Blackhawk Wingsdays 9: Dr. K Reviews The Brave and the Bold 28

I mentioned a few weeks ago that DC had announced several new projects that involve the Blackhawks, and last month, The Brave and the Bold 28 came out, which teams the Blackhawks with the Flash (Barry Allen version) in a story written by J. Michael Straczynski and drawn by Jesus Saiz. (I should note since this is a new comic that spoilers will be occuring.) As much as I was looking forward to this issue, it was a bit of a letdown, only partially because it broke one of my cardinal rules about Blackhawk stories:

Despite what the cover shows, the Blackhawks never once fly their planes in this story.

Now, that's not a huge problem, as there are dozens, if not hundreds, of Blackhawk stories where they don't go near a plane, and I have already shown a few of those in this series. But the paucity of planes in this story leads to what is probably the biggest problem I have with this issue: there is no compelling reason for the Blackhawks to be here. They are so little used, and most of the members aren't even named in the story, that JMS could easily, and more effectively, inserted Easy Company or the Losers instead, especially considering the story's setting.

The story opens with the Flash helping some scientist test a "multi-spectrum laser" in the fields of Ardennes, Belgium. The Flash is supposed to run alongside the laser beam and measure certain fluctuations, but the experiment goes horribly wrong, and Flash is sent back in time to World War II--specifically, the Battle of the Bulge. To make matters worse, the Flash has broken his leg in the journey and can't run forward to his own time.

While hopping around and escaping the Nazis, Flash ends up captured by the Blackhawks, who think he's a Nazi spy trying to impersonate the real, Golden Age Flash.



Flash tries to explain his story to them, but they don't buy it. Blackhawk, however, gives Flash one chance to prove his story's true. The team has recently smuggled some German scientists to New Mexico for work on a top-secret weapons project. Though this project is classified now, Blackhawk assumes it will be in the future's historical record, so he asks Flash to provide the name. Flash gives the correct answer--The Manhattan Project--so the Blackhawks don't kill him.

You know what I'd like to read? A story where the Blackhawks smuggle German scientists to New Mexico in order for them to develop the Manhattan Project. Unfortunately, that's not this story. In fact, there are a lot of moments like this, where JMS has characters tell about awesome events, instead of showing them. Like during a flashback, when the story stops just as the Blackhawks are getting ambushed by Germans, and Blackhawk then goes on to say that they escaped the ambush. Really? Would have liked to have seen that. And the whole Battle of Bastogne? Reduced to a one-page montage where Flash explains how the Blackhawks helped drive the Germans out of the town. That also would have been nice to see.

Anyway, the Blackhawks just happen to be in the Ardennes because they were supposed to be taking some R & R there, when the Battle of the Bulge suddenly broke out. So, we're meant to believe that, during a particularly terrible winter, the Blackhawks chose to take their vacation in this very section of Belgium.

When Flash is first captured by the Blackhawks, he's not really introduced to the team, and neither are we. Some characters are named, but few are actually identified.
Here, for example, I assume we see Olaf in the middle. But on the right side of the panel, we have a character that looks kind of like Chop-Chop, but talks about barbecue and Texas like Chuck. However, this character is never named, so I can only assume it's Chuck, now with dark hair instead of red. In fact, as far as I can tell, only 6 Blackhawks appear in this comic, with Chop-Chop being the absent one. That certainly gets JMS out of a jam by leaving out the most racially problematic character, but I do feel kind of bad that Chop-Chop wasn't allowed to go with on this team vacation.

While holed-up in a bombed-out barn, the Blackhawks and Flash are ambushed once again by Nazis. Chuck gives Flash a gun, but the Scarlet Speedster is not comfortable with the weapon, so he decides instead to chuck a bunch of bricks at the Germans. This knocks them out, but it also pisses off Blackhawk, leading to the most interesting part of the story:

I really like this debate that Blackhawk and Flash have about using lethal force. It highlights the fact that Flash, in his normal adventures, has the luxury to make certain choices that soldiers in wartime don't have. Flash's actions simply stopped the ambush, but they really did nothing to further the goals of the war, which was to kill as many German soldiers as possible. This moment really got my hopes up that this story would turn around.

However, that was not the case. Flash ends up donning an American military uniform and spends the next few weeks fighting alongside the Blackhawks at Bastogne. This exciting, potentially action-packed part of the story is, as mentioned earlier, limited to a one-page montage. Once his leg heals, Flash gets ready to return to his own time. Before he goes, though, he's asked some questions by Blackhawk:

Of course, anyone who has ever read a time-travel story will know what Flash's answer has to be, right? I mean, he couldn't possibly give Blackhawk information about the outcome of events that haven't happened yet, and by doing so, potentially change history, right?


Oh man, WTF JMS?

Flash goes on to reveal that war, in fact, keeps on happening well into the future, which really seems to boost Blackhawk's morale. Flash also explains that the planet of the apes is really Earth, that Kristin shot J.R., that Darth Vader is really Luke Skywalker's father, and that Dumbledore dies. Then Flash runs back to the present, where he has only been gone for a few seconds.

