Passing the Baton — Who Should Write The Flash Next?

After finishing my “In the Hood” post about good candidates for the next writer of Red Hood, it occured to me that Joshua Williamson’s run on The Flash is also ending soon. In fact, a month sooner than Scott Lobdell’s Red Hood, so… yeah, I’m going to put together a wishlist for Comic Book Santa and hope he delivers!

Joshua Williamson’s run on The Flash began in 2016, with the advent of the DC Rebirth initiative. Initially promising an examination of the DCU and a return of the Flash characters lost as a result of the New 52, it instead became this strange holding pattern, as DC’s plans were delayed and changed, and other series influenced what Williamson could really do with the title. It also had this weird fixation with tearing down Barry Allen as a character by having him repeatedly fail, having characters call him out on his mistakes and just shitting on him in general… and then never really did anything with that. Barry just… kept making mistakes. I’m not the character’s biggest fan, and the guy barely has a personality, but it became very hard to read and I only recently hopped back on.

The series had two, almost barely related stories. One focused on the Speed Force and the wider Flash mythos, introducing new characters like Godspeed, Avery Ho and Paradox while heavily featuring Eobard Thawne’s return. The other was focused on the Rogues and turning them into generic villains as they and Barry finally stopped “playing around” and got serious about their jobs. The Speed Force-heavy stories were very hit-or-miss, but played with the mythos in some interesting ways, while the Rogues stories were… not good, being average at best.

With the DCU seemingly working out its kinks after the conclusion of Doomsday Clock, the advent of Dark Nights: Death Metal which seems to be leading into a big semi-reboot by working in elements of the cancelled Generations series, and Williamson’s final story, “Finish Line”, promising a return of the Flash Family proper, I’m going to look at some creators who I feel, unburdened by the need to reintroduce missing elements of Flash mythos, could write some entertaining Flash stories and why I think they could. Just like with “In the Hood”, I’ll be trying to keep these reasonable and probably avoid anyone who’s had a run on the title already, as much as Mark Waid or Geoff Johns returning would be fun.

Anyway, here we go.

In the Hood — Who Should Be the Next Red Hood Writer?

Scott Lobdell’s run on Red Hood and the Outlaws, Red Hood/Arsenal and Red Hood: Outlaw is coming to an end. For the majority of the 2010s, Lobdell has been the driving force behind the stories told with Jason Todd, the second Robin and then Red Hood. I can’t say I’m sad to see it end, because I’ve always felt that Lobdell took an interesting character and boiled him down to his lowest common denominator appeal — this is not helped by the likely reason behind Lobdell leaving.

For those who don’t know, Jason Todd was the second Robin and famously was killed by the Joker. He returned to life and took up the identity of the Red Hood and was a Batman villain because he couldn’t get over how Bruce Wayne never killed the Joker for all he’d done — clearly also tied to his own daddy issues with Bruce. He would also go on to menace Dick Grayson during his Batman tenor before the New 52 clumsily reintegrated him into the Bat-family, and he has since been primarily written as a largely generic anti-hero bad boy by Scott Lobdell. It has not been a good run for most people, and every fan of the character I know has welcomed this news and has been waiting for a change of writer for years.

I’m going to talk about who I feel should be handed the reins to Jason Todd’s character. Some will be obvious, some less so, but these are creators who I feel would do Jason Todd justice. These aren’t writers who I feel would really be replicating Lobdell’s style or even be the types to have him be aligned with the Bat-family, if they had a choice. These are just writers who I feel would do well with the character.

I want these to be at least somewhat reasonable, so I’m not going to throw, like, Brian Michael Bendis on here or something — these are creators who I could actually see writing a good Red Hood ongoing, and I’ll explain why.