Geoff Johns
Best known for his DC Comics work on titles like Action Comics, Green Lantern, The Flash and Blackest Night, Johns is more than just the man who's single-handedly changed the publisher's fortunes in the comic book direct market: He's also a movie producer and writer, working on a movie with the people behind Robot Chicken (He's also written for the TV show) and part of the brain trust behind DC Entertainment's movie development team alongside Grant Morrison and Marv Wolfman. Not lacking in talent or ambition, he's already many comic fans' Master. How long before he wins everyone else over?

J. Michael Straczynzki
The onetime Babylon 5 creator already has a lot of Master qualities down: Huge fanbase, creation of/showrunning-upkeep of epic weekly television series, a surprising amount of power within Hollywood and geek credentials from comic book work that includes a longterm run on Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man. With future projects including the movie version of World War Z, a remake of Forbidden Planet and DC's relaunch of the Man of Steel, Superman: Earth One, expect JMS to become an even bigger name in our world. But is it enough to be our new Master?

Mark Millar
After dominating comics for the last decade with critic-proof hits like The Authority, The Ultimates and Civil War, Millar's mix of high-concept and big action did the same to movie audiences with 2008's Wanted adaptation. Mext May's independently-produced Kick Ass movie is already seeming like a blockbuster waiting to happen, and alongside new comic series Nemesis (already getting interest from movie producers) and Millar's first all-original movie project reportedly being announced at some point next year, expect to see Millar's star rise even further in 2010. But how high is Master high?

Roberto Orci/Alex Kurtzman
They wrote Star Trek, both Transformers movies, and co-created Fringe; there's not denying the success of the Kurtzman/Orci team over the last few years, making sci-fi mainstream without upsetting the genre faithful (too much). Besides continuing producing Fringe, they're working on adapting Whitley Streiber's 2012: The War For Souls, fantasy comic Atlantis Rising and working with the Iron Man dream team of Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. on Cowboys Vs. Aliens. Is that enough to win your hearts over forever?

Peter Jackson
Yes, The Lovely Bones may not have been a slamdunk for genre fans' interest, but don't think that Peter Jackson has abandoned you just yet. Along with his much-anticipated collaboration with Steven Spielberg and Steven Moffatt (The two movie motion-capture Tintin series), don't discount his producing return to Middle Earth with Guillermo del Toro's The Hobbit movies. Oh, and don't forget his Weta Digital effects house, continually raising the bar on what our eyes can be fooled into believing. Maybe Jackson is already our behind-the-scenes, puppet-Master.

Russell T Davies
You could try and argue that the success of Doctor Who has more to do with David Tennant's "long streak of nothing" (Thanks, Donna) looks and charm than the writing, but all we'd do is point you in the direction of Torchwood: Children of Earth to prove that showrunner Russell T Davies is able to come up with the goods all on his own when he has to (Also, he's the one who chose Tennant, so there's that, too). Not content with not only resurrecting the BBC's longrunning SF series but turning it into the most popular drama on British television and a successful franchise, Davies has relocated to Los Angeles and turned his attentions to American television. With the adulation and respect of many in the industry already his, will mainstream audiences follow?

JJ Abrams
Maybe I'm biased, but with stewardships of Alias, Lost and Fringe on television, as well as Mission: Impossible 3, Cloverfield and Star Trek in movies, JJ Abrams feels like he's already taken the title of New Master. All he needs now is to wheedle his way into comic books to complete the media triumvirate (And, no; that Wired issue doesn't count).

Joss Whedon
Were we too hasty to count Whedon out? Sure, Dollhouse crashed and burned at Fox, but it lasted a season longer than anyone expected and was full of interesting ideas even when the execution lacked. With The Cabin In The Woods, his horror movie with Drew Goddard, upcoming as well as a new Dr. Horrible web series expected, amid rumors that he'll move into even more online content creation, will Whedon 2.0 prove that television is over once and for all? It's be an impressive comeback and reinvention, but maybe that's what we should expect from a former Roseanne scriptwriter who made himself into a television and movie powerhouse who liked things shiny.

What do you think? Vote below and share your thoughts in the comments.

Original image by Neil Crosby.

August, who had been tapped as the screenwriter on Shazam!, announced in January that the film was dead and buried, citing the sense that movie executives want more superhero movies like The Dark Knight. But producer Michael Uslan quickly assured us that a Captain Marvel movie was still in the works, and it looks like he was telling the truth.

Warner Bros. has announced that Bill Birch (now being affectionately called "Billy" Birch by media outlets to make him sound more like Marvel's alter ego Billy Batson) is on board to write the script. Otherwise, the movie's lineup remains the same, with Get Smart director Peter Segal set to direct.

This may be Birch's first foray into writing for a feature film, having spent most of his Hollywood career as an actor, but he'll have some help along the way. Geoff Johns, who most recently brought the Shazam! family of characters back into DC's limelight with the Justice Society of America arc "Black Adam and Isis," will be co-writing the story with Birch.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

I have a few ideas of my own that we'll get to in a moment, but first it's worth going straight to the source. Our own Graeme McMillan had a chance to talk with DC Executive Editor Dan Didio during Comic Con. Here's what he had to say regarding the whys and wherefores of Blackest Night:

Blackest Night, you're bringing a lot of people back as zombies for want of a better way of putting it...

They're not really zombies.

They're undead creatures who go around killing people.

Okay.

What's the purpose of doing this? Are you doing it for nostalgia, are you doing it to confound nostalgia in that you may be bringing characters back, but in a way that's different from what they expect...

