Top retcons essay
So, for those who care (all one of you), here's the little essay I wrote about Geoff Johns' retcons to the Top's history. Let me know what you think, although for goodness' sake, don't feel obliged to read it if you have no interest in the subject. My intent is not to torture people :]
“We have a lot of plans for [the Top], to revamp him and re-update him. And why not? He's a classic Rogue. We haven't seen him for like fifty years.”
---Geoff Johns interview with Fanboy Planet, 2001
Geoff Johns’ retcons to the Top’s history
Roscoe Dillon, alias the Top, debuted in Flash v.1 #122 in 1961 as a slightly goofy Silver Age villain who spun and used gadget tops of his own design to commit crimes. He sometimes worked with other Flash villains known as the Rogues, and they formed an association that continues to this day. The Top died in 1976 (Flash v.1 #243), but has returned from the dead several times by possessing bodies to pester various heroes.
When writer Geoff Johns took over the Flash series in 2000, he focused a lot of attention on the Rogues, as he is an avowed fan of them. However, as we shall see here, he made many alterations to the Top’s history --- changing certain established details of past events, and adding quite a few new details into his past history. Slightly hinted at in Flash v.2 #210 (2004), the real changes began in Flash v.2 #215 (2004). In #215, current Flash Wally West reads an old letter from his now-dead predecessor Barry Allen, in which Barry describes Top’s early history and what was done to him, as well as the consequences of these actions. It is with selected quotes from Barry’s letter (written here in italics) that we begin.
“He had a talent for invention and explosives, and an obsession with, of all things, tops. The only good memory of a horrible childhood, he claimed.”
It’s entirely possible he had an awful childhood, but we’d never gotten any hint of that before. The brief flashbacks to his youth we saw in his first issue were quite ordinary.
“But unlike the others, behind his illusion-casting and shrapnel-spewing tops, Dillon had a power. He could spin his body at speeds that even made me take a second look. He did it through a kind of telekinetic ability.”
As was originally established, Top had simply taught himself to spin due to his obsession with tops and belief it would give him an edge, but had no inherent powers. He tended to rely on his gadgets more than the spinning, which was not a major part of his repertoire. He only developed the telekinesis shortly before he died, as a result of the spinning and its strange effects on his brain (it also increased his intelligence, and ultimately killed him). In other words, the spinning came first, the telekinesis came second.
In his first appearance, Flash v.1 #122, Top notes:
“I’ve learned how to spin myself like a top at incredible speed! And simultaneously, I’ve made a startling discovery --- the spinning action increases my brain power! There’s nothing I can’t attempt now!”
“For months, he eluded me. Over eleven police officers gave their lives trying to capture him. And I nearly lost mine.”
This is an inserted retcon, at least the part about the cops getting killed. It was a pretty big deal in the Silver/Bronze Age Flash issues when a police officer or civilian was killed, so it is unlikely that the original writers intended Top to have had a high death toll but didn’t mention it.
“The only reason his spree eventually ended is was that Dillon got sick. He claimed his mental powers and my super-speed vibrations were at fault. A kind of super-powered brain tumor. He died a few weeks later.”
The cause of death is correct, although originally, Top died in a matter of days after his symptoms began. Oddly, in the original story, he hadn’t been described as being on a crime spree that ended with him becoming ill; he actually went on a notable spree because he knew he was dying and had a scheme to blow up the city as his last act.
“An autopsy could never be done because the body was stolen by the Rogues. Who knows what they did with it?”
The Rogues --- specifically Mirror Master --- were actually the ones who discovered the body, so they didn’t steal it. They held their own funeral, and then there was a second funeral officiated over by a priest, and attended by Barry and Iris Allen (among others). While it’s true that we don’t know for certain there was a body in the closed casket at the second funeral, it seems unlikely the coffin would be buried with a priest in attendance if there was no actual corpse. There was also a headstone shown in a cemetery (at one time depicted as top-shaped, and later shown as heart-shaped). Perhaps the Rogues handed over the body after holding their own funeral.
