by Pete Schueler
Disclaimer: I don’t mean any harm with this column. The text is mainly aimed to entertain, and I don’t hate or dislike anybody. Except for Ewoks. I really hate those little buggers.
The kids of the Flash might be the single most annoying thing in recent history, if that history only includes superhero comics. Otherwise it would be the change of character in Jim of the American Office in Season 5. But that’s for another time…
Why they’re here, nobody exactly knows. So, I tried to make some sense of it. This is what I came up with:
- It’s a case of attracting new readers. We’re hearing from all kinds of sides that the comic-book industry is dying, apparently because of digital comics, and that we need new readers. So, in order to get new readers, stupid characters are introduced that nobody wants to see, except for brain-dead kids (Ewoks, anyone??)
- They’ve been introduced to save the world in the future. Maybe it’s a case of getting some weird prophecy thingy going and they’re needed. Which would be lame, and is frankly the least likely option.
- This is my personal favorite: Geoff Johns invented the kids, so he can kill them off in Flash:Rebirth. That’s right, Mr. Uber-continuity needed to kill some kids in the story, so he created children no one would care for. It’s not to hard to kill a child if nobody likes it. Right? Right?? (I believe there is also a law, that allows the killing of children, if they’re weird. Or it was a fever dream. Not sure at the moment…)
- It’s a fetish thing. Someone at DC has a fetish for boys that look strong, and yet child-like. This would of course be consistent with prevalent fetish inspired nature of the superhero comic itself; all major themes and ideas in the superhero world are somewhat fetish (I’m looking at you, secret identity!)
So those are the most likely reasons for their existence, in my opinion. Of course it could be something else entirely, you never know with DC these days. They introduce, kill and bring back characters at random it seems (see Lo3W for instance). Not that it isn’t cool to have something happen, but you overdo it and it feels cheap and not worthwhile. Which would lead into a whole discussion about the value of a single issue these days, that I’ll take that out another time…
Until then, keep reading them funny books!
Pete Schueler is currently residing in Berlin, Germany. He’s desperately trying to get his writing career somewhere. Where that is exactly, is not defined yet, but it should be somewhere where it’s visible. He’s been a comic book and pop culture geek all his life, but started reading them funny-books again on a weekly basis just three short years ago. In this time he matured from reading just DC books, to preferring mostly Indie titles. He still has a reverence for the Big Two and superheroes in general, and consumes them at a regular rate. The books, not the heroes. 
Merin on 
