Broken Frontier

As predicted, it’s been a huge week for Flash fans so I’m not going to be facetious about spoilers this time round. Treat the next sentence with the respect it deserves! Spoiler Warning: Read no further if you’ve not had your DC fix this week and don’t want to read about key story elements.

Events this week…

In Countdown #45: Jason Todd and Donna Troy face down Forerunner as the Amazons’ attack on the U.S. rages on. Jimmy Olsen muses on the fate of the New Gods while the mystery of the Legion of Super-Heroes’ mission deepens. Holly Robinson makes a new friend and the Monitors carry on bickering. Those guys really need some serious team-building sessions…

The Players
(this week’s principal cast)

Jimmy Olsen: Not just investigating Duela Dent’s death anymore. Now he’s also speculating on the identity of the assassin killing off the New Gods. Jimmy is also faced with the mystery of his own on-again, off-again super-powers. Upcoming issues of Action Comics are said to give us a definitive look at the origins of the New Earth Jimmy Olsen. So keep your eyes peeled on the Super-books in the near future.

Holly Robinson: Homeless on the streets of Metropolis, Holly is reacquainted with the old man she saved from falling masonry in Countdown #46, before being approached by a mysterious stranger in silhouette.

The Monitors, the Forerunner, Jason Todd and Donna Troy: Forerunner is more than a match for Jason and Donna but she’s stopped from inflicting worse on them by a delegation of Monitors. There’s more internal strife and arguments between the Monitors as to the correct way to police the Multiverse.

Monarch:

The former Captain Atom has already expressed a dislike for the Monitors in the pages of Ion. He appears to be conspiring against them again here and has definite plans for Forerunner.

Elsewhere in the DCU
(stories this week that may, or may not, tie into the Bigger Picture)

Catwoman #68 leads directly into last week’s Countdown #46 marking an ending and a beginning for Holly Robinson. Catwoman and Amazons Attack! writer Will Pfeifer was good enough to drop in and answer a few questions on Holly, Selina and the Amazon onslaught:

BF: With Holly such a key player in Countdown, how would you sum up the point she's reached in her life and her time as the stand-in Catwoman (readers can check out the full story beginning with the Catwoman: The Replacements trade) over the last few months?

WP: Holly's reached a point in her life where she's ready to strike out on her own. In the past, she's always had a mentor to look up to (Selina, Ted "Wildcat" Grant, Slam) or a friend to lean on (Karon). Now, thanks to the events of the last issue of Catwoman where she found herself mixed up in the murder (murder, hell -- the beheading!) of a Gotham cop and the target of two crazed Russian super-villains, she decided the only thing she could do was go off by herself, both to get away from the problems in Gotham and avoid drawing attention (and attacks) to Selina and little Helena. Of course, as we're seeing in Countdown, she's not exactly safe and sound these days, either. Her time as a stand-in for Selina in the Catwoman costume taught her independence, courage and -- not incidentally -- some valuable fighting skills. That's good, because she's going to need them.

BF: Events in recent issues of Countdown clearly take place after the conclusion of the current Catwoman story arc. Will Holly remain a Catwoman cast member as the Countdown progresses and what's in store for Selina in the near future?

WP: Right now, Holly's no longer part of the Catwoman cast. Selina thinks of her often, as does Karon, but she won't set foot back in Gotham for a while. Selina is pretty much on her own now -- Slam is recovering from his ordeal with Black Mask and the drunken days (and weeks and months) that followed. He's not a young man anymore, and he has to slow things down. Karon is also recovering from her wounds that came courtesy of Hammer's attack on she and Helena, and without Holly around to act as a direct connection to all things Catwoman, she's not sure she wants to be involved in Selina's world much these days. It's a dangerous, potentially deadly place to live, and Karon's just an average person. Who could blame her for opting out? That leaves Selina and Helena, mom and daughter along against the world -- a world full of villains, crazies and random violence. Somethings gotta give sooner or later. Probably sooner.

BF: Amazons Attack! has just crossed into the pages of Countdown. Is this just a reflection of events elsewhere in the DCU or does the Amazons' declaration of war play into the bigger Countdown picture? And given the Monitors aren't that keen on "death cheaters" will they take an interest in Hippolyta?

WP: Actually, I think the events in Amazons Attack! are going to be wrapping up long before Countdown ends, so it's more of one of the big events at the beginning than something that's going to have an impact on the entire course of that book. As for the Monitors, they won't be stepping in to settle matters with the Amazons, but someone else will. Someone very, very powerful.

In Checkmate #15 the team-up with the Outsiders continues as the mad scientists of Oolong Island strike back and plot threads from 52 are followed up.

Justice League of America #10 is just chock full of Countdown goodies as the Legion of Super-Heroes’ mission to the past comes to its shocking conclusion with the surprise return of an old friend.

Prepare for more time travel madness in the pages of The Brave and the Bold #4 because Batman is about to run into the other version of the Legion, prompting us to ask just which is the true Legion of New Earth?

I was remiss last week in not mentioning Green Lantern Corps #13 which is a prologue to the upcoming Sinestro Corps shenanigans. Given the yellow power ring seen in the first Countdown house ads this should be of significance.

And, finally, this week’s biggie! Directly following the appearances of the Flash’s Rogues in the last few issues of Countdown, tragedy strikes in The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13 as Inertia and the villains bring about Bart Allen’s demise in a final blaze of glory.

Outgoing Flash scribe Marc Guggenheim was kind enough to talk to us about Bart Allen’s finest hour:

BF: Your run on the Bart Allen version of Flash has been well-received by the fans although, for obvious reasons, it's been shorter than we'd expected!