I think so. There've been a lot of stories told about death, and killing of characters, over the last few years. Geoff came up with the idea for Blackest Night several years ago, and when it came time to move together, everything came together to where we are right now. But the Blackest Night story was always going to be the story that it is [now]. And part of that story was to explore the nature of death, we also explore a little bit about the concept of "revolving door death," as the story progresses, but more importantly, I think we really come back with a more defined sense of rules about what death really means in the DC universe.

I've said it somewhere else and I'll say it again, one of the mistakes we made [in terms of killing characters] was that we were going with quantity over quality. What we're really trying to do is be much smarter, and really, if somebody dies, it should have much stronger ramifications for the character, and the story, and across the universe.

Is it a possibility to undo deaths in this series?

There's a lot of things that have potential coming out of this. [Laughs]

Nice dodge.

Thank you! [Laughs]

Honestly, it's pretty hard to imagine Blackest Night won't be used as a massive vehicle for bringing dead characters back to life. After all, there's no way the Martian Manhunter or Aquaman are remaining dead forever, and I can't really think of a better place to revive them than in a massive company-spanning event that is all about the consequences of death. But that still doesn't mean Blackest Night is exclusively or even primarily about undoing superhero deaths, and that goes double for Necrosha.

So why then are both Marvel and DC launching massively death-obsessed stories so close together? What's the appeal of undead superheroes? Well, I have some theories…

1. Death has major dramatic and thematic heft.

Or it should, in theory. Death in comic books has been largely devalued ever since Superman came back to life after his bout with Doomsday in the nineties, turning death into little more than a brief retirement for temporarily unpopular characters. Indeed, the returns of such long dead heroes as Jason Todd, Bucky Barnes, and Barry Allen have made it crystal clear that a character's death is really just the start of the countdown for his or her return.

You would really have to go back over twenty years to find the last comic book deaths with real impact, including Barry Allen and Supergirl's heroic sacrifices in Crisis on Infinite Earths and Captain Marvel's painful death at the hands of a terminal illness. And, of course, two of those have since been more or less undone (and prior to Secret Invasion there was some definite playing around with Captain Marvel's real fate).

There have been attempts in recent years to take death seriously again, but most of these have been of the one step forward, two steps backward variety. Marvel promised the death of Captain America would indeed be permanent, and less than three years later Captain America: Reborn has begun. DC attempted to remove Bruce Wayne in Final Crisis without exactly killing him off, but the fact that his survival is a confirmed fact does somewhat cheapen the eulogies and tributes other characters have offered for him in recent months. Dramatic irony and pathos are both great things to have in a story, but they don't necessarily mix together terribly well.

As much as the revolving door of death has still been spinning freely, both companies have tried to reinvest death with some of its former impact. In DC's case, this has largely taken the form of focusing on characters whose deaths are a key part of the superheroes' origins. For Hal Jordan, this has been his father, the fearless test pilot Martin Jordan, while Barry Allen is haunted by the memory of his murdered mother (not to mention his father, who he believes was falsely accused of the crime). Of course, even this is not entirely consistent. Grant Morrison's Batman: RIP went so far as to suggest that not only was Thomas Wayne alive, but he was actually a psychopathic supervillain who was never really Bruce's father at all. (That was since disproved. Probably.)

Marvel, on the other hand, has simply done a better job resisting the urge to resurrect characters. As much as their claims regarding the permanence of Captain America's demise were soon shown to be false, they do seem to be treating death as a rather more final thing than DC. Secret Invasion was in part meant to reveal a recent rash of unlikely returns as part of the larger Skrull plot, although Hawkeye did manage to remain alive and human (and was even reunited with Mockingbird). As much as Janet van Dyne is probably coming back sooner or later, there are a whole bunch of characters, particularly mutants, that Marvel has killed off and left that way, thus leaving plenty of viable candidates for Necrosha's undead army.

What all of this has accomplished, really, is simply the sense that death can be permanent, and thus it's again possible to tackle death in comics in a way that is at least vaguely relatable to the world we live in. Blackest Night has already made much of the fact that there are many who never come back, and those who have are aberrations, cosmic freaks who should not be. These events are taking death in comic books one step further – death is no longer simple a way to underscore the seriousness of the latest threat, but is instead the threat itself.

Blackest Night and Necrosha are about confronting mortality and dealing with the inevitable through the quintessentially comic book means of having living superheroes fight their dead comrades. And, of course, if Marvel and DC can actually follow through with their promises to treat death more seriously and use it more sparingly in the aftermath of these events, then so much the better. Of course, that probably does mean they'll want to undo as many major deaths as possible while they still can…

2. You've got to bring these characters back sooner or later, so you might as well make a big production out of it.

For better or worse (and I know there are plenty of arguments that this is for the worse), comics are meant to be an infinite medium. To be sure, arcs within ongoing books can have clear beginnings and endings, but overall a character's story is meant to run and run forever. There's a reason Grant Morrison was able to somewhat plausibly imagine DC reaching the millionth issue of its books – ultimately, that basically is the goal of superhero comics.

Of course, that can create conflict with creating finite adventures that have their own stakes and consequences – in other words, telling actual stories. Much of the time, comics get by this by simply ignoring all previous stories that don't directly impact the current arc. (For instance, I'm fairly sure the time Superman and Wonder Woman spent a thousand years together fighting monsters is still in continuity, although you'd never know it from the way any of the characters interact.) This is rather more difficult to do when major characters actually die, which does generally necessitate some sort of change to the status quo.

