The bankruptcy was the best thing that happened to the company.

For a while during the early 00s, it seemed that Marvel were willing to do anything, no matter how nuts, to their characters. Daredevil was better than it had been since Miller, Priest’s Black Panther was (and still is, to this day) the most intelligent political thriller ever to be written in a superhero title; maybe one of the most sophisticated runs of any comic ever. Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man was just brilliant, and with Ultimate X-Men first and the Ultimates later Mark Millar was about to define what became Marvel’s house writing style for the decade.

I was a massive fan of Babylon 5, so you can imagine how much I was looking forward to the Great Maker’s Amazing Spider-Man. But hands down the craziest, and best, decision was to get Grant Morrison on New X-Men.

I’m not a Chris Claremont fan. So it’s incredibly easy for me to say that Morrison’s X-Men is head and shoulders above every other attempt to write with those characters. It seemed that he was willing to do anything with the title, an exercise in sheer imagination and possibility. Never mind Millar on Fantastic Four: Kirby’s legacy was carried forward in this title.

I’m not sure whether, from a creative standpoint, Marvel learned the right lessons from their successes. Jemas-era Marvel shows the incredible possibilities of writers left to do whatever they want. Instead, it seems that interesting elements of the Ultimates, New X-Men and Straczynski and Bendis’s work have been cherry-picked and then applied to years of interminable “events”. I can’t fault the marketing/business side of things; the sales figures say it all, and who’d have thought that the Avengers would become a brand to dominate even the mighty X, and without a film to back it up?

Like I say, I like new and fresh perspectives. It’s even important that the “industry” is more switched-on in business terms (Christ, I remember when the X-Men movie was a huge, global success, yet the comics of the time not only ignored it, but went out of their way to be hostile to any possible new readership that may have happened along). I’m not sure that the correct way to exploit this is to just overlay a style that was interesting five years ago on every fucking title that’s released.

Because what we have now, once again, is editorial-driven comics. Civil War/Secret Invasion dominates everything, and stifles the creativit of the individual titles that are meant to support it. To my mind they just aren’t enjoyable to read, or at the very least nowhere near as enjoyable as Morrison’s X-Men or JLA, or even Bendis’ first hundred Ultimate Spider-Man issues.

If I’ve got any conclusion to arrive at, it’s this: DC and Marvel have both chosen to stick to editorially mandated paths, the only difference (and the heart of why one company is doing better than the other) is that DC chose their path ten years ago rather than five, which makes it appear less “fresh”. But it’s only relative, because God knows Marvel’s approach started to look stale before World War Hulk.

Damn, I’ve gotten all pessimistic again. But one thing cheers me no-end. There’s never been a better time to be a Transformers fan.

I’ve got no idea what went on behind closed doors, but I remember what it was like being a reader at the time, and bits and pieces that have been reported in various places since then. But that said, is there really any doubt that companies like Marvel and DC prefer to keep a tight rein on their intellectual properties? Except, of course, for a brief period at Marvel when they let the writers do whatever they wanted…

After Waid’s Flash, Morrison’s JLA is probably what I’d say is the best example of the kind of superhero stuff I like. The first story arc is just about the best JLA story of all time, and there’s plenty to like in the rest of the run. But after the Rock of Ages, some things crept in that I wasn’t so keen on. Like why the fuck Huntress was on the team, or the New Gods. I remember me and dear friend Paul C assuming that editorial had told Morrison who he should be using, because we couldn’t believe anyone would pass over use of the Magnificent Seven for a pack of D-listers.

After a while, both Waid and Morrison left DC, and in an interview for Mark Salisbury’s Writers on Comics Scriptwriting the former said he almost quit writing comics because DC had refused to let him or Morrison write Superman, going as far to say that he’d never get the character because he was too “high profile”. It’s the kind of thing that I just cannot believe, and perhaps one of the clearest signs that some of these companies are not being run by business people. There’s no doubt that stories like this coupled with the odd behaviour of some professionals when they get on the internet suggest that the comics “industry” is deeply, deeply weird if not outright unpleasant.

I’m not one hundred percent sure of the timeline, but from what I recall this was happening around the same time as Marvel’s bankruptcy, or certainly in the lead-up to it. What I do remember is Joe Kelly moving from an amazing run on Deadpool to one of the main X-Men titles, with Steve Seagle on the other. I was really looking forward to this even though I’ve never followed the X-Men, but again it went to shit thanks to editorial interference despite showing occasional promise. It was the same kind of interference that led to Mark Waid leaving Captain America and demanding his name be taken off the later collections.

This is the background to what I honestly believe to be the decisions that have shaped the two companies’ superhero universes today. If Morrison and the others had been left to write Superman without editorial interference, All-Star Superman could have been the norm rather than the non-continuity exception. And bear in mind that Millar and Morrison were just about to hit the big time with their Marvel work. All that energy could have been directed into DC’s flagship titles.