This issue was disappointing, to say the least, and I have to wonder, for how many readers is this their first Blackhawk story? While I had read a lot of Blackhawk comics when I was a kid, the first one that really clicked for me, where I thought the Blackhawks were really cool, was The Brave and the Bold 167, where the Golden Age Batman teams up with the Black Knights during WWII. I'll be covering that issue later, but that's the comic that made me want to read more Blackhawk comics, and so it would have been nice if The Brave and the Bold 28 could have that same potential.

Flash Facts

I was recently digging through the comic collection, looking for the Green Lantern story with the first appearance of the Black Hand, hoping for a Gil Kane punch that would nicely tie into Blackest Night. Unfortunately, like a lot of early Green Lantern stories, it features absolutely no punching, the opponents choosing to shoot rays and crap at each other until one of them loses (on the plus side, it also does not feature Elongated Man tearing the heart out of Hawkman, so at least there's that).

However, that search did give me the chance to re-read one of my favorite comics, The Flash 229, another 100-Page Super Spectacular from which this blog takes its name. The Green Lantern story is reprinted here, along with stories of the Golden Age Flash, Johnny Quick, Silver Age Flash, and Kid Flash. In addition, the feature story contains an Earth-2 crossover, which was often a highlight of The Flash series.



I'm not going to cover this comic right now, but I do want to take the opportunity to plug my favorite podcast, Tom vs. The Flash. Tom Katers devotes about 15 minutes to each issue of The Flash, with three podcasts a week, and he's about three weeks away from covering this issue, so I don't want to step on his toes by saying too much about this issue.

As I've mentioned before, I recently moved, and the new house adds about 10 minutes to an already long commute. However, that extra time in the car is mitigated by the fact that I have more time to listen to an extra episode of Tom vs. The Flash (though once I'm through every episode, I may have to start the series over or something in order to keep the commute from becoming unbearably boring).

The podcast is hilarious, and Tom makes me laugh at the consistent goofiness of this series while still respecting its Silver Age qualities. Tom also frequently comments on the domestic hell that is the Barry and Iris Allen marriage (something that is also depicted here). So now, whenever I re-read my old Flash comics, I can't help but see this relationship in this light, as these panels demonstrate:



Because of Tom vs. The Flash, I don't read this dialogue as good-natured ribbing between a happily married couple; instead, I see Iris goading Barry into having an affair by needling him for being such a slow-ass loser. I'm looking forward to hearing what Tom Katers does with this story, and if you haven't checked out Tom vs. The Flash, I'd highly recommend it.

Final Crisis Post Mortem: Rogues' Revenge

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge, by Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins, was probably my favorite of the tie-ins, though I'm liking Legion of 3 Worlds a heck of a lot (I will cover that series once it's completed). Though I have read complaints that Rogues' Revenge was not tied in to Final Crisis enough, I would argue that it was tied in just enough. While it isn't essential to the main series, Rogues' Revenge does follow a logical tangent from it that comes out of the first few issues without contradicting them. This makes for the best kind of tie-in to a major event like Final Crisis: the main series has created a space for a story like this, yet it can also stand on its own, as the reader is given all the necessary exposition. And the story is told in a tight three-issue series.

The primary purpose of Rogues' Revenge seems to be bridging the gap between, on the one hand, the death of Bart Allen, Salvation Run, and Countdown (the Pied Piper and Trickster plot) and, on the other hand, the upcoming Flash: Rebirth series. That may seem like a lot of continuity to keep up with, but this is one of the things Geoff Johns does well: tie together continuity threads while still managing to tell an entertaining story.

And Rogues' Revenge is a lot of fun. During his run on The Flash, Johns understood the importance of these villains to the series, and he had managed to flesh out their backstories to make them more interesting characters and to give a clear motivation as to why they would work together (they are mainly held together by the strict leadership of Captain Cold, who understands each rogue's damage enough to keep them in line).

Rogues' Revenge opens with the villains on the run for some time after the events of Salvation Run. They are being pursued on two fronts: the heroes want them for their responsibility in the death of Bart Allen, and the villains are after them because they refuse to join Libra's new society of villains. They choose to fight the society while also evening the score by killing Inertia, the villain truly responsible for Bart Allen's death.

Johns is a straightforward, entertaining storyteller who uses continuity as a launching pad for new stories. In this sense, his style contrasts that of Grant Morrison on the main series. Though I find both approaches to comic storytelling equally valid, I can see why many readers preferred Johns's more accessible approach. I'm entertained by Johns's comics (though I don't quite understand his obsession with traumatic arm loss), and I tend to follow whatever he does. However, it's also clear that we have a lot of the same touchstones when it comes to the comics of our youth, and that may very well be influencing my enjoyment of his stories.

To look at one particular characteristic of Johns's storytelling style, I'm using a couple of scenes not from Rogues' Revenge, but from Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns, a tie-in that many readers cited for its failure to connect to the main series.

