15 Years Ago, DC’s Biggest Event Changed Comics, Just Not in the Way It Promised

DC Comics has hit a level of popularity that didn’t seem possible a decade ago. DC is crushing Marvel in sales for the first time in ages and it’s an amazing time to be a fan of the publisher. This isn’t just Batman comics outselling everything while the rest of the publisher’s output languished in the bottom 50 of the sale charts; while it started with just the Absolute books (and Batman), more and more other books have been reaching levels they haven’t before. The secret to this is simple – DC is letting creators take from all periods of DC history to create what is essentially a modern version of the Bronze Age DC Multiverse. DC had started going in this direction years ago, but in 2011, the company completely changed course with one of its most infamous events: Flashpoint, by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert.

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The return of Barry Allen as the Flash was thought to be just a part of DC bringing back their old school greats, something they had great success with when they reintroduced Hal Jordan to the DC Universe. The character came back in Final Crisis #2 before racing into The Flash: Rebirth, from Johns and Ethan Van Sciver. This book brought the Reverse Flash back, re-established Barry as the Flash, changed the way the Speed Force worked, and ended with a tease for an upcoming event called Flashpoint. I remember picking up issue #6 and being so excited to see that last page. Barry got his own book after Blackest Night and that led into the event that we had been teased. However, what we got was different from what was advertised, leading to one of the biggest changed in DC history, the birth of the New 52.

The ’00s Were An Amazing Time for DC That Flashpoint Ended

I haven’t opened up The Flash: Rebirth #6 in ages (it’s really not that good of a book, you guys, and I haven’t felt the need to read it in ages), but that teaser at the end is burned onto my soul, for its consequences if nothing else. You can go and Google it right now – there’s two panels of a timer ticking to zero, Reverse Flash’s costume coming out of Barry’s ring, Jay Garrick, Barry, and Bart Allen being electrocuted by lightning as they run, and a bottom panel of Barry fighting a shadowy Batman, with copy that said, “Even the Fastest Man Alive will fun out of time. The Flash’s world will change. And their world would change with it. If there is anything to be left of the past, present, and future they must learn the secret of the… FLASHPOINT!”, followed by a page teasing events from the story, which is the above image.

So, looking at that, it felt like we were going to get some kind of time travel story, with Reverse Flash dong something to the world, forcing the Flash Family to fix it and unravel the schemes of Reverse Flash. However, Flashpoint would get changed completely in the months running up to the story. While we didn’t know this at the time, Dan DiDio had decided that the best next phase of DC would be to have a Crisis on Infinite Earths-esque reboot of the publisher’s heroes for the 21st century. Creators were suddenly told to end their books and get ready to pitch new ones. It was chaos behind the scenes and Flashpoint was changed into the vehicle for this. However, it wasted everything that DC had been doing since the 21st century started.

In the run-up to Infinite Crisis, it was decided that DC was going to undo the changes of Crisis on Infinite Earths, re-establishing the multiverse and bringing back classic versions of the heroes and villains. As a post-Crisis kid, DC between 2004 and 2011 was like a candy store. Things were changing, getting better, and it was fantastic. Blackest Night, the last event book before Flashpoint, was massively successful and Brightest Day was rebuilding characters like Hawkman, Aquaman, Deadman, and numerous others. Even the Anti-Monitor was brought back and was treated like the threat he should have been. Comics are written and drawn months in advance and it’s apparent that DC was never planning on rebooting its universe when they were planning what came after Blackest Night.

So much digital ink has been spilled about the problems of the New 52, a lot of it written by me, but it was definitely not part of the plan. An article written for the reboot’s ten-year anniversary revealed the behind the scenes chaos and how terribly built the whole thing was. It’s plain to see that Flashpoint was not meant to be a reboot of the DC Multiverse and honestly, the book suffered because of it. Going back and reading it knowing that much of it was probably changed makes the anemic nature of the book make sense; it honestly felt like something written on the fly. Flashpoint is a very important part of DC history and has been canonized in New History of the DC Universe. However, it also spelled the end of what could have been a better 2010s for DC Comics.

Flashpoint Is a Cautionary Tale About Event Planning

I will go to my grave screaming about how great DC in the ’00s was from 2004 to 2011. I had never gotten to experience pre-Crisis, so getting a modernized version of Bronze Age DC was exciting. Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, and Blackest Night is one of the best runs of events ever (we don’t talk about Amazons Attack!) and it built a very interesting new kind of DC Multiverse, one that paid homage to the past while keeping the complexities of the present. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Justice Society, the Justice League, the Teen Titans, the Legion of Superheroes, and more were all hitting hard and there were loads of lower level books that were just as good. Then Flashpoint came along and bulldozed everything.

It wouldn’t be about 2021 that we’d learn the realities of the New 52 reboot behind the scenes, and it makes complete sense looking back. I was working at a comic store when the story was being built up and it honestly didn’t feel like we were about to get an all-new DC Multiverse from it; it just seemed like the Barry Allen meant event to reintroduce him to the world. Sure, there would have been alternate universe shenanigans and such, but no one expected what we got. It would end up derailing everything the publisher had been building for years, changing the course of DC forever.

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