Eisner Award winner Mike Baron proved Wally West could carry the mantle of The Flash in new collection this week FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / PRURGENT
In 1987, Eisner Award winner Mike Baron began writing Teen Titan Wally West's earliest adventures as The Flash! DC Comics releases it in a 480-page collected edition for the very first time this week.
Barry Allen's death gave Wally a sense of purpose. He was determined to live up to the example Barry had set for him. That job wouldn't be easy. He was consigned to relatively low speeds of 700 miles per hour. He won the lottery which allowed his more selfish characteristics to thrive then lost it all sending his life into a tailspin. Comics writer Mike Baron introduced many new aspects to Wally, and changed beloved hero forever.
"Mike Gold was my editor at First Comics. When he moved to DC he immediately offered me The Flash. I'd always liked the character., but my book was unique in several ways. Wally replacing Barry Allen was a very big deal. Legacy characters are rarely replaced. I figured in order for Flash to move at those speeds, he'd burn up enormous amounts of calories and had to eat enormous amounts of food to have enough energy."
When asked what he was most fond of about his run on The Flash, Mike didn't hesitate. "I remember Jackson Guice's artwork, and it was my favorite thing about the run. I also enjoyed developing his associate Chunk into more of an outcast. And creating Kilg%re, a new enemy that the Flash accidentally released from limbo who wound up wreaking havoc on S.T.A.R. Labs."
Since his days at DC and Marvel, Mike's been doing a lot more creator-owned work and less mainstream comics, even recently returning to his biggest indie creation Nexus with a prose novel. A tremendously successful collaboration with artist Steve Rude, Nexus, was recently released as a novel via a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign.
Baron's next comic is called 'Florida Man' and it's wrapping up an exceptionally successful campaign on another crowdfunding platform, Indiegogo. "Gary Duba (the titular Florida Man) is a redneck everyman, inspired by many of those hilarious Florida Man news stories, and pulling a lot of it from thin air. Todd Mulrooney is handling the art and we hope to get it out in November. You can still back it on Indiegogo."
CBR considers Baron one of the Top Ten Greatest Writers of The Flash of All Time.
and his 'The Flash: Savage Velocity' details the aftermath of Crisis on Infinite Earths. DC Comics collects those first nineteen issues of high velocity action in one impressive edition out this week, available wherever fine comics and graphic novels are sold! |