Because it didn’t what we got were more lacklustre editorially-driven storylines (and once again poor old Joe Kelly went from the frying pan to, well, another frying pan). Jeph Loeb’s Superman set the foundations for President Lex, Superman/Batman, and through them the current Crises. In short, everything that the DCU is today. And regardless of my dislike of Marvel’s recent storylines, there’s no doubt they are far more popular than their rivals.

More tomorrow.

Of course, the Flash I’m writing about is Wally West.

West’s been the Flash for twenty-odd years. Long enough that he’s the Flash to a whole generation (and let’s face it, probably the last generation) of comic book readers. And I understand why people like J. Michael Straczynski want to see Barry Allen return, really I do. Hal Jordan’s return was brilliant, and I’d like Tony Stark back too. But again, like the Legion of Super-heroes, I’ve got no sentimental connection to poor old Barry.

From recent hints, I wouldn’t bet against JMS being the one to bring him back, presumably in yet another relaunch. Regardless of anyone’s opinion of his writing (and even though I dropped the title around Civil War his run on Amazing is the longest I’ve ever bought a Spider-Man title for because as much as I like Spider-Man, I’ve rarely found the comics to be any good), the man is high-profile enough to shift a heck of a lot of comics, which is something the Flash really needs at the minute from looking at the sales figures.

The question is where did DC go wrong with what used to be one of the most consistantly good titles of all time? I think part of the problem may actually be down to the very thing that made the comic so good for so long: Mark Waid.

If it wasn’t for Waid, I doubt I’d still be reading comics. His and Mike Wieringo’s run was so far above what anyone else at the Big Two were doing in the 90s it wasn’t funny. He foreshadowed Grant Morrison’s legendary JLA run, and it was a shitty, shitty decision on DC editorial’s part that the four Superman titles weren’t passed to him, Morrison, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. In fact, I’d go as far to say that the ramifications of that decision are without doubt the foundation of DC’s current troubles. Grant Morrison’s New X-Men and Millar’s Ultimates fundamentally altered Marvel’s approach to their comics (for better or worse), inspiring the current Big Events that are making the company so much money.

Going back to Waid, what made his Flash so engaging was the long-form story that he told over a hundred issues or so, of how Wally West grew up. He took the work started by Mike Barron in the very first issue of the series and progressed it to it’s logical conclusion. And that was the problem: West’s story arc was essentially complete. There was nowhere really for the next writer to go.

Geoff Johns, after a seriously poor first arc, solved the problem by making his story arc all about the Flash’s Rogues Gallery. He extrapolated on events and themes Waid had explored, at first addressing the Rogues individually and then as a group in the Rogues War. It’s in these issues we see the blueprints of greater plans for DC’s current Crises (once again, for better or worse). Sure, the magical recreation of West’s secret ID and his wife’s pregnancy moved his story forward, but ultimately incrementally, and not on the scale of Waid’s work or indeed the focus Johns’ reserved for the villains.

It all went to crap after Infinite Crisis and the elevation of Bart Allen to main character. Despite the promise of Issue 1’s awesome cover, the Fastest Man Alive was just rubbish. The plot didn’t make a huge amount of sense, and Allen’s character was both boring and at odds with what had gone before. Twelve issues later and it all ground to a halt with his death, the only tragedy that the event was so inconsequential.

Impulse was always a bit of a wasted character. Oh, he was good enough in his own title and in Young Justice, and I’m sure Johns did a decent job with him in Teen Titans (though I’ve never read it). But he was never Wally West’s sidekick, and that really should have been his purpose. Instead of shuffling him off into a different book after his introduction, Waid really should have made him an integral part of the parent title. In fact, I suspect that some of the less effective later Waid issues would have been improved by using Bart as a dramatic device: Wally West’s next challenge should have been as a father.

Which is exactly what Waid tried to do on his return to the title after Fastest Man Alive got the boot. Unfortunately the damage has already been done momentum-wise, and besides, I get the feeling that Waid didn’t really want to come back. The first six issues have been lacklustre and have finally convinced me to drop the title. Like I’ve said before, buying things just because I always have isn’t a good enough reason anymore.

But not to end on a down note, you know what I think would work? The Flash as a team book. If we have to have Barry Allen back, let’s bring his grandson back too. Let’s do a Green Lantern: if there’s no reason to get rid of Kyle, there’s no reason to boot Wally. And depite my ambivalence about JSAers, Jay Garrick’s awesome, so get him in too (in fact, I still believe the best solution following Infinite Crisis wasn’t giving the teenager his own series, but rather the old guy). If the conclusion of one character arc ultimately crippled the old series, let’s start again with many.