:

I have no idea what this comic is about, but the cover features Lex Luthor sucker punching a pre-teen Superman in the back, and that, my friends, is worth three dollars.

While my brother lugged his sack of books to the car, I made a lap of the floor. I wasn't planning on buying any graphic novels, since my local comic shop was having a big sale the following weekend, in which all books would be 50% off, which is about as good a deal as I can find anywhere. However, I caved for one 1/2 off Showcase that I knew my LCS didn't have in stock: Batman and the Outsiders.

This early 80s book featured Batman quitting the Justice League (because they wouldn't help out a colleague of Bruce Wayne, who was being held captive by an enemy country) and reluctantly forming his own team of "outsiders" to help him. I was introduced to the humorous crappiness of the stories and the gorgeous Jim Aparo art by Siskoid's hilarious page-by-page analyses a while back, and have wanted to continue reading the series since.

With my recently-updated want list sitting uselessly on my desk at home I had to rely on my memory to make any comic book purchases, which meant, for the most part, hitting the broad strokes of my collection, things like X-Men and Avengers, for which I know by heart the issues I still need, and avoiding diving into bargain boxes for quarter comics.

I did manage to find a copy of Flash #54 for fifty cents, an issue Dave Campbell raved about way back when that I've kept my eye out for ever since, so I could experience the fun myself.

Then I picked up two issues of Iron Man, #98 and #99, that were old enough that I knew I didn't have them yet.

Usually, I like to methodically work my way backwards through my acquisition of X-Men and Avengers comics, purchasing, for example, issue #95 before #94, and so on. But this time I found plenty of good deals for issues all over the range of my want list that I threw that notion out the window.

To wit, I scored three issues of Avengers in good shape, all for under $5 a piece: #62, #104, #114

Apparently, I've exhausted the stock of my usual dealer for late 70s X-Men comics, as he didn't have any issues I don't already have this year. But I still managed to add two more issues of X-Men to my collection, #74 and #84:

These are all from the "reprint" period of X-Men's publishing history, in which low sales had led the book to being canceled for a time before it was brought back simply as a place to reprint older stories. Despite the lack of original content, at $8 an issue, these were a steal.

And that was the end of a soggy, quick-and-dirty Microcon for me. As usual, more than anything it simply whetted my appetite for Fallcon in October.

To Better Know A Hero: Flash

Real Name: Barry Allen

First Appearance: Showcase #4 October 1956

Nicknames and Aliases: The Scarlet Speedster, Fastest Man Alive.

Powers and Abilities: Super-speed, including the ability to run up walls and over the water, to create powerful updrafts of air by running in a circle, and to vibrate his molecules at such a speed as to pass through solid matter and the walls separating different realities. And yes, he's faster than Superman.

Weaknesses and Achilles’ Heels: Punctuality

Gadgets and Accessories: The Cosmic Treadmill allows Flash to travel through time and into other dimensions; his entire costume can be compressed to fit inside his ring for storage.

Friends and Allies: Iris Allen West, his wife; Kid Flash (Wally West), his nephew and sidekick; Bart Allen (Impulse/Kid Flash), his grandson; Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), his best friend; Jay Garrick (the Flash of Earth-2); the Justice League of America; the Justice Society of America.

Foes and Antagonists: The Reverse-Flash, Captain Cold, Captain Boomerang, Mirror Master, Heat Wave, the Weather Wizard, the Trickster, Pied Piper, the Top, Gorilla Grodd.

Movies and Appearances: Barry Allen was the Flash featured in the Super Friends cartoons. He was also the Flash in the short-lived live action show from the early 90s, played by John Wesley Shipp. "Barry Allen" was one of the alias used by Frank Abignale (Leonardo DiCaprio) in the film "Catch Me If You Can."

One-Sentence Origin: When a lightening bolt strikes his lab, police scientist Barry Allen is doused in chemicals that transform him into the Flash, the fastest man alive!


Memorable Moment: Crisis On Infinite Earths #8 1986: Captured by the Anti-Monitor, Flash escapes and sacrifices his life to save the remaining universes in the "multiverse" and all their inhabitants.

Fun Fact: In Flash of Two Worlds (The Flash (vol. 1) #123) Barry Allen met the star of DC's Golden Age Flash comic, Jay Garrick, establishing for the first time that the Golden Age heroes existed on a parallel Earth-2, giving birth to the DC multiverse.

Teebore’s Take: The first appearance of Barry Allen as the Flash in Showcase #4 is considered by most comic fans and historians as the start of the Silver Age. Barry later planted the seeds of the DC multiverse by meeting his Golden Age counterpart. When DC decided to prune that multiverse, Barry died in the process, which seems fitting.


Because I started reading comics post-1986 (after Barry's death) Flash has always been Wally West, who took over the Flash mantle after Barry's death, to me. I've always thought of Barry less as a character and more as a martyr and a thematic representation of DC's history: the herald of the Silver Age who died when DC made a conscious decision to move away from the style of storytelling that had defined that era for them (even if, as a kid, Flash I was most familiar with thanks to cartoons and whatnot was Barry).


Barry's death also established a theme almost exclusive to DC's comics, a unique element of their characters I find captivating: legacy, that of one hero training another to someday take over for or otherwise honor an existing hero. No "family" of characters illuminates this more than the Flash family: Barry mentored a sidekick, his nephew Wally, who after Barry's death "graduated" from being Kid Flash and became Flash in his own right. Wally, in turn, eventually mentored his own Kid Flash, Barry's grandson Bart, and so on.


Which is all my long-winded way of saying I don't "get" the recent resurrection of Barry Allen as the Flash. While I don't care enough to cry out for the blood of the creators responsible for the resurrection, I don't see the need to bring the character back. Even by Silver Age standards, and amongst some of his most fervent fans, Barry, as a character, was considered fairly dull, a straight-forward do-gooder that put on the visually stunning Flash costume and got involved in zany Silver Age adventures. His most defining character trait, beyond the virtues shared by all heroes of that age, seems to be the running gag of how, despite being the fastest man alive, he was constantly late for dates with Iris. Flash was a great character; Barry himself was fairly lackluster and undefined. Barry passed on while the Flash continued.

All of which makes it seem as though Barry works better dead than alive, as a martyr and an important part of the Flash legacy, than as a character in his own right. Hopefully, the resurrected Barry Allen will show us why he deserved to come back.