Barry Allen then goes on to describe the events in his life after the Top’s death, including the fact that his parents (Henry and Nora Allen) were in a serious car accident. His mother was left in a coma, and his father’s briefly-dead-but-resuscitated body was possessed by the Top’s spirit. We continue with snippets from Barry’s letter:
“After that. My father was different. His eyes…there was something new in his eyes.”
In the original story (Flash v.1 #297-303), Barry didn’t realize anything was wrong with his father after the accident, even though he lived with him for weeks. He refused to believe something was wrong even after Top revealed himself and started wearing his old costume, instead believing that Henry had gone mad or Golden Glider was manipulating his mind. It’s also worth noting that Barry trusted his father so much during this period that he finally revealed for the first time that he was the Flash --- not the actions of someone who noticed something wrong with him.
“The Top tormented my mother for weeks…”
In the original story, Nora Allen was in a coma for weeks after the accident, and only regained consciousness shortly (maybe a few days) before the Top was revealed. She suspected something was wrong with her husband, but he could not have been ‘tormenting’ her if she only had suspicions. It also seems unlikely that he would have tormented Nora because he clearly didn't want to reveal himself too early. He took great pride in the shocked acting job he’d done when Barry revealed to his ‘father’ that he was the Flash.
(Note that Henry Allen is drawn in the flashbacks as a middle-aged man with brown hair. He was originally much older, and had white hair. And in all the flashback scenes, Top’s costume is depicted in its modern style, not its Silver/Bronze Age style).
“Eventually, I exorcised the Top’s spirit and saved my father. But it didn’t end there. I thought I was safe until…a week later, he came back. A boating accident had left a young man brain-dead, and the Top’s mind returned.”
The part about rescuing his father is correct, although the information about the Top returning again soon after is a brand-new inserted retcon. Everything described from this point on is a retcon to his history, though the events are still taking place circa the 1981 Henry Allen storyline.
Barry then writes that Top attacked Barry’s parents, his lab assistant, and dug up his wife Iris’ grave. Frustrated and angry, he dragged the Top to the JLA satellite, and had the magician Zatanna alter his mind. “She made him into someone full of virtue and honor,” Barry wrote. Top then joined him as a hero for several weeks, working alongside the Flash to fight crime and battle the Rogues.
“But he helped me take down more Rogues than I ever had before. Fixing his morals increased his mind-over-matter powers tenfold. He knew where they all were.”
Unfortunately, this new morality caused the Top a great deal of guilt over his past, and it started to drive him insane. Remorsefully, he said that prior to starting his supervillain career, he’d hurt innocent people when testing out his top gadgets. While not exactly unexpected, this revelation is also an inserted detail into his early history, as is Top’s claim that his motivation for going into crime was an act of rebellion against his pressuring parents.
Barry’s letter continues:
“I found him two days later, attacking the Rogues. He was incoherent. Crazy. Babbling. I thought he was going to kill them. And then his mind left that boy’s body. I drove him mad. The League’s new experiment, my experiment, failed.”
Barry then finishes his letter, asking his successor Wally West to find the Top and restore his mind. Again, all of the details about Top returning shortly after being driven from Henry Allen are completely new inserts by Johns. And the retcon about his mind being altered has more aspects to it that we’ll look at next, a retcon with very far-reaching effects.
In Flash v.2 #216, Wally dutifully seeks out the insane Top, and has Zatanna undo the alterations she’d made to his mind. Top’s memories return, and he regains his coherency. Angry over what had been done to him, he taunts the Flash about what he did to the Rogues during his period as a hero with Barry Allen --- it was Top’s own mind-alterations to the Rogues that caused many of them to reform over the years. He then threatens to undo his alterations. These retcons are significant for two reasons: firstly, that the reformed Rogues hadn’t turned good of their own volition (thus negating much of their character development), and secondly, that the Top was suddenly revealed to have had mind-alteration powers for years.
