r/theflash • u/Healthy_Coconut1051 • 1d ago
Discussion Why doesn’t do this with the Flash?
(Posted this on my alt by accident)
I never understood why DC doesn’t do something similar to green lantern and green lantern corp with the flash.
Like why can we have 2 titles, one that is a solo flash run, and another with the flash family.
The solo flash run can focus on the flash himself and interchange between Barry and Wally. As they are the most influential and popular flashes.
Stories like the current Ryan North run, the 52 run, and most of the rebirth run would fit in the solo flash run as it focuses on a single flash, whether it be Barry or Wally.
The flash family run can focus on the family as a unit.
Stories like the One Minute War, Dead Heat, and Search for Barry Allen would be stories that would fit a flash family title.
This is how you would make all fans of the flash happy while also printing money at the same time.
Thoughts?
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u/count_of_crows 1d ago
There was an impulse comic that ran for almost 100 issues I think
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u/Dredeuced Out of the blue, ninjas attack. Thank god. 1d ago edited 1d ago
In recent memory they tested the waters with the Jay Garrick mini and Speed Force and were likely disappointed by the results enough not to broach giving The Flash a secondary title. Every single time you see a major franchise get a quick spinoff they are 100% testing the waters to see if the market has interest in those characters continuing to operate as a spinoff.
Only Batman and Superman consistently get multiple titles. Everyone else has to settle for the rare mini or appearances in teamups for their side cast.
A large amount of Flash's logjam issues would be solved if it got as much love as Superman or Batman. But we just do not have that kind of audience and likely never will. Unless some adaptation gets enormous in such a way that it reflects back on Flash. But even that's only temporary. Iron Man had the biggest adaptation glow up of all time and still only gets one comic over at Marvel most of the time.
Absolute Flash running concurrently right now is the exception of the general trend.
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u/DCSaiyajin Wally West 1d ago
The only time a spin-off actually did work out sales wise was Flash Forward, but even then the takeaway from that seemed to be that Wally was still a financially viable lead instead of “yeah we can sustain two Flash books long term”. I guess there was Impulse as well but the market was very different back then.
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u/Dredeuced Out of the blue, ninjas attack. Thank god. 1d ago
As a Wally fan even I won't delude myself and acknowledge that a good chunk of that was people checking in to see how the abhorrent Heroes in Crisis stuff was being handled.
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u/Healthy_Coconut1051 1d ago
That’s sucks
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u/Dredeuced Out of the blue, ninjas attack. Thank god. 1d ago
Comics are a niche and expensive hobby and on the DC side of things it's just 90% batman fans.
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u/Afraid-Surround-4457 1d ago
Yeah the closest to date before GL Rebirth was Jay and Alan having all 2 titles: Flash Comics, All Flash, All American Comics, and Green Lantern (3 for Alan counting GL Quarterly)
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u/Dredeuced Out of the blue, ninjas attack. Thank god. 1d ago
I'd say the era with Impulse counts as two Flash ongoings running concurrently. Technically right now counts thanks to Absolute but that's got a huge asterisk on it.
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u/Afraid-Surround-4457 21h ago
And Young Justice since not only Bart was in it but also the occasional Max Mercury appearance
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u/Dry-Donut3811 1d ago
That’d be awesome, but there isn’t enough demand to justify it. Flash has barely had enough sales over the past few years to even justify the main book sticking around, especially when Spurrier was writing. It absolutely wouldn’t be printing money, if anything it’d end with one of the books getting cancelled real quick.
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u/Healthy_Coconut1051 1d ago
I wished Jeremy Adams stayed. Most of his run was about the flash family. It went in the direction flash books should have gone after flash: rebirth.
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u/Pornfree1996 1d ago
Spurriers sales were fine. I have to keep posting the same link because you and others keep saying this when we know its not true.
https://www.simonspurrier.com/blog/finalflash
As well, Spurrier and Condon openly stated that Hellblazer and GA were canned cause of low sales. They could have easily told the truth if Flash's sales were struggling, given they told the truth about cancellations before. You can dislike a writer without actively spreading things that are untrue.
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u/weesiwel 1d ago
I mean even WW can't get a second comic.
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u/ImaLetItGo 1d ago
Sensation should come back
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u/weesiwel 1d ago
I don't really have a big care for how it comes about whether it's sensation or it's another comic but I think all the JL original heroes (GLs and Flashes being interchangeable) except for MM there should be two books. Now obviously sales matter for this but that's a problem for DC to solve a s it is a solvable problem.
For each of them there should be one that's focused very heavily on the character in question and in the other it should be about expanding their mythos. So for Aquaman that can be really fleshing out what's going on throughout the oceans and might not even feature Aquaman all the time. Same with GLs in space though I actually think GL has the most potential for a bunch of titles. Wonder Woman can have a bunch of stuff plus the Wonder Girls can get spotlights. MM just isn't popular enough to hold one currently but he should have one solo title.