But then, if the status quo changes too much, soon enough the call goes out for a return to the more iconic version. Kyle Rayner, Wally West, Bucky Barnes, and Dick Grayson must eventually hand the mantle back to Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Steve Rogers, and Bruce Wayne. This has been particularly commonplace in recent years, as an era of self-consciously grim and gritty (and thus death-filled) comics have been replaced by ones more concerned with the history of the medium, often bringing back long forgotten elements and plot points from the Silver and Bronze Ages.

As such, you've got a whole bunch of dead characters with a whole bunch of comic book writers ready and willing to bring them back. And why bring all of them back piecemeal when you can turn it into one massive event? Thus the need for Blackest Night, and quite possibly for Necrosha as well. (Admittedly, there's not really enough known yet about Necrosha to say whether it explore similar territory, so some of this may only apply to Blackest Night.)

If there's one thing DC has arguably always done better than Marvel, it's turn massive continuity reboots into epic events. Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis might both be a little too impossibly vast in scope for their own good, but they do rather defiantly take ownership of what could otherwise be embarrassing admissions of creative failure (although the less said about Zero Hour the better).

Blackest Night is tackling about a big a topic as one can in the DC Universe without traipsing into that pesky multiverse, and both Dan Didio and event mastermind Geoff Johns have suggested they also want to explore more metaphysical territory. In this sense, Blackest Night could be somewhere between Johns's own Infinite Crisis and Grant Morrison's Final Crisis, which was all about (well, as much as it was all about anything) the moral order of the DC Universe, and whether good fundamentally had to triumph over evil.

Similarly, Blackest Night apparently wants to explore the cosmic underpinnings of why some characters have come back and why others haven't. It's a way of turning years of cheap shocks and inconsistent editorial decisions into a gigantic masterplan, and it might almost look elegant when all is said and done. But perhaps I'm being too lofty in my thinking. Perhaps it's as simple as…

3. Zombies are huge right now.

I'll admit that I don't always keep up with my cultural zeitgeists as much as I should, but I'm fairly sure zombies are supposed to be the new vampires. (Or are they the new pirates?) Certainly, the past decade has been kind to the walking dead, with movies like 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead becoming hits and books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies somehow attaining both popular success and critical acclaim. And it seems like you can't go another day without news of some another ridiculous zombie version of a pop icon in the works.

And, of course, comics themselves have done very well with the undead. Zombies are a key part of a rotation of character types in the steady stream of "[BLANK] vs. [BLANK]" comics that also includes vampires, ninjas, robots, aliens, pirates, werewolves, cowboys, and Amazons. Marvel has had plenty of success with its Marvel Zombies franchise, which will continue at least as long as the House of Ideas has iconic covers to zombify. It's hard to argue zombies have made for a lot of high art in comics, but their stories have largely been good, goofy fun, and the sales figures certainly reflect a healthy readership for their stories.

As such, it makes a ton of sense to prominently feature zombies in your company's next big event. Even stripped of the particular wrinkle of bringing back prominent superheroes as undead killers, zombies seem to work just fine in abstraction, and there's every reason to think a "Green Lantern Corps vs. Zombies" or an "X-Men vs. Zombies" event would do very well for their respective companies – all the additional character stuff is just icing on the zombie cake.

The only slight problem with this is whether either Blackest Night or Necrosha actually, technically speaking, involves zombies. Dan Didio certainly doesn't seem to think the Black Lanterns can be considered zombies. I suppose it depends how important it is that the villains of Blackest Night partake in classically zombie activities, like, say, eating brains (something I wrongly suggested they would be doing in a post I wrote back in February).

All of this really sets up a technical argument over the definition of "zombie" that I'm not really qualified to have. I will say that whatever one's precise understanding of the concept, I'm pretty sure the Black Lanterns meet a lot of the requirements, and the undead mutants in Necrosha will probably be even closer, if only because their origins will be more explicitly supernatural, what with the villainous vampire Selene prominently involved.

Green Lantern, of course, is the superhero whose "power ring" can make or do anything, using a mysterious green light. GL's traditional weakness was the color yellow, and Johns' big contribution to the mythos was to decide that the colors in the Lantern universe stood for different emotions, with green representing willpower and yellow standing for fear. But what do the other colors represent?

Last month's release of Blackest Night #0 helped explain: green stands for willpower, orange for avarice, and indigo for compassion. (Hence the Indigo Girls.) In the interview, Johns finally explains why colors and emotions tie together in the first place and the larger metaphysical implications, starting with the pivotal position of the Green Lantern Corps:

They're the fulcrum. So if you look at ROY G BIV [a mnemonic for the colors of the spectrum] on a line and it's balancing on the tip of a pin, swaying a little bit-green is the center that doesn't move. When the first sentient being actually willed itself to move and had a voluntary action-the will to survive, the will to live-it created this invisible aura. It gave off an energy. I do believe there's something to being sentient and aware of your surroundings. We're not just rocks. We're moving around of our own will. So when those first sentient beings existed, they gave off an aura, and that aura was collected and coalesced into green light. When we got more sophisticated and our emotions started to change, we felt fear and survival through fear, and that gave off another invisible aura that could be condensed and collected into a yellow light. And it goes on into rage and avarice and hope and compassion and love.

Johns also discussed what sorts of stories he likes to tell and what he hopes readers will get out of Blackest Night, seemingly taking a swipe at Frank Miller's abandoned Batman-vs.-Al-Qaeda epic Holy Terror, Batman (which still might be the single dumbest idea in comics history) in the process:

The thing I always like about ideas in comics is when they're metaphors for something else. I don't want to see Batman fight Al Qaeda. I don't want to see terrorists in the books. If Green Lantern is going to fight terrorists, I want him to fight the Sinestro Corps. All these different corps represent something different to me and to the reader. If the readers like sci fi adventure with aliens and star wars and an epic tale, great. If they want stuff that's deeper, great.