Early in the book, the reader is reminded by the following image that the Guardian known as Scar is connected in some way to the Sinestro Corps, as indicated by the Yellow Lantern symbol that appears in her pupils (the Black Lantern symbol also appears there in an earlier panel).
Later, when Green Lantern John Stewart questions how the Sinestro Corps managed to ambush them, we get a cut to another panel showing Scar's pupils.
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On the one hand, this is just clear storytelling, repeating information in order to make sure the reader is following along and can continue to follow. On the other hand, however, this is an unnecessary repetition that doesn't account for readers' intelligence or attention to the details of a comic that takes less than 15 minutes to read from cover to cover. In Final Crisis, Morrison would not have cut back a second time to Scar's eyes, as the first shot pages earlier should have done the trick.

I will say one more thing about Rage of the Red Lanterns: despite the claim on page one that "these events take place between Final Crisis #1 and #2," that connection seems unlikely. Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and the Alpha Lanterns have a pretty tight continuity in Final Crisis, and there is just not enough time for these events to occur. That being said, Rage of the Red Lanterns is still an entertaining story regardless of where it fits in relation to Final Crisis. It probably would have been best, however, if DC had left off the "Final Crisis" label from this book.

DC has recently solicited some of the Final Crisis collections. Here's the copy for the Rogues' Revenge collection:

FINAL CRISIS: ROGUES' REVENGE HC

Written by Geoff Johns, art and cover by Scott Kolins.

In the face of Final Crisis, Johns and Kolins revive the most ruthless Rogues Gallery of them all! At times, they've been laughed at, ridiculed and hunted -- but The Flash Rogues Gallery has had enough. The team of villains decides to remind the world why they're not to be messed with in this hardcover collecting their return in Final Crisis: Rogues Revenge #1-3 as well as a couple of their greatest hits from The Flash #182 and #197.

144 pages, $19.99, in stores on July 15.

It's nice that DC is padding the collection out with two of Johns and Kolins's best single issue stories from The Flash: the origin of Captain Cold and the new Zoom, respectively. I would say that Flash 182 is the best issue of their entire collaboration. However, due to the importance of Weather Wizard's son to the story's climax, I would have liked to see Flash 175 and 176 added as well, which established the relationship between father and infant child.

I'll have more on these collections in a later post, along with my comments on Final Crisis: Revelations.

The Complete Works of Dr. K, Part 4

The summer after I graduated from high school, I wrote a couple more letters to comics before heading off to college. Both letters attempted to impart some of my high school knowledge on comics readers. The first letter was written to Wonder Woman, which at the time was being written and drawn by George Perez, and I tried to explain how Perez was using the Greek gods in a way consistent with their representation in mythology. That letter never got printed, perhaps because I misused the term "voyeurism" in it.

I wrote another letter to the newly revamped Flash series, written by Mike Baron and drawn by Jackson "Butch" Guice. In the series, Wally West had taken the place of his deceased mentor, Barry Allen, but Wally had been significantly depowered. At this point in the series, he couldn't break the sound barrier, and he had to take in considerable calories in order to keep going. Mike Baron also had Wally win the lottery early in the series, thus solving his frequent financial and occupational problems.

Though Baron wasn't on the series for two full years, I really liked what he did with it, especially the introduction of other speedsters like Red Trinity and the use of Vandal Savage as a substantial adversary for the Flash. At that time, though, I was pretty much buying anything Mike Baron wrote based on his work on Nexus and The Badger, which remain two of my favorite series of all time.

The letter attempts to explain Wally's difficulty with breaking the sound barrier using some loose fact I remembered from high school Physics. I don't even know if the point I made is accurate, and I have no memory of ever having this knowledge. If it is accurate, however, I have Mr. Wallevand, my high school science teacher, to thank for it. He was fired a few years after I graduated for not doing his job after some complaints were raised about his unorthodox teaching methods, but I guess he could have used this letter as evidence that his students left with some knowledge.

But if someone out there knows more about this stuff than I, please let me know if I was right about this speed of sound thing.




I'm also proud of my 18-year-old self for dropping the reference to The Right Stuff, one of my favorite movies and the film that still makes me bawl more than any other, with the exception of It's a Wonderful Life. Seriously, I just lose it when Chuck Yeager walks out of the burning wreckage in the desert.

Here's the scene from the beginning of the movie that I reference in the letter:

"There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die." That gives me goosebumps. Is there a better opening line in movie history?

The answer is, no. Certainly not the one you're thinking of.

While I was never actually a physics student as I claim in the letter, other than taking the basic required classes in high school and college, I was a runner in high school, doing fairly well in track--well enough to letter four years in a row and take home some hardware. I even had the school record in the 300-meter hurdles for a short time, but that was only because I discovered, by looking at the record books, that no one in the history of my school had ever competed in that event. So, though I finished last in that particular race, I set the record. It only lasted, however, until someone else decided to enter that event a few weeks later.

And, in the end of the letter, I ask what was a burning question for a lot of readers of the Flash at the time: how do you pronounce the name of the new villain, Kilg%re? I always just read it as "Kilgore," but Editor Mike Gold's response doesn't help much.

And I did include my address on this letter, but by the time the letter was printed, I had moved out of the house and into the dorms at school, so I wasn't around to receive my mail regularly. I did, however, get one important piece of mail as a result of this letter, which will be the subject of an upcoming post.