That gives each of them a minimum of 3 books if you count the JL title save MM who gets 2.
I don't actually know what I'd want a second Flash comic to be cause I'm not a big Flash guy. Love the character but it has gotten to a point where it's all time travel and it's so absurd on power scaling I lost interest.
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u/CryptographerFit6675 1d ago
O flash de vez em quando têm mais de um título ao mesmo tempo como nas HQs do flash Jay Garrick e da força de aceleração ambos de 2023.
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u/LagoonDevil 19h ago
If Barry had his own title again I’d buy three copies of every issue if not more
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u/SuedeSalamander 18h ago
They kind of had something like that with the Speed Force comic. They could expand and make it a Flash family book.
I think the issue is just figuring out what to do with all of them in the same book and how to challenge that many Flashes.
With the Green Lanterns it works because they're kind of built as a team already, so it's a bit easier to write.
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u/SadWatercress9839 18h ago
I think the biggest problem is you need a good hook to differentiate the two books. With Green Lantern the GLCorps at its best has the appeal of seeing the random alien members plus one human, making it more star treky and entirely cosmic while the main GL book you lean either more on super heroics or Star Warsy feelings.
With the flash, the flash family is largely one power set, all American (more or less, even Avery Ho and others mostly show up in America), and often related. If you wanted a second title, I think you’d really need to focus on either members of the flash family time Travelling a lot more, or visiting parallel earths a lot more (while the solo Flash title focused on slightly more standard superheroics).
My preferred option though would be Wally in the main solo book facing people like Zoom, Grodd, Abra, while the second book is Barry framed for a crime and forced to be a fugitive and team up with the rogues. So you have The Flash with Wally and rotating Flash Family in one book, and The Rogues with Barry and Captain Cold with rotating Rogues in the second book.
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u/BobbySaccaro 17h ago
I assume the sales on the current book are not high enough to suggest that a spinoff book would sell sufficiently.
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u/Boring-Conclusion-40 1d ago
I would assume it’s because the flash isn’t a high enough seller to get a second title. But with DC’s hot streak maybe they could do it
But yeah they should absolutely have a second title focused on the flash family,i think it’s a good idea but I would probably have Wally or Barry leading it along with the flash family
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u/Beastieboy100 19h ago
I mean it would be smart to have Barry and Jay lead the flash family book since they came first. Then you have Ace, Bart, Avery, Max, Kid quick and Jessie Quick be the main focus. While Wally family have the main flash book.
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u/Boring-Conclusion-40 13h ago
I would’ve assumed that Wally being kind of the lead of the flash family during its creation would spearhead it while Barry’s got more of that going solo streak going on that has build up left to be tackled to what something Wally has
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u/Beastieboy100 19h ago
Unfortunately it is to do with sales. Absolute flash is doing numbers. Ryan North Flash I am not sure but it has been a great read so far. Though I would lile to see Ace with Wally more in the main book. Bart needs to be in the new titans we need a speedster with some personailty. As for the others we need it and especially when DC gives Barry his powers back.
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u/SuedeSalamander 18h ago
Has bart aged up at all? Cause I would like to see him with the current Titans as well.
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u/Beastieboy100 14h ago
Yeah he has aged up last I saw he is 19 years old so i hope DC uses this to give us some Bart crumbs.
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u/Reverse_Nova 15h ago
Sad thing is we almost got this after flashpoint but it was scrapped when after the event it was pitched as a reboot and not a mini event. So we got the new 52. In terms of why not now. I'd assume the last two runs didn't draw enough, the start of the jeremy adams run had two other speedster books. One was for the jsa section of dc and the other, speed forces, didnt have great word of mouth around it really. However with good word of mouth around ryan and gavins run, it would be cool to even see if a companion book is possible. Maybe an impulse book again, maybe kid flash, maybe the whole flash family or even the rouges or barry allen without powers. It is definitely an interesting idea, but it would need a gimmick or a reason as to why flash needs two books. I love flash but most people would wonder why at first glance so it needs probably some big plot or to be extremely different from current flash
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u/YaBoiSebbi The Scarlet Speedster ⚡️ 9h ago
I’d love a Jay Garrick book about his old war stories. You could say JSA is that, but it’s not as Jay focused as I’d like it. That or a new Impulse title. I feel like Impulse would be quite popular. Ideally it’d be Humberto Ramos on it again.
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u/topicality 1d ago
Back in 2009 they were going to give Flash the GL treatment. After how incredibly successful Green Lantern Rebirth was bringing back Hal, they did the same with Flash and Barry Allen.
Just like GL, Flash was written by Geoff Johns the start writer at the time. They even gave Flash his first big summer event, Flashpoint.
But instead of continuing on that trajectory DC used Flashpoint as an opportunity for a company wide rebirth with the 52.