The annual New York Comic Con was held this past weekend. DC Comics was there to hype their upcoming projects, of course, and to let at least a few details slip regarding what's ahead for the scarlet speedster and some of his more famous foes...
- A panel entitled “DCU: A Better Tomorrow--Today!” offered a sneak peek at upcoming events in the DC Universe. DC Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Dan Didio noted that two of the Flash's Rogues will be playing a major role in the new weekly series Countdown. Wizard reported that the "Countdown teases included a note that Flash villains Trickster and Pied Piper would play into the series heavily."
- A teaser poster unveiled at the DC Nation panel, in fact, features two gloved hands cuffed together under the banner headline "Villains Defiant." According to Newsarama, Didio explained that "the storyline tease refers to two men who shouldn't be together shackled together for the duration of Countdown, and [they] will travel through the underbelly of DCU." One of those hands clearly belongs to the Trickster. Is the other the Pied Piper? Or someone else entirely?
- In a major slip of the tongue, also covered at Newsarama, Didio admitted that the Flash appearing on the clue-cluttered DC Comics teaser poster released several weeks ago is, in fact, the great Barry Allen. What role Barry will be playing in upcoming stories remains to be seen, but the revelation has left the fan community buzzing.
The annual New York Comic Con was held this past weekend. DC Comics was there to hype their upcoming projects, of course, and to let at least a few details slip regarding what's ahead for the scarlet speedster and some of his more famous foes...
4 comments:
My first instinct was to say that DiDio didn't really give anything away, as we could all tell by the details that it was Barry. But then I remembered how incredibly lax artists have been with the Flashes' costumes. Yellow gloves, belts that don't meet... hell, for Wally's first few years, they consistently drew his logo backwards. (Normally we could write it off as tweaking on Wally's part, but this was supposed to be Barry's costume.)
The all-time championship in this category actually goes to Brian Augustyn. A letter-writer once described a costume he'd seen in back issues and asked which Flash had worn it. Brian said Professor Zoom -- but the costume described was clearly Kid Flash's. Bit of a difference, eh? Someone must have pointed it out to him, but as far as I know, he never ran a correction.
Speaking of slipups, it's a little odd that DiDio called Piper a villain, isn't it? He switched sides 20 years ago.
That's not a gay joke.
Honest.
Okay, maybe a little.
- Z
Y'know, I'm actually going to go with the Spectre on the other gloved hand.
It could be Piper, but at least he and the Trickster have worked together. When it comes to characters who should not be shackled, who could be more wrong than a con man and the spirit of God's vengeance?
As for the Barry "slip-up" (if it really was such), it doesn't really tell us much. After all, Batman's got a sword and armor in the picture. And he has said that some of the characters are literal, and some of them are symbolic.
I dunno about that being a "slip-up."
I wouldn't put too much stock in what Didio says. Isn't he the same guy who said something like, "How could that be Barry? He's dead," some weeks, ago?
zeke: I think Piper "went bad," again, some time in the past year or so. I don't recall if they said that was just a trick or what, but I remember him going bad.
It may've been a couple of years.
kelson: Yeah. This kinda thing is only worth kicking around for fun. There's little substance to speak of and much of it could be there strictly for the sake of misdirection.
What I remember about Piper "going bad" was sort of two-step:
First, he was framed for killing his parents during the lead-up to Crossfire. He broke out of prison and became a fugitive. At that point he wasn't a villain as such, but was on the wrong side of the law.
Then in Rogue War, the Top undid all the "be a good guy" conditioning he'd planted in Piper, Trickster, and heat Wave. Wally tried to reverse it by giving Piper back his memories of their friendship, but unfortunately Geoff Johns left the book before we could find out whether it worked or not.
The only time I can think of that we've seen the Pied Piper since then is the infamous mountain-climbing issue, which was written several years ago and should probably be read as a flashback.
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