Whatever Happened to Ongoing Comics?

It also took time. The issues I’m talking about are Flash #15 (August 1988) to #162 (July 2000). That’s 12 years. Waid’s legendary run was a whopping eight. Meanwhile, in this decade—you know, the one that’s only six years old—we’ve already had three writers handling Wally’s ongoing adventures: Jeremy Adams got two years, Si Spurrier got two, and Ryan North took over back in March. Unlike Waid, who built on the groundwork Messner-Loebs had laid out, all three of this decade’s runs have been wildly tonally different. Every new writer functionally means a reset to Wally’s story, literally in the case of Spurrier, whose run launched with a new #1. They have all written interesting, creative, ambitious stories—but they’ve also written almost totally disconnected stories. Oh, and while this was happening, we also got a Flash/Aquaman miniseries, Voidsong, about a completely different Flash (Barry Allen) that was impossible to place into continuity. This is happening across the board. Writers are allowed to stay on a title for a year or two or maybe just an arc. Status quos are constantly being reset. Even when there are changes to the status quo, they’ll be published alongside miniseries...