MG: Yeah. There was some hanky panky in order to keep the series' -- and Bart's-- demise a secret. Though I'd come on the book with the understanding that my run would be limited to five issues.

BF: Was one of the stated objectives of your tenure to make the Flash's Rogues a very real and credible threat again?

MG: Honestly, making Bart-as-the-Flash a real and credible hero was a higher priority. It was always the plan for the Rogues to be the ones responsible for Bart's death, so their credibility was always "built in."

BF: How does it feel to have played such a big part in such a pivotal moment in Flash history?

MG: It's totally awesome. It's one of the reasons I took the gig, to be frank. I'm still living a fanboy dream here and to write a pivotal issue such as this one -- particularly one where the shockwaves will be felt throughout the DCU long after its publication -- is a total thrill for me.

 

Continuity Corner
(interesting tidbits from this week’s issues!)

 

The Forerunner – Stopped by the Monitors from killing Jason Todd and Donna Troy, Forerunner is distraught at the dishonour this brings to her. Lots of fragments about the history of her race are thrown into the dialogue between Forerunner and the Monitors. We hear of a prophecy, a planetary treaty of the nine houses, the years of suffering her people endured and of wars and liberation. Time will tell where this is followed up but a good bet would be Forerunner’s own backup series in the upcoming Countdown to Adventure book.

Monarch – A character with one of the most convoluted back stories in recent DCU history. Way back in 1991 DC had a crossover series throughout that year’s Annuals called Armageddon 2001. The basic premise was that Waverider, a mysterious hero from the future, came back in time to discover the identity of 2001’s despotic ruler Monarch. All he knew was that Monarch was a former super-hero. Visiting heroes in turn he looked into their futures to determine which of them would turn out to be the Big Bad, leading to the revelation in the final issue of the series that Hawk, from Hawk and Dove was the villain-to-be in question.

All sounds fairly straightforward doesn’t it? Unfortunately though the rumors almost immediately started surfacing that Hawk was a late swap as Monarch’s identity. The character that should have been outed was, in fact, Captain Atom and there’d been a last-minute change when the news was leaked online. This made sense as the final issue of Captain Atom #57 had seen the good Captain gain new reality-altering powers and adopt a colder, more callous personality. Bottom line: Hawk, an intellectually limited, semi-thug just didn’t make sense as a world-conquering, technological genius.

Hawk as Monarch eventually became Extant, one of the chief villains of the Zero Hour series and later died in JSA. To make matters worse Captain Atom was revealed, in the pages of Extreme Justice, to never have been the real Nathaniel Adam at all, only his "quantum clone". The true Adam became the new Monarch shortly before Extreme Justice was cancelled (at which point everyone stuck their fingers in their ears and quietly ignored the mess that Monarch had become…)

The latest version of Monarch thankfully ignores all the baggage of the past. Waverider died in 52 and Captain Atom first started wearing the Monarch armor to contain his radioactivity in the pages of The Battle for Blüdhaven, after his return from the Wildstorm Universe in Captain Atom: Armageddon. Monarch was last seen hanging out in The Bleed, the limbo between dimensions, in Ion #10. He’s well aware of the Monitors and is hiding in The Bleed because it’s the one place they can’t track him. Whether this Monarch will be hero or villain remains to be seen.

Told you it was convoluted.

The Black Flash – The supernatural portent of doom for any super-speedster, the Black Flash’s first story arc was in Flash #139-141 (Jul-Aug 98) in the Wally West run. His reappearance obviously has more tragic consequences this week though. (The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13)

The Lightning Rod Saga – The JLA/JSA teamup concludes this week and it’s looking more and more like those old Adventure Comics Legion tales are canon again as Superman recalls more of his time with the classic Legion of Super-Heroes. Of course the whole arc has paralleled the resurrection of Lightning Lad in Adventure Comics #312 and there’s a mention of the Legion Espionage Squad from those halcyon days as well. Another intriguing continuity point is the mention of Karate Kid’s death. He died in dramatic fashion in Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 3 #4 (Nov 86).

But for Flash fanatics that’s all small potatoes, because the Big Event in this month’s Justice League of America is the identity of the character the Legionnaires "resurrect". The foreshadowing implies it’s Barry Allen who will return, with a flashback appearance of the ghostly figure of Barry Allen who appeared to Batman and the Joker in Crisis On Infinite Earths and Hal finding himself in the lab where Barry Allen gained his powers. Even Braniac 5 is apparently expecting the Silver Age Flash and is surprised when Wally West, Linda and their children return from the Speed Force.

Lots of questions arise from this issue:

Are Wildfire and Red Tornado one and the same character? What is the mission Karate Kid still has to complete in the present? Who were the Legionnaires really trying to bring back and why? Who is the mysterious figure Karate Kid is talking to at the end of the issue? What is the significance of the face still trapped in the lightning rod at story’s end? And, given Starman’s ominous words "Flash is back. Worlds will die again." is there a link to the original Crisis On Infinite Earths? (Justice League of America #10)

History of the Multiverse – More classic JLA/JSA team-ups recounted here including the very first one I ever read in Justice League of America #s171-172. For your nostalgic delight the covers to the original JLA #s 147, 159 and 171 are included along with the referenced Adventure Comics #462 from March 1979 (featuring the death of the Golden Age Batman). In the near future I’ll compile as full a bibliography as I can to events shown in the History of the Multiverse feature and post it on the Out for the Count thread on the Lowdown message board at Broken Frontier.

R.I.P. Bart Allen 1994-2007. See you next week.