Quarter Bin #20 "Another Flashpoint"

I became something of a eager cheerleader for Geoff Johns’ FLASHPOINT this summer, enjoying not only the alternate reality and the ways it shed new light on familiar characters, but how Johns shaped everything around Barry Allen, The Flash.

Do you want to know something funny? There was another FLASHPOINT more than a decade ago that did exactly the same thing.

I became aware of this other FLASHPOINT by digging through the back issue bins at Heroes & Dragons late in the summer. That’s one of the great things about comics, how you can discover something totally new about a character you thought you already knew everything about, because creators in this medium are constantly and fearlessly reexamining and reinventing the mythology (which is I suppose another reason why I prefer DC over Marvel, because of its willingness to do this on a near-constant basis, as evidenced most famously recently by the “New 52”).

During the 1990s, DC made a habit of this instinct with its series of Elseworlds specials, many of which focused on Batman and Superman (naturally), which more or less culminated in KINGDOM COME (though for some fans, SUPERMAN: RED SON is a more recent exemplar), alternate versions of familiar characters from a post-CRISIS era missing multiple realities. SUPERBOY and THE KINGDOM introduced the concept of Hypertime, and that was the first chink in the armor and dignity of Elseworlds, and then 52 came around and brought back the traditional concept of multiple earths that had come to symbolize the greater DC approach to storytelling, and became a heavy feature of COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS. When Elseworlds more or less became mainstream, it lost all forward momentum as an independent entity (let that be a lesson to Marvel’s Ultimate line, but that’s really a completely different story) and disappeared from the publishing schedule altogether.

Before that happened, however, before the most recent FLASHPOINT altered reality to a kind of event Elseworlds, there was another FLASHPOINT. Officially:

FLASHPOINT #s 1-3 (DC)
From December 1999 to February 2000.

Considered the first regular format Elseworlds mini-series (KINGDOM COME had been prestige format; even THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS might be considered a retroactive Elseworlds tale), this FLASHPOINT also featured Barry Allen, deep in the heart of Wally West time, after Mark Waid had successfully transformed him into one of DC’s hottest characters, and before Geoff Johns formally claimed him for the next five years. Written by Pat McGreal and featuring art by Norm Breyfogle (not to mention covers by Stuart Immonen) , the original FLASHPOINT examined an alternate timeline where Barry was paralyzed early in his career, which resulted in a drastically altered reality in which he struggles to make science instead of The Flash to be his lasting legacy.

Before I talk too much about it, though, I want to return to the subject of how I ended up discovering it. I say “discover” because until I found it in the back issue bins, I hadn’t been aware of its existence, since it was originally published during the early period of my first and most permanent (at the time) break from comics, which began earlier in 1999 and lasted roughly for the next five years. Though I tried to keep tabs of the major developments during that time, something like FLASHPOINT would have been hopelessly unnoticed, something only active readers would have been aware of, especially since it didn’t feature Batman or Superman.

I didn’t know what I’d found, obviously. I bought only the first issue, even though the first two were available. After reading it, I felt like a fool, because the storytelling and art were timeless, just as relevant in 2011 as when they were originally published. Frantically, and because at the time I only had access to Escape Velocity on the other side of Colorado Springs, I hoped I might find the remaining issues, but to no avail. At the next opportunity, I revisited Heroes & Dragons, and as I’d hoped, the second issue was still there, but then, only that one. The third and concluding chapter remained elusive. I visited the Internet in hopes of remedying this, but it appeared that I would be out of luck. That issue was either unavailable or prohibitively priced. I believe some readers were mistaking one FLASHPOINT for another at that time. A little while later, though, I tried again. This time FLASHPOINT #3 was reasonably priced. I didn’t hesitate. Soon I’d read the whole story.

There are several intriguing elements to FLASHPOINT, not the least that it features Barry Allen, and Wally West only in a marginal capacity. It pivots around the assassination of JFK; actually, in this Elseworlds tale, Kennedy lives, because Barry saves him, at the cost of his own paralysis. While a part of the reader (assuming they’re as happy as I am for Kennedy to receive a second lease on life) is happy at this change in the timeline, there’s also a permeating sadness that the Fastest Man Alive has been confined to a wheelchair (not specifically for the first time in comics lore; consider THE FLASH ANNUAL #7 from 1994, part of a year that featured Elseworlds across all the annuals), that he still makes a difference in the world, but from a position of impotence. His partner in science is none other than Vandal Savage, a specter over most of the stories, since he is most traditionally depicted as a villain. Those expecting McGreal to spring his villainy in a typically over-the-top manner will be pleasantly surprised. It’s the restraint of the tale that truly brightens it.

Pat McGreal is not a creator I was previously overly familiar with, so FLASHPOINT serves as a touchstone to a brilliant career that has otherwise been obscured by the passage of time. That alone is reason enough to publicize the existence of this other FLASHPOINT. The book itself deserves recognition. As popular or talked-about as The Flash has been in the past twenty years, it’s a franchise that has remained remarkably restrained in spinoff material (which makes the fact that Geoff Johns made his FLASHPOINT all the more remarkable). When the existence of something like the 1999-2000 FLASHPOINT becomes known, it’s understandable but lamentable that it has been allowed to sink away from memory. I don’t know whether the competing FLASHPOINT will compound that error or make it easier to overcome. If someone creates another FLASHPOINT a decade from now, maybe the legacy will lift them all up together.

Until such point, it may simply remain a treasure of the back issue bins.