It wouldn’t take long at all, just four short issues for Mike Weiringo’s characteristic art style to emerge. Those early issues of ‘Ringo’s run on Flash, issues 80 through 82, are still among the most exciting to read visually. But they’re not yet the style fans would come to love and cherish. They’re Ringo, but not classic Ringo. Not just yet.
But by #83, the artwork on Flash just pops. Wally West, the titular Flash, is lantern-jawed, square-shouldered, cartoonishly exaggerated with just the right amount of intensity carved into his mask. Each panel is orchestrated with just the right amount of chaos. Ringo’s visualization would prove definitive of Flash in the 90’s, just as his style of hyperreal cartooning would prove definitive of the 90’s themselves.
Moreover, Ringo’s artwork provided the best possible vehicle for the post-#79 reboot of Flash. With Waid finally excising the ghost of Barry Allen in #79’s ‘The Once And Future Flash’, Wally finally became a hero in his own right, stepping out from under his mentor’s shadow. Following on from this, Waid was beginning to re-craft Wally’s story as a superhero romance in the courtly tradition of knights, quests, maidens and monsters. Ringo’s artwork would eloquently define the optimism and the danger of this new project.
This coming Wednesday, PopMatters commemorates the passing of Mike Weiringo on August 8 2007, by celebrating his work on Flash. The victim of a sudden and unexpected heart-failure, Weiringo’s legacy stands as the power of his art to imbue readers with a sense of wonder while his characters face adversity.