#johns era

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All these years I've been looking at the Rogues in this panel, and only just noticed the pic of a woman in a very sheer bikini (above the guy doing a bad zombie impression).

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Idk if u got asked this yet but what do u think is The Rogues best charactirization in comics? Tbh the new 52 really kinda butcher some of them 😭

Yeah, I'm with you on the New 52 😅

As for the best, it probably depends on what you like about the Rogues, or how you want them portrayed. There's no question that Geoff Johns was the first writer to make some of them well-rounded characters, and he was the writer who established many of the characterizations and tropes we now take for granted, such as the Rogue Rules and making Captain Cold the wise badass leader. That said, a lot of people have justifiable complaints about his Rogues (making them edgier and meaner, for instance, and his great love of pointless retcons), so his Rogues are far from perfect.

Pre-Crisis Rogues are tons of silly fun, and that's how some people like them to be portrayed, but there's no denying that the writing in those days was pretty shallow and none of the Rogues are well-developed. It's completely valid to like and prefer that portrayal, but again, the stories and the characters aren't especially deep.

Mark Waid wrote a great Trickster and Abra Kadabra, and his Pied Piper (by then reformed, so he wasn't a Rogue) was generally good, but overall he didn't handle the other Rogues particularly well. So it's easy to love Waid's James and Kadabra and they are pretty cool, but the others tend to not do so well under his pen.

William Messner-Loebs had a fun run on the Flash, and he was the writer to reform Piper, so that's a popular run too. He did fun stuff with a handful of other Rogues, but TBH some of them were kind of goofy and a bit out of character. They were very much in the spirit of the pre-Crisis Rogues, but Messner-Loebs' run was after Crisis (when DC was trying to be more mature) so they do stand out a bit.

And there's lots of other writers, of course, but a fair number of them either barely used the Rogues or did questionable things with them. Joshua Williamson rebuilt the Flash book after the New 52 and deserves credit for that, but he handled a lot of Rogues poorly or just adequately (his Eobard is great, however).

So in the end, it all comes down to what interpretation(s) you like best, and going from there. And in comics you always have to take the good with the bad, so maybe you love some aspects of one writer's Rogues but need to accept that perhaps other parts aren't so great.

As for me personally, Johns' Rogues are arguably the foundation on which modern Rogues fandom was built, and that's my favourite. I genuinely think most of us wouldn't be fans if that run hadn't existed. But pre-Crisis Rogues comics are what made me truly fall in love with them, so I've got great fondness for that portrayal of them too. It's just that they aren't very complex characters or stories.

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Hello, do you perhaps ahem can spare a few Axel comic panels?

Sure thing! You didn't specify an era so I chose a bunch (and the last three are AUs).

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Further thoughts on Johns' Roscoe retcons

This is a follow-up to @longitudinalwaveme 's excellent post here and my thoughts in response.

Thinking further, there's another Johnsian retcon I should have brought up earlier, because it's a huge one and really changes Roscoe's character and motivation as a Flash villain.

In Flash v2 #215, in a flashback to an unspecified time before he died, Roscoe says to Barry:

"Do you want to know why I do this? It's certainly not for the diamonds, though I do like to decorate my tops. It's for the thrill. The thrill of spinning your world upside down. Dragging your psyche through the mud and dirt that ours has gone through. We'll see what kind of hero you are then, Flash. We'll see…"

That's a massive change in his motivation, because it was very clear in the Silver and Bronze Age that he was motivated by money and personal gain like the other Rogues, since he bragged about his loot hauls and that was the sort of thing he'd talk about with the other Rogues and the Flash. Why would he stash a million dollars of loot haul in a satellite in space if he was disinterested in money? Why participate in annual 'Rogue of the Year' competitions with a prize if he was only interested in destroying the Flash?

He did have an interest in besting the Flash as part of his schemes (again, like the other Rogues), but that Johns quote tells us he was a Rogue for psychological warfare reasons, that his whole purpose was to break Barry as a hero and as a person. And that's just not something we saw in the Silver and Bronze Age.

