In January, writer Jeremy Adams will be joined by artist Roger Cruz as the ongoing Flash series is moved to a twice-monthly release schedule.
The first major arc on the new release schedule, One-Minute War, begins in issue #790 and will continue for six or seven issues. There will also be a one-shot special, The Flash: One-Minute War Special #1, which dives into the story and its villain: the Fraction, a race of speedster aliens who use the Speed Force as a resource to power their entire empire.
Following Newsarama's announcement of the One-Minute War special, we chatted with Adams about his first long arc on the Flash series, what Barry Allen's return to the title will mean, how Linda Park-West is involved, and whether other heroes in the DC Universe are even aware of this devastating 60-second invasion.
Samantha Puc for Newsarama: Jeremy, as far as you know, is The Flash's new twice-monthly release schedule a permanent change?
Jeremy Adams: As far as I know... but what I know is little. I think, you know, just like everything in this industry, whether it's comic books or DVDs, if the sales are there, I can't imagine why they wouldn't do it, you know? Right. So, my hope is that it gets people excited about reading The Flash.
I know there have been some people who still don't know that Wally is the lead character in The Flash. Going into the One-Minute War, it's really going to be about everybody. The Flash family as it is. I've done little arcs, and then I would dovetail into War for Earth-Three one time or the Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths for three issues.
One-Minute War is probably going to be six, maybe seven issues of content because in my mind, each issue would be like 10 seconds of real continuity, but it's a lot longer for the speedsters because of how fast they're going. I don't know if I'm that clever to pull it off that way.
Nrama: It looks like Barry is going to come back into the picture - can we expect him to stick around? Will Wally still be the focal character?
Adams: Post-One-Minute War? I'm not entirely sure, mainly because with Barry, in particular, I like to check with Josh Williamson and see what's going on, you know? And I hope that we can build that out. I've been having a lot of fun with Dark Crisis, in particular, especially the last issue of The Flash where I got to not just write, but interact with the other characters in the DC Universe. It's definitely whetted my appetite to be able to interact with those people and those things.
As far as Barry, I really just want to know what's going on with Josh, and I would love Barry to be involved. It's weird because again, we're talking pretty far out. I have up to issue #800 mapped out in my brain and then this morning - I mean, God willing that I get to stay on [the series] - I figured out the next Flash event, but that we're not talking about that now. That's for future Jeremy to reveal.
Barry will be involved in One-Minute War heavily, and it's going to be unbelievably dramatic for Barry. There's going to be a lot going on for Barry and a lot that he has to face in terms of his own personal growth. Where he is standing, it's a very peculiar situation where you are the mentor and you're looking out at the landscape and you realize the kid that you helped train and raise, in a way, is married with kids.
You're not married and you don't have kids, and what do you want from life? That's not a negative or a positive, it's just this guy's moving on with his life. What am I doing? Is this what I want? Or do I want to be married to Iris? Do I want to be doing this? Do I want to be that? And I think that'll be part of the journey he's going to have to be on, especially because non-speedsters are going be kind of frozen in time during this entire event.
Nrama: How does One-Minute War fit into the broader DC plan for 2023?
Adams: Oh, I have no idea. [Laughs] I don't entirely know what the plan is for 2023. I'm in my own little corner. I would love to know, but one of the reasons that this idea works is that it's only one minute of continuity time. So it could potentially be devastating at the end - or not. It's all up in the air in a way.
You have this group called the Fraction that hits Earth with the speed of a meteor and causes a devastating amount of damage. And eagle-eyed viewers will see that in the Dark Crisis crossover, the "Mad Max land" that Max Mercury and Jesse Quick were in had already been looted, for lack of a better word, by the Fraction. It was a husk of a shell of a planet. And that's kind of what they do.
Hopefully, in the One-Minute War 40-page special, I'm doing kind of a past, present future. I look at the Fraction and maybe some surprise guests and stuff within that. It's still taking shape.
Nrama: The Fraction use the Speed Force the way others would use technology. How did you come up with the idea for that race and their relationship with the Speed Force?
Adams: Well, I wanted something that would equalize speedsters, because in my mind, speedsters are the most powerful creatures on Earth. I think Wally might be the most powerful creature in the DC Universe, and I'm sure everybody can fight about that. But if you can move so fast where everybody is standing still, how do you defeat something like that? Right?
I think that's both a really cool thing, and it's also one of the weaknesses of the Flash, right? You constantly have to make speedster villains in order to reasonably, logically say they're going to be a challenge to Flash or whoever. So this is kind of like a kid cousin of that. It's not Reverse-Flash. It's not any of the other evil Flash villains. It's not Savitar. It's a race of people that use [the Speed Force].
And we have had tastes of that in the past in other versions of the Flash, and we've talked about it. I've really leaned into the Speed Force as energy. The idea that somebody can harness this energy - what does that look like? It just makes sense to me that there's a group out there that has obviously used this energy source, tapped into it - like nuclear power in a way - and it's allowed them to progress as a race. So they are artificial conduits versus our speedsters being organic conduits.
Nrama: How involved does Linda Park-West get with her new Speed Force powers?
