Thursday, November 09, 2006

Earth-Smorgasbord

Once again, Tom Bondurant has pursued a fascinating line of thought for his Grumpy Old Fan blog column. This time around, Bondurant considers the ramifications of redefining the DC Universe in a way that reboots all of the familiar heroes without the use of their existing legacies, much as Marvel's Ultimate line has done. Some intruiging questions emerge.

In the case of such a scenario, who should be the man behind the mask as the Ultimate Flash? Bondurant decides, quite logically, that the answer is Barry Allen.

Can Wally West be the Flash without Barry Allen’s influence? Animated Wally apparently was, and apparently (if “Teen Titans” is linked to “Justice League”) was also Kid Flash. However, no Barry means no struggle to live up to Barry’s example, and that was a big part of Wally’s development... Many successor characters have been set up through more complicated story arcs, including Matrix/Supergirl, Kon-El, the Hal Jordan Spectre, Bart Allen, and arguably the newest Firestorm, Blue Beetle, and Aquaman. These tend to make them dependent on existing characters, and therefore would probably exclude them from this freshman class... So, with all that said, who makes the cut for Earth-Smorgasbord’s freshman class?

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