When asked how he balances writing a monthly comic with the fact that many will only read the story as a trade paperback, Johns acknowledged thinking about the differences that might make, but that it doesn't affect how he writes. He noted he would have preferred DC had collected Sinestro Corps War somewhat differently than how they ultimately went about it, and he hopes Blackest Night will ultimately be collected as one giant story that properly integrates the Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps titles.

Indeed, he pointed to the collaborative nature of writing in the DC as one of his favorite parts of the business. Singling out Green Lantern Corps writer Peter Tomasi as one of his favorite people to work with, and that the opportunity to build a shared universe with people he respects is one of the most satisfying parts of the creative process.

Finally, he discussed the upcoming Green Lantern movie and his belief that Green Lantern has the potential to be the next big cinematic superhero:

I think Green Lantern is poised to be one of the biggest characters in the world. No other superhero is like him. It's not even a superhero book; it's a sci fi book. It's Lord of the Rings in space. It's Star Wars and aliens and cop shows, but it's its own thing. For me, Green Lantern has always had the most potential to reach and touch a lot of people because it's such a wonderful mythology. It's grown in the comics to the point where there's interest in the movie, and now the movie is going to grow it to a place. With [Casino Royale director] Martin Campbell [signed to direct the Green Lantern movie], I really have a lot of high hopes that it's going to be great, and I think people will continue to become fans of Green Lantern.

Blackest Night #1 is due in comic book stores July 15, and I'm really not sure I can wait that long.

[Publishers Weekly]

The return of Connor Kent, AKA Superboy, in this week's fourth issue of Legion came as a double surprise to many people; not only has the character been dead since 2006's Infinite Crisis, but he's rarely been mentioned as Superboy since, due - most assumed - to an ongoing lawsuit with the heirs of Jerry Siegel over the ownership of the name. Does Connor's return, to life and as Superboy, mean that DC have settled the case? Not exactly, explains Newsarama's Jeff Trexler:

The comprehensive nature of the 2006 ruling–that "any comic strip material of the nature now and heretofore sold under the title SUPERBOY" belonged exclusively to the Siegel heirs–arguably prohibited DC from publishing any material that featured a character named Superboy, whether a young Clark Kent or a derivative work featuring a character with the same name and similar powers... However, in July 2007, after the Superboy case had been transferred to a different judge, the court granted DC's motion to reconsider the 2006 ruling... Even better for DC, the 2007 order went on to indicate that DC owns at least 50% of the Superboy copyright. Because the original material in question was drawn by Joe Shuster–whose rights at this point remain vested in DC–Superboy would arguably be a joint work co-owned by DC and the Siegel heirs.

As a co-owned property, DC would have the legal right to publish new Superboy material without permission from the Siegels... which would explain not only Connor's return this week, but also the news that he will go on to star in DC's upcoming Adventure Comics revival, written by Geoff Johns:

The series will feature one of my favorite characters to write and a mainstay of my run on TEEN TITANS - SUPERBOY... But that's not all. It can't be, right? I mean, it's called ADVENTURE COMICS. It's not called SUPERBOY. That's because the series won't just be featuring Superboy, it'll be co-featuring the Legion of Super-Heroes fresh from the Crisis of the 31st Century in LEGION OF THREE WORLDS. More on the details of the book, and Superboy and the Legion, will be coming out in the following weeks, but I think it's safe to reveal that STARMAN will be the Legionnaire taking front and center stage with our first issue.

Adventure Comics #1 will be released in August; the Superboy lawsuit is ongoing.

Explaining A Mysterious Return [Newsarama.com]

Why bring back Barry Allen?

Because the world needs heroes.

Bringing back Barry Allen, that was something that grew out of everything we were doing with Final Crisis with Grant [Morrison] and everything. You know, Grant and I had talked a lot about this, too, when we were working together on DC Universe Zero way back when, about what was going on with the Flash Universe, and more specifically the DC Universe.

With Final Crisis, it was a full circle from Crisis on Infinite Earths, and with Darkseid representing the ultimate evil, and Grant really playing the theme that Darkseid really is evil incarnate without room for any grays, Barry Allen was by all accounts considered the greatest force for good in the DC Universe, and so he was brought back to combat that as a signal of ushering in the new age of heroes back in the day with Showcase #4. Barry represents that.

My, and a lot of fans', opinion about this is that Barry Allen was almost more powerful being dead, because he was this figurehead, this person who made the ultimate sacrifice. He became this almost Guardian Angel for the DC Universe. By bringing him back, do you lessen that?

That's what the story's about: If Barry Allen is back, what does that mean to what he sacrificed, what does that mean to what he was seen as, what does that mean to the Flash universe... It's a very different situation to [Johns' previous series] Green Lantern: Rebirth.

To my mind, Green Lantern was broken in a way that Flash wasn't. Green Lantern missed Hal Jordan, missed the Corps.

I wrote the Flash for five years. I wrote Wally West for five years, I love Wally West, I love the Rogues. I think the Flash universe has continued on, though it's recently tripped. Whereas Hal Jordan's return brought the entire [Green Lantern] universe back. You know, the Green Lanterns had become kind of complacent. You only had Kyle Rayner and John Stewart flying around, really. But the Flash universe, it progressed. Wally West became a great Flash, you had a new Kid Flash, Jay Garrick was still around, new speedsters showed up. Even Iris West moved on. That's not to say there's nothing to build up or nothing new to add. There is.

