Wally West is in for a horrific adventure unlike any other as Si Spurrier and Mike Deodato, Jr. take the creative reins on relaunching The Flash this September. As the West family continues to defend Central City from all sorts of supervillains and other crises, an unknown evil rises from beyond the Speed Force, ready to plunge the Fastest Man Alive and his friends through a nightmarish gauntlet of new enemies and realms to explore. But even as the Flash races into the terrifying possibilities of the Speed Force, the West family finds itself at a major crossroads.
In an interview with CBR, The Flash writer Si Spurrier explained how the inspiration to bring horror elements into the relaunched series came about, revealed some of the major themes and developments as his and Deodato, Jr.'s run starts, and teased what fans can expect from the new adventures of Wally West. Also included is unlettered preview art from The Flash #1, illustrated by Mike Deodato, Jr. and colored by Trish Mulvihill.
CBR: Si, you're bringing cosmic horror to The Flash. There is something unknown in the Speed Force, even to Max Mercury, and it's hungry and coming for our characters. What was it about taking The Flash in a more horrific direction?
Si Spurrier: It just seemed so obvious to me. It sort of surprises me when people don't see that that's a really obvious place to take The Flash. [laughs] The thing about the Speed Force is that it's this extra-dimensional energy into which speedsters tap like they're tapping into a battery or hooked into an electric supply. It's been defined by all sorts of in-world authorities in very different ways, some quite contradictory, and some don't make much sense.
You have this situation where all these incredible heroes and a few villains are utilizing this ineffable force that, if you really take it to its logical degree, is god-like. If you're fully saturated in this thing, there's nothing that you couldn't do, nowhere you couldn't go, no way you couldn't go. They use it to mostly do extremely good things, but they don't know what it is. [laughs] That blows my mind!
Some people have said to me, "It's like switching on your computer. Do you know how your computer works?" The answer is no, but I know that in this world, there are people who do, and I trust them that my computer isn't actually running on demon juice or whatever. When Wally, Barry, and the rest of them utilize the Speed Force and travel close to, or past, the speed of light, burst into alternative realities, or ascend to strange bubble universes, they don't know what they're doing or the consequences of it.
My mind always goes to the quintessential image of an American frontiersman prospecting for oil, going, "I'm going to save this nation -- save my people. We're going to find this stuff. It'll make everybody rich. We're going to fuel this country, make some incredible progress, and invent some stuff." Then you skip forward 150 years to the world we live in today, where everything is on fire, we've got 30 harvests, and our cars are choking the planet. That guy didn't know. He did it because he thought it was a good thing to do. In his heart, he thought he was doing right, being a good guy, but he's fucked us all. [laughs]
There's nothing to tell Wally and Barry that they're doing the same thing. That's not to say that's exactly where this story is going. It isn't. It's going in a different direction from that. But it's an example of how deeply mysterious this school of characters are. They dress in these bold clothes and do these incredibly bold things, but there are nothing but question marks behind them.
To me, that is the most fertile ground for any sort of interesting story, but cosmic horror, especially because of where this power is coming from and because of the sorts of things it can do. It cracks open so many doors, and that's exactly where my brain went. [laughs]
Though the focus is on Wally West, Max Mercury and Bart Allen also appear, and there's a quick shout-out to Jay Garrick. What unique perspective does Wally bring to the Flash mythos that you wanted to double down on in this story?
There are two -- one is that he's unique in that he's the sidekick who made it. He started out as this plucky, youthful sidekick character that idolized his hero, Barry, who spent his life studying and learning how to be him, he became it and went through so many ups and downs, trials and tribulations, and eventually exceeded his mentor. He became the fastest man who ever lived, and that's a really interesting dynamic.
The second thing, which is related, as we come into this story, having inherited this beautiful dynamic from my predecessor, Jeremy Adams, Wally is all things to all people. He's a wonderful superhero capable of doing anything, he's a loving husband, he's a devoted father, he's got all these hats, and he's constantly racing between these different lives. He's always smiling, never complaining, constantly doing it all, and making everybody happy. Those scenes at the end of Jeremy's run... That's a lovely way to sign off.
As a parent of small children with way too many hats on my head at all times, it is my thesis that that's something you cannot sustain for long without starting to feel the pressure, without the smile starting to crack, without all the stress and expectation starting to weigh down on your shoulders and starting to drag you down. It's not in Wally's nature to be mopey or maudlin. There's a line in Issue #1 or #2 where he's like, "I don't do all that angsty Batcave crap."
He's not that guy, but something's got to give. The nature of this first issue is that we come into the story in such a way that the family dynamic is still beautiful, everything is still balanced, and Wally is still doing all of those things. But, little by little, we check in with him, all the family members, all the friends, all the different villains, and we see the cracks starting to form. Not because they're bad people, not because they've changed their minds, not because they're falling out of love. It's because there's a limit to how much weight people can carry.
Into those cracks, strange and unpleasant things start to swarm and seethe. That's the overarching vibe of this arc.
Mike Deodato, Jr. is the artist on this, and he can capture electrifying, bombastic action and ominous moments all at once. How has it been working with him on The Flash?