In Flash v.2 #222, the Top makes good on his threat to undo the Rogues’ mind-alterations, and “frees” the Pied Piper, Trickster, and Heat Wave. After a brief period of confusion, the latter two immediately switch sides, clearly reverting back to villainy and apparently proving Top’s claims to have been true. Piper, who had a long history of friendship with Wally West since reforming, wavers but ultimately clings to the strength of his friendship with a hero. However, since then, he has acted ambiguously, possibly staying reformed and possibly slipping into villainy on occasion. All three ‘fixed’ Rogues had years of history of reforming or flirting with reform, which seemed to be genuine, or at least part of their personal development --- and now we are apparently to believe it was not their choice at all, but rather the influence of the then-demented Top. This, too, is a retcon.
Another minor addition by Johns can be found in Flash v.2 #218, when Heat Wave notes “The Top always tried to talk over your head. He wanted you to know he was smarter” and Captain Cold says to Top in #222 “You always thought you were the brains. Cultured in art and food and crap. But just because you can taste the difference in red wines don’t mean you’re better than anyone else.” While it’s true that Top wasn’t as personable as some of the Rogues and liked to make puns about being on top of everyone, these complaints are actually new. He seemed to get along with the others, and never showed any indication of being interested in art, wine or culture. In Flash v.2 #121, he stated that a lower-class Brooklyn background made him an unsuitable candidate for US president. However, it’s known that Captain Cold disliked him (quite possibly because the Top once dated his sister), so that may be the source of his complaint.
Ultimately, I don’t have a problem with simple additions to a character’s history (such as Top’s motivation for going into crime was to rebel against his parents, or his apparent cultural elitism). The problematic additions are when they contradict existing history, especially when there’s seemingly no reason for the contradiction. There was no point in changing the story about the possession of Henry Allen, for instance --- the general gist stays the same, but the details are different. It is entirely possible, of course, that Barry was lying (unlikely), embellishing, or simply misremembering the events he talks about in his letter. But whatever the reason behind the discrepancies, they ultimately result in a bunch of retcons and confusion. And making the Rogues’ reform be the Top’s doing tosses out a lot of their interesting characterization. Geoff Johns did a lot of great things during his run on the Flash series, but I feel that his alterations to the Top’s past were unnecessary in some places, and quite problematic in others.
“We have a lot of plans for [the Top], to revamp him and re-update him. And why not? He's a classic Rogue. We haven't seen him for like fifty years.”
---Geoff Johns interview with Fanboy Planet, 2001
Geoff Johns’ retcons to the Top’s history
Roscoe Dillon, alias the Top, debuted in Flash v.1 #122 in 1961 as a slightly goofy Silver Age villain who spun and used gadget tops of his own design to commit crimes. He sometimes worked with other Flash villains known as the Rogues, and they formed an association that continues to this day. The Top died in 1976 (Flash v.1 #243), but has returned from the dead several times by possessing bodies to pester various heroes.
When writer Geoff Johns took over the Flash series in 2000, he focused a lot of attention on the Rogues, as he is an avowed fan of them. However, as we shall see here, he made many alterations to the Top’s history --- changing certain established details of past events, and adding quite a few new details into his past history. Slightly hinted at in Flash v.2 #210 (2004), the real changes began in Flash v.2 #215 (2004). In #215, current Flash Wally West reads an old letter from his now-dead predecessor Barry Allen, in which Barry describes Top’s early history and what was done to him, as well as the consequences of these actions. It is with selected quotes from Barry’s letter (written here in italics) that we begin.
“He had a talent for invention and explosives, and an obsession with, of all things, tops. The only good memory of a horrible childhood, he claimed.”
It’s entirely possible he had an awful childhood, but we’d never gotten any hint of that before. The brief flashbacks to his youth we saw in his first issue were quite ordinary.
“But unlike the others, behind his illusion-casting and shrapnel-spewing tops, Dillon had a power. He could spin his body at speeds that even made me take a second look. He did it through a kind of telekinetic ability.”