Adams: There's a lot of shining the light on some of the other speedster family members, whether it's Irey, Jai, Bart, Jesse - I think those characters are going to get a little more focus, and Barry's going to get a little more focus because I deal with Linda and Wally a lot. Linda will obviously be involved. This is a war for all intents and purposes. It is an invading force, and they are the only ones that are cognizant of it. She can still move at super speed and whether or not she is pregnant will play into the story as well.
Nrama: How does this affect the Flash family moving forward?
Adams: I think that it's going to solidify them as a group. I think what the Bat family has done really effectively is that they all operate together in and out of each other's books. They all have each other's back. They all have kind of a purpose, especially because Gotham is a hellhole.
Central City and Keystone aren't hellholes. I think what I've tried to establish even leading up to this is that Flash's mission is so much more global, and with the advent of the Fraction arriving, I think they're going to realize that their mission is maybe more than global. That's all I'm going to say about that. I will be planting seeds about what will be coming post-One-Minute War.
There will be a lot of indications of where I'd like it to go. In the past, especially in my first run, I hinted at things that I would like to see the Flash family go to. At the end of the day, when I finally am 105 years old and have to give this up, I hope that people go, 'Man, that was bananas.' Yeah. There are a lot of ideas that I'm trying to just excise from being a fan of comics for so many years.
I've talked about it before, but the way that I designed the Flash generally is sort of like X-Files or Buffy, where the idea is that you have issues in an arc that maybe service an overarching plot line. But then I have a couple issues to really get people a soft on-ramp so people can get invested in the book again, and they don't feel like, 'Oh, I'm missing out on a thousand different things.' I want people to be able to pick it up and have some one-offs so that they can go, 'Oh, I get what this is.' And then they can, they can be introduced to the new arc.
Nrama: Is there a risk that readers keeping up with other books in the DCU will know what happens at the end of One-Minute War before it's done in the pages of The Flash?
Adams: I don't know. During Dark Crisis, Josh referenced something that had happened in my Flash book where they would tear apart pieces of the Legion of Doom headquarters. And that was really, really cool.
I kind of leave it up to them whether or not they want to tell, because these other characters like Jesse Quick, you know, she has some ties into the JSA. Will Geoff [Johns, who's writing the New Golden Age] reference it? I don't know. I don't know. We've already mentioned Judy [Garrick, the apparent daughter of Golden Age Flash Jay Garrick], which is obviously gonna play into the New Golden Age in some way. But as far as the One-Minute War aspect of it, I don't know exactly. And that's only because I have a pretty clear thought of how One-Minute War ends.
It could be one of those things like, 'Oh my gosh, what happened?' Or it could be one of those things where [the non-speedster heroes] are not aware of it at all. I don't know.
Nrama: It's wild to think about an entire war that the other heroes just don't know about.
Adams: Not to toot my own horn, but the whole idea came out of another rejected Flash premise. I think they thought it was too maudlin. But then when I hung up, it all kind of coalesced. The hardest part was trying to figure out the name of the bad guys. But as I said on Twitter yesterday, I happened to be reading a Matt Fraction book, and I was trying to look at something that really dealt with time, and I was like, 'Oh gosh, I'm such a fan of this guy's writing. Is it flattering to be named after an entire race of evil speedster aliens?' I don't know. It's all supposed to be flattering.
Nrama: So what are you hoping that readers take away from this arc?
Adams: Even growing up with the Flash, I thought the Flash was very one-dimensional in some ways. I thought, 'Oh, it's just a guy that runs fast. How fun is that?' And I hope what they recognize is that there's a lot of length and depth to their powers. Like, it's not just, 'Oh, we can move fast.' It's also about the family dynamic. It's about the fact that they all have each other's back.
Wally remembers everything, right? Wally sits in Metron's chair while Klarion basically says to him, 'You remember it all. You remember every reboot. You remember being excised from continuity. You kind of have this galaxy brain aspect.'
Because [the speedsters are] paradoxical in some ways, because they're so powerful because they can move fast and they're connected to this otherworldly force. they become guardians of that in a way. So I'm hoping that when people come to [One-Minute War], they're like, 'Hey, this is really fun. This is really creative. This is extremely adventurous.' But they also go, 'Man, I actually like these characters. I actually get this kind of Doctor Who, sci-fi, world-trumping aspect of the Flash.'
And that was something that was really prevalent, especially in the Golden Age. You would have these covers of Flash with a giant brain, and it was just so weird and so out there. That's kind of what I'm pulling from.
But I'm really trying to also channel some of the family dynamics and the drama that Mark Waid was so good at, and kind of the weird high-concept stuff that Geoff Johns was so good at. And also I'm just a nerd that's having fun. When I was asked if I want to do this book, I was like, 'Are you kidding me? There are a thousand ideas.'
I'm glad about that. People aren't necessarily sure what they're going to get when they pick up the Flash, but they know it's gonna be fun, or at least entertaining or interesting. And that's all you can really hope for.
The Flash will be released twice monthly starting with issue #790 on January 3, 2023. The Flash: One-Minute War Special #1 will be available January 31, 2023. See DC's full January solicitations for more.
Barry Allen and Wally West are two of the best DC speedsters.
