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Monday, June 01, 2009 

If Flash becomes more like CSI, that won't be good at all

The Nashua Telegraph writes an interview with Geoff Johns about his bringing back Barry Allen, and I don't think what he might put the Silver Age Flash through sounds very appealing:
CC: One of the familiar aspects of old Barry Allen stories was silly plots and transformations taken with utmost seriousness. Is this lighthearted element toast in today's grim and gritty environment?

GJ: It all depends on the story. For "Flash: Rebirth," there's going to be a lot of heart in that series, but . . . we're not going to go back to 1960s-style stories where we have stand-alone stories where Barry Allen turns into a puppet. . . .

But the stuff I really want to focus on is with Barry Allen as a crime solver. But his crimes are on the crazy '60s-physics level. A murder could span across dimensions or ancient cities or crazy places that are real cities. Or he could find a body where the crime is unsolvable through normal means, and kind of taking that "CSI" approach but putting it on a greater scale of wonder and scope and the DC Universe itself. If that makes sense.

CC: Now that DC has established 52 parallel Earths, it sounds like "CSI: 52."

GJ: Exactly, exactly, that's a great explanation. And that's what I want to do. He solves crimes that are unbelievably bizarre and unexplainable. And they take him to different places and strange foes and bizarre criminals. . . .
Given what Crime Scene Investigation is like, I'm not happy to hear this. As the Parents Television Council reported in 2004, CSI is one of the most disturbingly violent and/or graphically sexual in nature police series in history, and not very realistic at that. And if we were to take a little paragraph from the Wikipedia page:
The show has been heavily criticized—almost since its debut—by police and district attorneys, who feel CSI portrays an inaccurate image of how police solve crimes, and by the Parents Television Council, who note the level and gratuitousness of graphic violence, images and sexual content seen on the show.
Not that many things on TV are realistic to begin with, but if they're as violent in nature as CSI happens to be, I don't think that's very healthy for the Flash, nor the indication that the new path is going to be dealing with murders, something too many comics of recent have been plagued with. And thus, I doubt there's going to be much heart in it either. There may not even be much humor in the finished product.

Johns is clearly too influenced by the movie and TV industry he once worked at, and that's only hurting his work even more.

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  • From Jerusalem, Israel
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