I'm sure Johns did this to make him seem like he was always a terrifying psychopath, but it really wasn't necessary: if Johns wanted to darken him, he could have taken the extremely obvious (and text-supported) route of Roscoe being severely messed up by his canonical death, his time spent in Hell, and his time spent walking the Earth as a disembodied ghost. That stuff is completely canonical and right there in the text for making him scarier and more cruel. Roscoe himself even admitted in the `90s that his experiences were traumatic.

The Zatanna brainwashing retcon is obviously important for the impact it had on the other Rogues and on Roscoe himself, but I think this particular retcon has a far greater impact on Roscoe's character and how the heroes and the readers respond to him. Johns probably wouldn't have been able to get away with the Zatanna story if he hadn't turned the other characters and the readers against Roscoe; Zatanna's brainwashing is made more palatable by the fact that Johns retconned Roscoe into being very evil all along. So I'd argue that this retcon is the most major one that all the other retcons pivot upon.

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Happy (late) birthday! Sorry I didn't say that sooner. Also: If you could have any mentioned-but-not-shown Geoff Johns Rogues plot idea made into a comic, which one would it be?

Thank you very much, and no worries! :D

I think my number #1 choice would be that power struggle between Roscoe and Len mentioned the other day (I think about it a lot lol, and the story could probably fill an entire miniseries). My second choice would be the relationship between Digger and Meloni and the return of Digger and Owen to this era, and the third would likely be the mysterious incident involving the Snarts' dad during the Golden Snowball era.

On the one hand, if any of these stories were actually published I'd be sorry I could no longer imagine the chain of events for myself, but on the other I just really want to know how it happened 😅

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purplecyborgnewt replied to your text post: I'm not so sure it's an example of Hartley actually smoking, seeing as he's using a cigarette-holder primarily as an instrument (and sigarette itself might be an accessory to go with his outfit).

Yeah, that's true, it might just be for style and as part of a plan. But it sure wouldn't have been unusual for him to be smoking in that era.

roguesrevenge replied to your ask post: hey do you happen to have the panel (or issue) where it’s mentioned that mark helped Evan get off cocaine?

Sure, it's from Flash v2 #217!

bonewrites replied to your ask post: Slowly working up myself to make a angst fix Abt diggers alcoholism cause I keep connecting it to the suicide squad cause he'd definitely try and get beer after every mission

Yeah, I wouldn't doubt that his time on Task Force X made any existing problems he had much, much worse -- though he certainly already had some trauma beforehand, thanks to his resentful father and unstable family life. Exploring that in fic and coming to a healthier resolution for him would be fab!

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Obviously it’s not actually Bruce and Wally dealing with each other’s villains, but it’s a threat to, as well as a description of the differences between the two rogues’ galleries.  As Wally suggests, Bruce wouldn’t find it as easy as he thinks he might...and perhaps he forgets that Roy once trapped him inside a rainbow prism ;)

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I just noticed that at the end of Flash 189 when Piper is sitting at Trickster’s FBI desk, Trickster’s papers appear to say, among other things, “comics are cool!” (Fourth paragraph on the right-hand-side paper.) Looks like James was really hard at work at the FBI!

On an unrelated note, that last Roy fanfic is charming. If only he’d had more Bob Ross in his life.

[Oh wow, I can’t say I ever looked at those papers before, but you’re right!  Nice catch :)  And does it say “But I kick butt(s)!” in the third paragraph?  Imagine all the stuff his superiors found once he’d gone missing from the FBI, like his documents and an entire drawer of extra-loud whoopie cushions.  Plus it’s very interesting that the artist put at least some actual text in there, including some relevant words like “Pied Piper” and “DC comics” and they’re not just scribbles as I’d presumed.

And thank you so much for your kind words!  Roy could definitely have used the influence of Bob Ross, as could most of us, TBH.  His gentle positivity is to be admired.  – Lia]