Did you approach this as "I love Barry Allen, and therefore he's going to be the Flash"? I mean, like you said, you wrote Wally for years.

Not at all. I grew up reading Wally West comics, I read Barry Allen comics in back issues. I like the Flash; whenever I put a name down, listing my favorite characters, the Flash was always number one. I'm getting into Barry Allen now, so it's really a process of rediscovery, for me, of that character. But it's the concept, and the idea of the Speed Force, that is at the core of it all for me.

For me, the Barry Flash is much more of a science fiction,science hero, and Wally was more the superhero. Is the book returning to its science fiction roots?

There's definitely a lot of science fiction in it, absolutely.

And another major difference with Wally was, he never had much of a life outside of being the Flash.

Yeah, that defined his character once he became the Flash, his life became about living up to Barry's legacy and everything else was a part-time job.

Yeah, it was always about living up to Barry's legacy. And then, beyond that, he became his own character, his own hero, his own Flash, but he was never really out of the uniform very much. Barry is, or was.

So what do you think about complaints about DC being retro, with bringing Hal back and bringing Barry back? How much of that is because [DC] is being nostalgic, and how much is because the concepts just didn't work that well without those characters?

Well, I think Green Lantern is anything but a retro book. And you have a whole new, young audience reading about Green Lantern. That's a good thing.

I grew up reading comics in the late '80s and the '90s. Is it nostalgic that Cyborg Superman is prominent again in Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War or Bane in Secret Six. I don't think it's a case ofcertain characters like Hal and Barry coming back because they want to be retro, everyone has their favorites, and a lot of these characters are valuable to the DC Universe from all eras. The 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's. Booster Gold has made a big return to prominence. The JSA continue to have characters from all eras, including several new ones. Is it nostalgic for Barry to be back? For some people it will be, but for others - for most readers, Barry Allen is new to them. I'm a believer that all eras, including this one, are valuable to DC. I hate limiting anything in comics.

Barry's been dead as long as he'd been alive, so there's a whole generation who've never read Barry Allen as the Flash.

Yeah, but to me, that's exciting as hell. Barry Allen is "new" to most readers.

How much of this is open to people who have never read a Flash comic before?

100%. Just like Green Lantern: Rebirth. Green Lantern: Rebirth was a jumping-on point for a lot of people who'd never read a Green Lantern comic before. That was their first comic. I mean, not everyone's read comics for 20 years, a lot of people forget about that. This is definitely for fans of the Flash, but also for new readers who've never read the Flash, have never met anyone in the Flash universe.

Is Flash: Rebirth all about laying the groundwork for what's coming? How much of it is a story complete in and of itself?

It's a story in and of itself that obviously sets up the status quo for a lot of these characters. There'll be a couple of new characters coming out of it.

In the same way that Green Lantern: Rebirth set up pretty much the remainder of your Green Lantern run?

It has a definite ending, just like Green Lantern: Rebirth had a definitive ending, with an open road ahead. The last issue doesn't end "To be continued." It ends.

Is that the way you tend to think, in terms of character and stories? Is the point of Flash: Rebirth, to you, to relaunch a franchise?

It's a story about a guy who's come back, but feels the seconds slipping away,everything moving at breakneck speed and he isn't quite sure which way to turn at the fork in the road. Sure, there's going to be people who'll say "My favorite Flash is Barry Allen" or "My favorite Flash is Wally West" or "My favorite Flash is Bart Allen." Same with GreenLantern, everyone has their favorite characters, but...

But with Green Lantern, you almost get to the point where you can please everyone, because there are multiple Green Lanterns...

You can never please everyone, but there have been multiple Flashes since Barry Allen met Jay Garrick.

But there can only be one fastest man alive, surely. Doesn't there have to be a Flash in a way that there doesn't have to be one Green Lantern?

You'll see what makes each of them individual, just like you did in Green Lantern, through Flash: Rebirth. I think that'll become pretty clear.

Flash in all his incarnations has become somewhat of an avatar for the DC Universe. Barry ushered in the Silver Age, but Wally, to an extent, the changes he went through mirrored the direction of comics at the time, from Mike Baron's quasi-mature approach to Mark Waid's updated silver age run that set the tone for DC's superhero books for the next five years or so. Do you feel a similar pressure with Rebirth?

Of course, but I'd rather go for it or not. I believe in the Flash, I believe it can grow, and Ethan is doing an amazing job. Barry Allen ushered in a lot of heroes, but the world could always use more imo.

You're bringing back Bart [Kid Flash, who was killed in 2006] as well, right?

Bart comes back in [Final Crisis:] Legion of 3 Worlds - Sorry for the delay, but the art is worth it, it's freaking amazing! - but in Flash: Rebirth, he's back from the future and his attitude is "Wally's the Flash, I'm Kid Flash, Now Barry's back. What's going on? If Barry's back, where is everyone else?

"If everyone's coming back from the Speed Force, where's Max?"
Is the tone similar to Green Lantern: Rebirth? Because Green Lantern has a tone of, I don't want to say "space opera," but it's been very grandiose and the stakes have never been small.

Green Lantern is to Space as the Flash is to Time.

The backdrop is, big and epic. But it's a little bit more character-focused, though, the difference being, I gotta get into Barry Allen's history more because he's more of an unknown to people.

Barry didn't really have much of a personality, either. He died before the trend for giving your heroes more of a personality than just a schtick - in Barry's case, being late - kicked in.

