Footnotes?

The Cat Bastet, my so far mostly silent partner here, suggests that I may have to provide footnotes for my comic book reviews. Yeah, I was afraid of that. When I started writing these to an old friend in email, there was no need to explain references, because he is also a long-time comic book reader who largely shares my tastes: mostly old school superheroics. When I began to also send them to two more friends, I tended to go into more detail, because they didn't necessarily read the same things. Now, I may have to go into much more detail in order to be intelligible, it would appear.

CB particularly wanted to know why I found the Flash scene in Final Crisis touching. Briefly, DC has several generations of heroes, often with the same name. The great transition using Golden Age names and gimmicks in the Silver Age is the only major instance of success, but the three generations of the Flash, all existing in the same coherent continuity, would be the other major exception. That is to say, replacing the Silver Age Flash (Barry Allen) with the Bronze Age Flash (Wally West) was actually successful, and Wally sustained his own series for most of twenty years while Barry was dead. Now Barry is back, and no one is sure where it's all going.

I'm not the biggest Flash fan, but I did read the Wally Flash while Mark Waid wrote the series in the 90s, and enjoyed it. He focused on that generational aspect, and that was why I found the scene moving.

Probably I need to write a post on character deaths and successions. It's been done, and better, no doubt, by other writers, but perhaps it will be appreciated by our audience.