As was originally established, Top had simply taught himself to spin due to his obsession with tops and belief it would give him an edge, but had no inherent powers. He tended to rely on his gadgets more than the spinning, which was not a major part of his repertoire. He only developed the telekinesis shortly before he died, as a result of the spinning and its strange effects on his brain (it also increased his intelligence, and ultimately killed him). In other words, the spinning came first, the telekinesis came second.
In his first appearance, Flash v.1 #122, Top notes:
“I’ve learned how to spin myself like a top at incredible speed! And simultaneously, I’ve made a startling discovery --- the spinning action increases my brain power! There’s nothing I can’t attempt now!”
“For months, he eluded me. Over eleven police officers gave their lives trying to capture him. And I nearly lost mine.”
This is an inserted retcon, at least the part about the cops getting killed. It was a pretty big deal in the Silver/Bronze Age Flash issues when a police officer or civilian was killed, so it is unlikely that the original writers intended Top to have had a high death toll but didn’t mention it.
“The only reason his spree eventually ended is was that Dillon got sick. He claimed his mental powers and my super-speed vibrations were at fault. A kind of super-powered brain tumor. He died a few weeks later.”
The cause of death is correct, although originally, Top died in a matter of days after his symptoms began. Oddly, in the original story, he hadn’t been described as being on a crime spree that ended with him becoming ill; he actually went on a notable spree because he knew he was dying and had a scheme to blow up the city as his last act.
“An autopsy could never be done because the body was stolen by the Rogues. Who knows what they did with it?”
The Rogues --- specifically Mirror Master --- were actually the ones who discovered the body, so they didn’t steal it. They held their own funeral, and then there was a second funeral officiated over by a priest, and attended by Barry and Iris Allen (among others). While it’s true that we don’t know for certain there was a body in the closed casket at the second funeral, it seems unlikely the coffin would be buried with a priest in attendance if there was no actual corpse. There was also a headstone shown in a cemetery (at one time depicted as top-shaped, and later shown as heart-shaped). Perhaps the Rogues handed over the body after holding their own funeral.
Barry Allen then goes on to describe the events in his life after the Top’s death, including the fact that his parents (Henry and Nora Allen) were in a serious car accident. His mother was left in a coma, and his father’s briefly-dead-but-resuscitated body was possessed by the Top’s spirit. We continue with snippets from Barry’s letter:
“After that. My father was different. His eyes…there was something new in his eyes.”
In the original story (Flash v.1 #297-303), Barry didn’t realize anything was wrong with his father after the accident, even though he lived with him for weeks. He refused to believe something was wrong even after Top revealed himself and started wearing his old costume, instead believing that Henry had gone mad or Golden Glider was manipulating his mind. It’s also worth noting that Barry trusted his father so much during this period that he finally revealed for the first time that he was the Flash --- not the actions of someone who noticed something wrong with him.
“The Top tormented my mother for weeks…”
In the original story, Nora Allen was in a coma for weeks after the accident, and only regained consciousness shortly (maybe a few days) before the Top was revealed. She suspected something was wrong with her husband, but he could not have been ‘tormenting’ her if she only had suspicions. It also seems unlikely that he would have tormented Nora because he clearly didn't want to reveal himself too early. He took great pride in the shocked acting job he’d done when Barry revealed to his ‘father’ that he was the Flash.
(Note that Henry Allen is drawn in the flashbacks as a middle-aged man with brown hair. He was originally much older, and had white hair. And in all the flashback scenes, Top’s costume is depicted in its modern style, not its Silver/Bronze Age style).
“Eventually, I exorcised the Top’s spirit and saved my father. But it didn’t end there. I thought I was safe until…a week later, he came back. A boating accident had left a young man brain-dead, and the Top’s mind returned.”
The part about rescuing his father is correct, although the information about the Top returning again soon after is a brand-new inserted retcon. Everything described from this point on is a retcon to his history, though the events are still taking place circa the 1981 Henry Allen storyline.
Barry then writes that Top attacked Barry’s parents, his lab assistant, and dug up his wife Iris’ grave. Frustrated and angry, he dragged the Top to the JLA satellite, and had the magician Zatanna alter his mind. “She made him into someone full of virtue and honor,” Barry wrote. Top then joined him as a hero for several weeks, working alongside the Flash to fight crime and battle the Rogues.