Hopefully, you'll feel different as the series progresses.

Starting with Hal Jordan and bringing him back, even back then, was this great thing... I remember the skeptics on that, but it turned out well and I'm hoping to do the same thing with this.

By this point, Barry's better known for that legacy, for dying.

Yes. And why there's an ominous or reluctant attitude in Barry will become clear.

Do you think Flash is one of the more inviting of the DC superheroes to new readers?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

We've got Green Lantern being made into a movie, all the talk about Wonder Woman back and forth, and obviously Superman and Batman...

The Flash is undoubtedly one of the most popular characters that the DC Universe has. I think he's one of the most popular characters in comics. Superspeed is one of the most amazing powers that I think people can get into and explore. Speed is something, today... everyone wants things to go faster, downloads to go quicker... No-one has anytime for anything. Speed is something that, today, we're always trying to get everything to go faster. As our society "progresses," everyone is wanting things to move faster, everyone is texting, using Twitter, all this stuff, all this constant communication and interaction, it's all about speed.

It used to take weeks to deliver a letter, and now you can communicate with someone in, like, two seconds. You can communicate with two or three thousand "friends" about what you're having for lunch immediately, all at once. It's pretty amazing.

In that case, is the Flash more suited to the modern world?

Absolutely. I think Barry Allen is more relevant now than he was back then, including his identity outside of the uniform... And not just because CSI is a TV show, but because the technology and the world has progressed.

Criminals are caught because of DNA, and Barry Allen hasn't been operating in a modern world since, what, twenty-plus years ago.

So what's your one-line pitch to io9 readers to read Flash?

He's the fastest man alive. If you've ever wished you had more time to do everything you wanted to do, here's a story about a guy who has that ability.

And then you can go and pitch that as a movie.

[Laughs] Who knows...

The honest answer would be an uncertain "Pretty well, maybe?" While Johns' script was perfectly fine, it was also more of a regular Smallville effort than what comic fans have come to expect from Johns. Yes, there were the geek-friendly shout outs (A Legion of Substitute Heroes reference? Really?). But the scale was smaller and the formula much more generic than fans of his Green Lantern or even his Action Comics runs would've expected.

A lot of that comes from necessity, of course. Not only does the budget of an eight-year-old series on the CW tend to limit the amount of super-powered derring-do, but because the episode was as much about the resolution of a long-running subplot (Chloe's become possessed by Brainiac!) than it was about the Legion themselves.

What we did see of the Legionnaires was... uneven. While the Ron Weasley-izing of Lightning Lad was a bit of a surprise, at least it gave him a personality. The futuristic serenity of Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl was less convincing, mostly because it was hard to tell what was serenity, and what was bad acting. (When it came to Alexz Johnson's Saturn Girl in particular, I think it may have been the latter). That said, all three were still more interesting to watch than Tom Welling's still-dull Clark or the visiting-yet-entirely-unnecessary Kristin Kreuk's Lana Lang, arguably two of the least-compelling series leads in television history.

The saving grace of the episode, then, was Evil Chloe. Yes, the plot's been done to death on this series alone, but Allison Mack's scenery chewing as she explained why this time Brainiac was going to take over the world (Apparently by sticking her hand into a server and using the internet to read everyone's minds in the world or something; welcome to Smallville logic) was wonderfully fun to watch, and the right match of hammy campness and respect for the story. Of course, everything was solved - and Chloe returned to her much blander self - by the end of the episode, but we all expected that, right?

And so, "Legion" wasn't the OMG GREATEST SMALLVILLE EVER that many - including myself, I admit - were hoping for, but it still managed to be strong enough within one of the strongest seasons of the show for years. Now, if Johns wants to return to the show to follow through on his hint of bringing Clark into the 31st Century, that could be exactly what I was hoping for all along...

Episode writer Geoff Johns, who's currently writing the characters in the Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds series from DC Comics, explained the genesis of bringing the 31st century superteens into the CW's angst-ridden drama:

‘Smallville’ had been featuring Green Arrow for some time, and Black Canary and Cyborg and Bart Allen had made appearances, and since the Legion is such a big part of the Superman mythology from when he was younger, I had an idea to introduce them into the ‘Smallville’ world too... I was casually talking to [former ‘Smallville’ producer] Jeph Loeb one day, who obviously knows the showrunners – Darren, Todd, Kelly and Brian – and he mentioned it to them that I had an idea for an episode. They called me up and were pretty excited to hear it. So I pitched them the idea of the Legion and how it affected Clark and what it would mean to the characters in the series. And they loved it. I spent a couple weeks in the writers’ room with them breaking the story and working on the script and then flew up for the shoot. So that’s how it all came together. It was really pretty amazing.

As a longtime Legion geek, I have to admit that I love the call-out each character's outfit has to their comic book version, even if it it also makes them look pretty ridiculous as well. Johns is optimistic that they'll be successful enough to make a return appearance:

I can tell you the door is left open pretty wide for them and other Legionnaires. If there’s a Season 9, I would love to write another episode.

As long as you're going to have some version of this scene, Geoff? You can bring them back whenever you want.

The "Legion" episode of Smallville airs on January 15th at 8pm on the CW.

Image from Kryptonsite (Via).

Geoff Johns Talks Legion of Smallville [Comic Book Resources]

Okay, we won't boast too much that Donner was just saying something that we said a couple of months ago when he suggested that Johns be given the keys to the franchise earlier this week:

I'd like to see Geoff Johns take a crack at Superman...I think he would be startling. Did you read his comics? There it is. It's there on paper... The studio hasn't gone to him and said, 'Give us a screenplay.' That would be the smart thing to do, but that's show biz. Right? Show biz, that's our life.

