Word Balloon: Geoff Johns on Blackest Night, Flash & Lo3W

Writer Geoff Johns is juggling three Epic stories from DC Comics, and in this episode of Word Balloon, we talk about all of them. You'll hear behind-the-scenes details of Flash: Rebirth, Blackest Night, and Legion of 3 Worlds. In addition, you'll hear character discussions of all the major players, from the reborn Flash family to the Green Lantern Corps, clues to various Black Lantern resurrections, and hints of what's to come in Adventure Comics and Superman: Secret Origin.

Some quotes from the conversation.

Answering the concerns that Johns current portrayal of Barry Allen is so different from his Silver and Bronze Age characterization:

“Everyone is in a very different place at the beginning of Flash: Rebirth to the end, because I didn’t want to open up with a big Flash parade, and Barry running in with a big smile, I might as well have started with Flash #1 and we’d be off and running, but there were other emotional explorations with Barry Allen and the Flash team. I wanted to go against expectations and do a 180 on everything. Flash is back, but Barry Allen isn’t...that’s what the story is about...

“The great thing about it is it allows me to explore him emotionally... I love the discussion and debates, because I know where this story is going ...I remember when we did The Sinestro Corps Wars, and Kyle at the end of the first issue was possessed by Parallax. People went crazy! They couldn’t believe how we could do this (laughs) ...and Ethan was saying ‘We should tell them that he’s not going to be Parallax,’ and I said ‘No! Let them get riled up, because they should, but we know where this story ends.’ ... In Flash: Rebirth, Barry is searching for the same answers...this story is trying to solve a crime, but Barry is moving much too fast to do that.”

On Blackest Night’s further exploration of the multi colored Lantern Corps:

“Every one of my artists has brought their own take on the designs for each of the various corps and characters...Doug Mahnke’s first issue Green Lantern #43 is an all-Black Hand issue. It’s one of the creepiest issues you’ll read.”

On the upcoming Blackest Night crossover stories, and how this GL story has morphed into a major DCU event:

“Events are just big stories...sometimes there’s a bad connotation to that ‘event’ term...You always want it to be good, and as a writer you want to protect your own story...with Blackest Night there’s just more story potential, so when (the editors) wanted to make it bigger and explore it more, it made sense to me, because you’re gonna have DCU characters face dead ones, and Black Lanterns on all sorts of levels...”

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