“But he helped me take down more Rogues than I ever had before. Fixing his morals increased his mind-over-matter powers tenfold. He knew where they all were.”
Unfortunately, this new morality caused the Top a great deal of guilt over his past, and it started to drive him insane. Remorsefully, he said that prior to starting his supervillain career, he’d hurt innocent people when testing out his top gadgets. While not exactly unexpected, this revelation is also an inserted detail into his early history, as is Top’s claim that his motivation for going into crime was an act of rebellion against his pressuring parents.
Barry’s letter continues:
“I found him two days later, attacking the Rogues. He was incoherent. Crazy. Babbling. I thought he was going to kill them. And then his mind left that boy’s body. I drove him mad. The League’s new experiment, my experiment, failed.”
Barry then finishes his letter, asking his successor Wally West to find the Top and restore his mind. Again, all of the details about Top returning shortly after being driven from Henry Allen are completely new inserts by Johns. And the retcon about his mind being altered has more aspects to it that we’ll look at next, a retcon with very far-reaching effects.
In Flash v.2 #216, Wally dutifully seeks out the insane Top, and has Zatanna undo the alterations she’d made to his mind. Top’s memories return, and he regains his coherency. Angry over what had been done to him, he taunts the Flash about what he did to the Rogues during his period as a hero with Barry Allen --- it was Top’s own mind-alterations to the Rogues that caused many of them to reform over the years. He then threatens to undo his alterations. These retcons are significant for two reasons: firstly, that the reformed Rogues hadn’t turned good of their own volition (thus negating much of their character development), and secondly, that the Top was suddenly revealed to have had mind-alteration powers for years.
In Flash v.2 #222, the Top makes good on his threat to undo the Rogues’ mind-alterations, and “frees” the Pied Piper, Trickster, and Heat Wave. After a brief period of confusion, the latter two immediately switch sides, clearly reverting back to villainy and apparently proving Top’s claims to have been true. Piper, who had a long history of friendship with Wally West since reforming, wavers but ultimately clings to the strength of his friendship with a hero. However, since then, he has acted ambiguously, possibly staying reformed and possibly slipping into villainy on occasion. All three ‘fixed’ Rogues had years of history of reforming or flirting with reform, which seemed to be genuine, or at least part of their personal development --- and now we are apparently to believe it was not their choice at all, but rather the influence of the then-demented Top. This, too, is a retcon.
Another minor addition by Johns can be found in Flash v.2 #218, when Heat Wave notes “The Top always tried to talk over your head. He wanted you to know he was smarter” and Captain Cold says to Top in #222 “You always thought you were the brains. Cultured in art and food and crap. But just because you can taste the difference in red wines don’t mean you’re better than anyone else.” While it’s true that Top wasn’t as personable as some of the Rogues and liked to make puns about being on top of everyone, these complaints are actually new. He seemed to get along with the others, and never showed any indication of being interested in art, wine or culture. In Flash v.2 #121, he stated that a lower-class Brooklyn background made him an unsuitable candidate for US president. However, it’s known that Captain Cold disliked him (quite possibly because the Top once dated his sister), so that may be the source of his complaint.
Ultimately, I don’t have a problem with simple additions to a character’s history (such as Top’s motivation for going into crime was to rebel against his parents, or his apparent cultural elitism). The problematic additions are when they contradict existing history, especially when there’s seemingly no reason for the contradiction. There was no point in changing the story about the possession of Henry Allen, for instance --- the general gist stays the same, but the details are different. It is entirely possible, of course, that Barry was lying (unlikely), embellishing, or simply misremembering the events he talks about in his letter. But whatever the reason behind the discrepancies, they ultimately result in a bunch of retcons and confusion. And making the Rogues’ reform be the Top’s doing tosses out a lot of their interesting characterization. Geoff Johns did a lot of great things during his run on the Flash series, but I feel that his alterations to the Top’s past were unnecessary in some places, and quite problematic in others.