Something cute

[seriousfic]

So I was working at the theater the other day and we have this huge Green Lantern standee with cardboard cut-outs of all the Lanterns. And these kids are coming to see some of the children's movies, so, a lot of them look at all the CGI and go "Cool!" In fact, one of the moms was going from Lantern to Lantern and asking who they were and her kids was telling her "Tomar Re! Kilowog! Sinestro, he's bad!"

The kid didn't recognize Hal Jordan, though, because "in the cartoon, Green Lantern is black."

That's what I don't get about this argument that, say, Barbara Gordon is the iconic Batgirl because that's who's in the cartoons. If that's the case, shouldn't Wally West, Vic Sage, and John Stewart be front and center? Since they're who's in the cartoons?

Comments

[colonel-green.livejournal.com]

In some cases, arguably, though Hal has appeared as GL in a number of non-JLU projects.

With Wally, I don't think people would especially notice, since they look basically the same.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

With Wally, I don't think people would especially notice, since they look basically the same.

Mainly because they keep retroactively grafting all of the best-looking aspects of Wally's costume onto Barry.

But the point still stands. I laughed my ass off when JMS tried to claim that this was the equivalent of the Golden Age Atom making way for Ray Palmer, because we already HAD that when Ryan Choi came on the scene, and then they KILLED him, even though HE'S the one who's appeared in the most recent Batman cartoon!

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

Well, Wally's big deal is his personality. If Barry just has Wally's personality, then what's the point of even bringing him back?

[colonel-green.livejournal.com]

Mainly because they keep retroactively grafting all of the best-looking aspects of Wally's costume onto Barry.

Speaking from the perspective of somebody only casually acquainted with the Flash property, they all wear red suits with yellow stripes in various places; most people wouldn't pick out the minor variations in the stripe patterns.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

And yet, DC obviously cares enough about them to swipe all the improvements to Wally's suit and slap them onto Barry's suit, which is especially suspect when Geoff Johns has actually written in-canon stories explaining the character-based reasons why Barry and Wally chose the slight alterations that they did, so especially in light of his Shilling the Wesley on Barry's behalf, it's hard not to see this as a very conscious, premeditated attempt to erase Wally's importance.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

I mean, for fuck's sake, Geoff Johns has actually written Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash - the ORIGINAL Flash - saying, and I quote, "Barry Allen is the reason why I became the Flash." There's a point at which subtext simply becomes TEXT, and Geoff's hard-on for Barry crossed that line a long time ago.

[jlbarnett.livejournal.com]

that was dumb. Making it canon by saying that Barry was the creator of the speed force, without actually having Jay say it would have been less dumb.

But Wally was also in the Silver Age so why not use him. And of course Johns is actually moving off Flash with barely a years worth of stories.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

I guess so. But I'm a big enough comics geek that one of the very few reasons I'm considering seeing Green Lantern is to see if the movie will have Mogo and Rot Lop Fan in it...and I'm not sure I could tell Wally's costume from Barry's costume without context. So I agree with Colonel Green. I think for the vast majority of people they pretty much look the same, and as seriousfic notes below, the main differentiator is the personality.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

And the personality issue is huge, since the incoming writers of Barry-as-Flash have said that they're going to be writing him as someone who's still learning how his own powers work, which runs completely counter to the entire point of Barry's personality as reinforced by Johns himself. That's like if they chose to get rid of Tim Drake so they could put Dick Grayson in the same role, and then wrote Dick as completely new to superheroing.

That being said, I still think it's worth noting these signs of the writers and editors' actual intent, simply because they run so counter to what they SAY they're trying to do. It's not a good thing to trust the writers and editors of modern superhero comics, because that way leads to believing Joe Quesada when he says that Spider-Man's unmasking will lead to years of new stories under that status quo, and won't simply be reset by a retcon. If they're going to justify this half-assed clusterfuck trainwreck abortion of a partial-boot with a certain set of reasons, then I by God expect them to abide by those same reasons.

[jlbarnett.livejournal.com]

sometimes they're flat dishonest and sometimes I think they're just brain dead.

"Hey, if we do a reboot then we can do this and this and this and this," not realizing some of the ideas just flat contradict each other like the young and inexperience world's greatest heros who in some cases(Batman) are on their fouth sidekicks. Or the teenagers who sound like teenagers voluntarily taking names that basically mark them as younger knockoffs of people they might not have even met in new continuity.

[jlbarnett.livejournal.com]

I wasn't sure how much I wanted to say when I did my first post, but you know I'm not sure Johns is as big into Barry as you think. Unless barry's a significantly worse character then everyone in the GLC and Aquaman and Mera. He did some very good work with those characters working with their core concept. But with Barry he practically turned the book into a time travel book crossed with CSI instead of a story about the World's Fastest Man. And he didn't last on it very long either.

Of course maybe you've seen some interviews I haven't but overall it seems to me like he's considered their reviltilize the Silver Age guy so he got drafted.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Excellent points.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

It's more the fact that Johns' approach to Barry - who actually has some untapped potential as forensic police officer, since it allows him to be a crime-fighter and a scientist as both a superhero and as a "regular" person - has been to derail everyone else's characters by having them all talk at great length about how great Barry is. Even with Hal, Johns has shown a lot more restraint, allowing all the other Lanterns their own moments to shine, but as soon as Barry came back, Johns basically wrote him as Poochie.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

And in Batman's case, a sidekick who's his twelve-year-old biological son. So unless Damian was a prom baby...

[jlbarnett.livejournal.com]

ha! And even if he was it puts Bruce near thirty.

[jlbarnett.livejournal.com]

the Poochie thing is actually why I was giving him a pass. No one chooses to write that way these days. Shilling the Wesley is to well known, so I figured he was kind of stuck for ideas as it were. Still I guess it's possible to like a character and still not know what the hell you want to do with them.