He's incredible, isn't it he? He's a bonafide legend, and there's a little part of me that doubts I would've gotten away with this book at all if I didn't have someone of his caliber to back me up. He's been doing it long enough to know exactly what works and what doesn't. As you say, he can switch immediately between ridiculous action, punching gorillas in the middle of the street, to a quiet scene where somebody is feeling a bit forgotten to a spooky scene where a boy is locked up in a boiler room to exploring cosmic horror and alien dimensions, all in the same tone and same voice, pivoting between those genre realities without skipping a beat.
He's always had that sort of bold simplicity that works so well for the middle-of-the-road superhero stuff, but always with a bit of creepy edge. I've always thought he's done a character smiling that was always about 5% creepier than you might have expected. It makes you think, "What's really going on behind that mask and in those eyes" That works so well here.
He does what he calls Mondrian lines, which is a unique storytelling technique. He breaks up big panels into separate sub-panels, which helps to create a sensation of perpetual time progression, breaking up things into separate zones and moments in quite an interesting way. I think that works especially well with our letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, who is constantly inventive and likes to create rules. In one panel, a dialog balloon might float behind the connecting line, and in another, it might sit under the panel gutter.
It'll be because of different things, like somebody is speaking from a different part of the room or something, all sorts of clever tools like that which we are absolutely learning on the job because this isn't a combination of voices and creative approaches that has ever existed before, certainly not in the context of The Flash. I think it's working really well. [laughs] I'm always a little hesitant to say that because I'm not egocentric enough to know when something is as really good as I suspect it is. But certainly, the reaction has made me feel a lot better about it. [laughs]
Wally West's family is center stage in the opening issue. I love how you use text to highlight how isolated Linda is without powers. How did you want to approach the narration and perspective in developing this story?
When you have such a big cast of characters, it affords you the privilege of changing the voice constantly. In future issues, I have tended to focus on a single voice per issue. Issues #2 and #3 are mostly inside Wally's head. Issue #4 is from Irey's perspective. Issue #5 is from Jai, Wally's son. We'll keep mixing it up, always checking in with these characters but enjoying the fact that, for short or long periods, you can step inside different people's heads through the wonderful magic of comics.
With Linda, to wax on her recent backstory. When she was pregnant with her most recent child, Wade, she borrowed his superpowers for a while. She went from being this incredibly talented and very capable journalist, broadcaster, mother, and a really strong character into the exaggerated realms of superheroism. She was saving the world, she was writing five novels in a week, that sort of stuff. And then, along comes the baby, and she returns to her life before that.
Inevitably, you're going to feel like you've lost something. You will mourn the loss of the person who you very briefly were, especially when, all around you, your family continues to occupy this heightened world that you can no longer access. She feels lonely, not because she doubts everyone loves her, not because she feels unhappy with her lot, but because anybody would feel lonely under those circumstances.
With the narrative voice, I got to thinking that she's trying to go back to work. She's thinking like a journalist. It just felt right that she's reporting on her own circumstances to try [to] make sense of them. I've had a lot of success in other books using heavy narrative text that works as a graphical element amidst all the art. We used that for these two or three pages just to make her feel really boxed in by her thoughts [and] the loneliness of her internal monologue. I think it works very nicely. That's one of my favorite pages in the whole thing.
It says something like, "Linda Park-West knows what it's like to be haunted," and, "If she sees them at all, she perceives her family as the whining of mosquitos and the doppler blur of old light." Things like that, where she's like this statue miraculously giving milk while, all around her, there's this whining blur of movement. That's her life now. That's her day-to-day. It's impossible not to feel for somebody under those circumstances.
It's my hope that, as we check in with each of these characters, we have that same level of relating to them and their specific circumstances as they connect to the wider picture so that we can understand all their stories branching in different directions and coming together. It's not just about Wally. Wally is the guiding light, the compass at the heart of it all, but a lot of the time, the drama is being generated by other members of his family and friends.
For all the cosmic horror and the emotional rollercoaster that this opening issue contains, it's also a lot of fun, with a fight against Gorilla Grodd. Was that the reasoning behind having him appear as the primary antagonist in this issue?
Yeah, absolutely! I knew coming in that I wanted to steer toward uncharted territory. The whole cosmic horror thing just made sense. But I also didn't want to flip a table and abandon everything that makes The Flash, let alone Jeremy's version of The Flash, so beloved. I cherished all that stuff I inherited so much that it would've just felt disingenuous and disrespectful to go, "No, this isn't a superhero comic anymore! It's not about a family who loves each other. It's about spooky horror stuff!"
I would've hated that, and I think the fans would've quite rightfully turned their noses up at it. Instead, we set ourselves the challenge of doing both, deploying these joyful superhero tropes. To me, The Flash has always had this Silver Age energy where you can throw crazy sci-fi stuff at it, and nobody goes, "That wouldn't happen!" because it's The Flash.
Having all of that, being inventive, fun, and a bit crazy, but at the same time, pivoting towards these slightly darker territories that I think are quite apposite with this IP, it could've been a mess and too many things in one place. But because it's all quite heightened anyway, it all fits together nicely. We're all steering toward it together rather than just leaving everybody behind and careening off in that direction. Grodd is great fun, and there's an awful lot more of that stuff coming down the pike, with big, bold villainy and crazy stuff, but always in service to this gradual shift toward creepy territory, and I think it works!
Written by Si Spurrier, illustrated by Mike Deodato, Jr., colored by Trish Mulvihill, and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, The Flash #1 is on sale Sept. 26 from DC Comics.