Miscellany

Sep 11, 2007 10:06

Okay, so some RL stuff is finally over with. I will celebrate by posting some odds and ends.

First, two scans from THE LIFE STORY OF THE FLASH. This was a 1997 graphic novel by Mark Waid, mixed text and illustrations; the idea was that it was a biography of Barry Allen as written by his wife Iris. There's a chapter on Barry's enemies, and here's what Mrs. Allen has to say about our favorite Rogues:






You can see Waid playing favorites in the descriptions--"So the Trickster uses rubber chickens, but he's still really cool and a great enemy for the Flash! Honestly! Not like that loser the Top!" I find the dismissiveness a little surprising, actually; obviously Waid couldn't know about later events, but he's the one who wrote the story where the Top came within an inch of becoming President. Still, not complaining about Trickster getting props!

Several points about Piper's writeup:
1) Macho is a word I have some difficulty in applying to the Rogues Gallery, although I guess the viewpoint of a woman whose husband likes to wear skintight red spandex may be slightly different.
2) I'm sure there is some plausible reason for Barry to have been aware of Piper's sexuality before it was common knowledge. And I really, really want to know what it is. *g*
3) As far as I know, this is the only mention anywhere of Piper being a research scientist (or having any job at all). It's believable enough, though, and we never saw that much of what he did in his day-to-day non-Wally life under Waid.
3) It's also the only time James was specifically described as Piper's boyfriend. Nice to have that in print somewhere, even if it's not in the series proper. Shame Iris didn't get around to giving the poor guy's last name while she was at it, but you can't have everything.

Under the heading of oh-my-god-how-did-I-forget-that, an appearance of Piper that is not in the bibliography post, from FLASH #23:



I also left out a somewhat larger appearance, at the end of FLASH #87, in which Wally spends his whole Christmas fighting crime and is getting pretty cranky about it. It isn't very interesting as Piper appearances go, but the page with him crashed on Wally's couch is kind of cute:




And I found a link to this, a calendar in which DC assigned birthdays to their characters. It's very old, but Piper and Trickster are both on it; Trickster's birthday is March 23rd, and Piper's is June 22nd. Maybe next year...

links, scans

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