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Creators of TVs ‘The Flash’ return to the fastest man alive |
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Written by By Bill Radford, MCT
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Thursday, 10 August 2006 |
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Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo apparently feel the need for speed.
Fifteen years after their oneseason run of “The Flash” on CBS, they have returned to DC Comics’ scarlet speedster.
 Bilson and DeMeo, who have been writing partners since college in California, created “The Flash,” “The Sentinel” and other television shows and wrote “The Rocketeer” for the big screen. More recently, they have written and developed video games for Electronic Arts. Now they’ve returned to “linear fiction,” as Bilson puts it, writing two comic-book series for DC: “The Flash: Fastest Man Alive” and the upcoming “Red Menace.”
“The Flash” was the first to hit stands: The series launched in June. But it wasn’t until after the deal to write “Red Menace” was made that Bilson and DeMeo got a call from DC asking if they’d be interested in writing “The Flash.”
“I’m sure that somebody thought, well, it would be kind of a cool idea to have the guys that did the TV show back in the day write the book,” Bilson said.
He and DeMeo have great affection for the character of the Flash and for DC in general, Bilson said. “It was very easy for us to say yes.”
The two had some homework to do, though. The TV series, which was released on DVD at the start of this year, featured police scientist Barry Allen as the Flash.
In the comics, there has been a succession of Flashes: “The Flash: Fastest Man Alive” establishes Bart Allen, the grandson of Barry, as the latest scarlet-clad hero to race down crime.
“We definitely had a lot of catching up to do because we hadn’t been reading ‘The Flash’ in a long time,” Bilson said. And Bart’s history is more than a bit convoluted: Born in the future and raised in a virtual-reality environment, he was then brought to the present and became Impulse, a young superhero known for leaping before looking. But he has grown up fast — literally — with the events of the recent “Infinite Crisis” miniseries aging him four years.
Bart, for now, is a reluctant hero. “He’s pretty scared about what’s going on with the speed force and his body and his lack of control and his aging and all of that,” Bilson said.
But look for Bart to embrace the role of hero as he recaptures some of his old spirit, Bilson said. “It hasn’t come into play yet in our books, but one of the things we like — and we’re going there — is there’s a certain joy in being the Flash. There’s a certain amount of joy in running fast and speeding past the villains.”
Bart will face villains old and new as the Flash. One of Bart’s former foes, Inertia, “is sort of lurking in the shadows,” Bilson said, and a favorite member of the Flash’s rogues gallery will bust out of prison and cause problems for Bart in an upcoming story arc.
Bilson expects their other title, “Red Menace,” to begin in November. A six-issue miniseries published by DC’s Wildstorm imprint and illustrated by Jerry Ordway, it’s set in the McCarthy era of the 1950s. It focuses on the Eagle, a hero who becomes blacklisted because of his alleged Communist ties, and a young man with powers who looks to the Eagle to mentor him.
For “Red Menace,” the writing duo has become a trio. Adam Brody, who plays comicbook geek Seth Cohen on Fox’s “The OC,” is helping write “Red Menace.” Brody is the onscreen and off-screen boyfriend of Bilson’s daughter, Rachel, who plays Summer on the TV series.
Bilson said Brody is a comicbook fan in real life, though not to the degree the character of Seth is. “It has been a really good collaboration,” Bilson said. “He’s really held up his own as a writer on this. He’s been an integral part of the writing process.”
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