The reason for our lack of gloating? The fact that Johns is the most obvious choice to try and turn the Superman movies around. As a veteran of the comic industry, television industry and now moving into movies, Johns has also tackled the Man of Steel in comic book, animated (in Justice League Unlimited) and, with an episode of Smallville due to debut soon, television incarnations. He's demonstrated a love for the character, but also an ability to get to the heart of what makes the character - as well as his surroundings and supporting characters - work and translate that into enjoyable storytelling. Ignore Donner's links to Johns; in this case, he's literally just stating the obvious.

As to what Johns would do with the franchise if he were in charge, he's keeping that to himself. Well, apart from letting slip at the San Diego Comic-Con that he'd want to see Brainiac in a future movie if possible... Although, if Kevin Spacey is to be believed, we'd be much more likely to see yet another Superman/Luthor clash in the next go-around.
In fact, Spacey's belief that he'd be involved in any future Superman movie is half of one of the more interesting wrinkles in all the talk about a Superman Movie Reboot coming at some point. Namely, if they're trying to reboot the entire franchise, why are they keeping the cast of Superman Returns around? It's not just Spacey; according to Latino Review's speedy conversation with DC Comics' Paul Levitz, Superman himself, Brandon Routh is still involved in any future Superman movie - A fact surprising to anyone who didn't see how well he managed the role in Bryan Singer's otherwise uneven 2006 movie. Does the presence of Spacey and Routh mean that Singer's supposedly "Wrath of Khan"-esque sequel to Superman Returns is more alive than most people think, or simply that Warners don't want to have to go through the messy casting process again?

Levitz perhaps offered the most honest, and perceptive, take on where the movie's progress really stands:

Everyone is waiting for Nolan to sign on for another Batman, once that happens, the release date for Superman and all other future projects will follow.

Given the success of The Dark Knight, it only makes sense for Warners to try and base their superhero strategy around another installment of the series - but we must admit, we're hoping that they'll come to their senses and see any future Superman movie as brighter, optimistic counterprogramming to Christopher Nolan's increasingly-dark and depressing Batmovies instead of trying to explore the darker recesses of a Kryptonian's soul.

Johns' involvement doesn't just bring his history with the characters to the project - it also apparently brings his sense of scale and ability to make fanboys across the world wet themselves with anticipation, if this is anything to go by:

It's almost like you have a Secret Origin. That's what I look at is as... If you're a new hero; what's your Secret Origin? Your Secret Origin is going to take you throughout the DC Universe, from one end to the next, from The Daily Planet to the inner dungeons of the Doom Patrol's castle in Prague. That's my goal, is to really have you be able to visit and interact with any corner of the DC Universe, whether it's the world of the Flash or the Suicide Squad... I'm kind of a freak when it comes to the far-reaching corners of the DC Universe, so to do that and be able to say, 'Can you build this?' or to say, like, 'can we use the Rogues?' And to have them come back and say, 'Sure! Which ones? Any Rogues you want!' It was really pretty freeing, and it was a kind of experience I'd never had in the DC Universe. It's a totally different way to write.

One of those differences is that there's no such thing as "a" story, as Johns explained:

There are lots of different stories or offshoots you can do. The story that I've created, is really just the first story but within that story, there are dozens and dozens of others... There are some things in it from [Green Lantern] that for people who know my stuff will be familiar.

But if you're worried that gaming - or his TV writing career, like writing an upcoming episode of Smallville - will steal his attention away from comics, you shouldn't be:

[M]y first love and interest is always going to be comic books. Comic books are my main focus and specifically, the DC Universe. It's where I have the most fun. It's where I find a lot of challenges in my writing. It's never boring.

Geoff Johns Joins with Jim Lee for DC Universe Online Game [Newsarama], Geoff Johns Teams With Jim Lee On DCU Online [Comic Book Resources]

Actually, it's really a relatively quiet book outside of the major publishers, with Chopper Zombie - which we've previously written about here - the only new indie book of interest coming out. The Chopper in question was on show at San Diego, freaking small children out while simultaneously getting gearheads excited:

If your tastes run towards the less gory and more whimsical, then perhaps you should check out Dark Horse's Robots & Donuts, a collection of fantasy artist Eric Joyner's paintings of toy robots from the early 20th century in unexpected settings. Equally whimsical is Marvel's Skrulls Vs. Power Pack, which brings Marvel's second-favorite family of superheroes face to face with everyone's favorite Secret Invaders.

Skipping over to DC for a moment, they have a couple of big books this week: Justice Society of America Annual has Geoff Johns exploring the multiverse by returning Power Girl to Earth-2 finally, while Keith Giffen explores the afterlife in the first issue of Reign In Hell. Maybe more appropriately for the io9 audience, Wildstorm's new dystopic reality begins in the first issue of the re-re-relaunched Wildcats; no Grant Morrison or Jim Lee this time around, but there is a completely-fucked world for our heroes to deal with.

