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Big comics story in today’s NY Daily News whose very url spoils something huge. SERIOUSLY DO NOT CLICK IF YOU HAVE NOT READ DC UNIVERSE #0.

Val has more to say in another URL spoiler.

Also, I find it interesting that the direct market is depending on the spoilers not to be spoiled in order to maximize sales, yet the company putting out the comic is purposely working with the major media to spoil the story on the morning of the book coming out. Just a thought.

We find it interesting that he name of the comic the article supports is found halfway through; hopefully civilians will get the message and run to the shops to find out WHICH long-dead hero is being resurrected.

“That’s the point of comics – they don’t have to die, because they’re fictional creations,” said Grant Morrison, one of the writers behind the comeback.

UPDATE: If you are immune to spoilers, the Occasional Superheroine comment section complaining about spoilers is also pretty interesting.

20 COMMENTS

  1. “And that’s why people read comics, to get away from the way life works, which is quite cruel and unheroic and ends in death.”

    In my case that’s the exact reason I stopped reading mainstream DC and Marvel years ago. If I want to read about people being raped, maimed and/or killed, I’ll pick up a newspaper.

  2. “Without Barry Allen, we’d still be reading comic books about cowboys,” Geoff Johns, co-writer of the new Flash comics, told the Daily News.

    Now there’s an interesting idea… No Flash, no Justice League, no Fantastic Four, no superhero genre dominating the medium. Without the excitement generated by superhero comics, would fans have entered the profession in the 1960s and 1970s? Or would comics just continue on as a children’s medium distributed to newsstands and drug stores, with the occasional independent or underground title? Without the fan base encouraging the creation of comicbook stores and the Direct Market, there would not be an easy market for creators to distribute their work.

  4. Torsten asks: “would comics just continue on as a children’s medium distributed to newsstands and drug stores, with the occasional independent or underground title?”

    IMO, had the mainstream medium tried to rely purely on non-fan support in the decade that gave rise to the DM, the price hikes would have killed the medium. It’s true that the hikes for comics aren’t much worse than for paperbacks (some of which were about 25 cents in 1960, and which now go for about $5 usually), but the higher the costs went up, the less would be the tendency to regard comics as quick throwaway reading.

    Of course, maybe the medium could have hung on doing ARCHIE-style booklets designed for the supermarket trade. At least SUPERMAN could’ve…

    As for the Flash coming back, it’s just the other shoe dropping, after a really long time.

  5. “Without Barry Allen, we’d still be reading comic books about cowboys,” said Geoff Johns.

    I didn’t realize Flash had come along at such a crucial moment in comics history. That’s interesting.
    I couldn’t help but think, though, that if superheroes hadn’t come to dominate the direct market, we might have a lot more people reading comics.

  7. “Now there’s an interesting idea… No Flash, no Justice League, no Fantastic Four, no superhero genre dominating the medium. Without the excitement generated by superhero comics, would fans have entered the profession in the 1960s and 1970s? ”

    Sure. It just all would have been pirate comics.

  8. John you bring up a great point. Many common folk who knew of the Flash still think that Barry is Flash and never died. The 1990 tv show and the excellent reference in “Catch Me If You Can” didn’t help.

    I had a feeling that Barry was coming back, after Ollie, Carter, Hal and now Ray. I just wish that J’onn wasn’t expiring (spoiler my ass) and Arthur would come back full circle.

  9. I read DC #0 because I happened to browse into a comic shop today and it was free so i took one, and I was so confused I didn’t even see Barry Allan in it, or didn’t realize I was seeing him. I also bought a Batman comic because I saw the Ten-Eyed Man was in it.

    Anyway #0 was a bit of a mess. I didn’t understand a single thing I was reading, I have no idea who or what The Black Hand is, I happened to have read Crisis 25 years ago so I knew the Spectre flashback imagery, but that’s about all I got. Not clear what was going on with WW, or why the cast of 300 was hanging with her, who the guys talking about the cast of 300 were, why The Legion was with Superman…nothing.

  10. Is this a paradigm shift we’re witnessing? No longer are these massive announcements displayed only in Wizard Magazine… now they’re getting announced in EW and the Daily News!

    As Keanu Reeves would say: “Whoa!”

  12. “Without Barry Allen, we’d still be reading comic books about cowboys,” Geoff Johns, co-writer of the new Flash comics, told the Daily News.

    everyone, please let that comic be JONAH HEX.

    Jimmy p

  13. Like Ivan, I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop on Barry for a while. After the returns of Jason Todd and Bucky over at Marvel, it seemed inevitable.
    However, as with Ken, I didn’t immediately click it was Barry until I read the article on Newsarama, it really wasn’t as clear as it could have been. Like a doofus, I initially thought it was Shazam related…
    I’m interested to see where Final Crisis goes from here though.
    Oh, and Jimmy P, you’re doing an awesome job on Jonah Hex, I implore anyone who likes really well done Western comics to check it out.

  14. I was so busy at work yesterday that I actually managed to avoid all the spoilers before I read this. I did know that Barry was due for a comeback, so it wasn’t a total shock. That said, the comic really doesn’t work until you realize “oh, it’s Barry Allen narrating”, and then it kind of looses steam.

    As for the question of what would have happened to comics without superheroes, I’ve always thought that superheroes became the dominant genre because it’s the only one that comics could do better then other mediums. I don’t think it’s the case any more– “the Incredibles” is better then 99% of superhero comics, and comics have proven to have strengths that movies, tv, ect. can’t match. Still, the course has been set.

  15. The problem with all of this is that Barry Allen doesn’t really appear in DCU #0. There is much to imply his presence but also enough ambiguity to put off the full reveal until presumably some time later in the pages of Final Crisis or mayber Rogues Revenge. But then the news media comes in and pretty much blows all of this build up out of the water.

  16. I’m with Ken,…I read that comic and it didn’t make no sense. Like Chris,…I thought it was about Captain Marvel too. Possibly.
    It seemed like a William Burroughs pastiche. As if pages ripped from previous DC Event comics were pasted randomly together. It’s as if each panel were created by a different awesome comics team.

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