Image sidesteps any notion of continuity with their second Popgun anthology by an amazing selection of creators including James Kochalka, Dan Hipp and Paul Pope, and it's probably the pick of the week. Nonetheless, Marvel has two more books that I must mention: Fantastic Four: True Story sees Doctor Who writer and io9 favorite Paul Cornell take on Marvel's first-family of superheroes (admit it; you thought I'd leave you hanging on that one), while True Believers may be the ideal io9 comic book: A team of superpowered bloggers on a mission to expose the seedy underbelly of the Marvel Universe in a first issue that features a superpowered all-female fight club watched over by old men dressed up as the Hulk, Spider-Man and other familiar faces? With one of our heroes undercover as a hooker who complains that she won't give a john a "crusty bunker"? Who could resist? It's not perfect, of course - Paul Gulacy draws it, for one thing - but it's the kind of zeitgeist-shagging over-written schlock that we don't see enough of these days, and therefore highly recommended.

By now you know the drill: You can find the whole list of this week's releases here, and look for your local comic book store here. Just ask them for the one about the crusty bunkers.

Introducing the panel, Action Comics writer Geoff Johns said,

We've all kind of started to work together on Superman... we're all working in tandem to get the Superman universe lined up like we did on Green Lantern, get all the characters on the same page so we can go and tell crazy stories... We had a huge summit that we worked on all three books all the way through December 2010.

The first crazy story to spin out of that summit is October's New Krypton, which Johns teased with this high concept pitch:

Kandor is grown on the planet Earth, and all the Kryptonians decide 'Hey, cool, this must be new New Krypton' and Superman says 'No, it's not,' and chaos ensues.

More important than stories, according to the writers, is the characterization. Johns again:

We don't really want to change anything about Superman like saying, he's gonna have a kid. It's not about changing stuff as much as it's about exploring character... We want to get to them on an emotional level... [For example, the story 'Last Son'] was really about, Superman can never have a kid. He and Lois may love each other, but they can never have a kid. The House of El will end. How do they react to that?

Superman writer James Robinson admitted that part of that effort will include making sure that characters like Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen will return to the versions everyone knows, instead of superpowered giant turtles fighting evil gods: "The [supporting] characters have lost their way a bit," he said, before saying that Jimmy Olsen should be the third most important character in a Superman comic, after Superman and Lois. Johns agreed, and added that there are also plans afoot to use Lois more often: "If Superman married her, she's gotta be the coolest woman in the world."

The most important revelation from the panel may have come from new Supergirl writer Sterling Gates. When asked whether he will bring a more consistent characterisation to the Maid of Steel after an erratic few years where she's been portrayed as confused, evil, stupid, slutty and almost continually unheroic, he said that he saw her as one of the strongest characters DC Comics has, and feels that she's been mishandled recently. "Can we officially say that she's not a slut?" Johns asked, to the applause of the audience. So, now you know: Supergirl isn't a slut.

That's Mary Marvel's job.

One of the most feared and revered characters in the Superman universe is Brainiac. So when you bring him back, it's got to be in a big way. And from the sounds of the first issue, it could be an epic starter filled with flashback scenes. John's revealed that we'll learn more about the history of Krypton and Brainiac's involvement with its destruction. The first issue even deals with a flashback where you see General Zod defending Krypton from Brainiac.

John's also explained what Brainiac is going to be like after being gone for a while:

We wanted him to be very unsettling, very alien and feel different then the other adversaries that Superman has. The idea is to make Brainiac one of the villains that Superman dreads when he has to face him, rather than just another slot in a long line of villains. I think our first issue has a real creepy vibe to it and Gary did a really great design on him.

[Comic Mix]

A series that will not only tie in with the eight-part Final Crisis series that runs the entirety of DC history from the first boy on Earth to the last (Yes, Anthro and Kamandi will both appear), but also celebrate the Legion's 50th anniversary and sort out once and for all what's going on with all those multiple versions of the same characters may look like a tall order for most people, considering that that would mean upwards of 50 characters to deal with. Unless, apparently, you're Geoff Johns:

[T]here's a focus on a group of characters. Certain characters will really get the spotlight. A lot of other characters will be in the background. That's what George [Perez, artist on the series as well as 1980s "everyone in the DC universe" series Crisis on Infinite Earths] does. When you have these big epics and you have dozens and dozens of characters, it can get overwhelming, but there's a focus on a group of characters that have their goals and missions that really represent to me the heart of the Legion. And those characters will be getting most of the attention. But everybody will be in there. Just about everybody.

[Y]ou don't have to know anything before you read it. This is Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes vs. Superboy-Prime and the Legion of Super-Villains... [My] goal is to have people cheering for these characters. Some people don't know the Legion yet. Some people don't see the value in the Legion yet. My goal is to have them cheering for them by the end of this. And if you already do know the Legion, you're going to cheer louder.

Legion of 3 Worlds, 1: Geoff Johns [Newsarama]

Famous names: Hal Jordan, dude! Okay then, writer Geoff Johns and artist Ethan Van Sciver, both of whom became household names in nerd households after this series was done.

Crunchy goodness: 4

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: Successful enough to launch a monthly Green Lantern title, as well as the companion Green Lantern Corps monthly, this storyline had a direct sequel in this year's crossover "The Sinestro Corps War," described by Johns as "Empire Strikes Back to Rebirth's Star Wars."

Elevator pitch: It's Lord of the Rings in space as written by Dr. Phil and directed by Michael Bay.

Life lesson: "If a giant glowing yellow insect asks if it can live inside you and kill all your friends, make sure that you've got some Grecian formula handy."

Review of the series at Pop Matters

He could totally patch that suit up with his ring. He chooses not to.

The story continues in this week's Green Lantern. Another Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner, emerges from the fear-eating monster Parallax totally naked. His fellow hero, Guy Gardner, uses his power ring to clothe poor Kyle — but only in a pair of tight-fitting boxer shorts. That's the kind of team spirit we like to see.

This Week's Haul [Living Between Wednesdays]