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Ken Lashley interview (June 2006)

June 19, 2006 | Interviews

It’s the return of a legend.
Actually, make that two.
Well, OK, maybe that’s over-hyping it a bit, but this Wednesday will see two big comebacks: DC Comics’ The Flash and Canada’s own Ken Lashley.
After a four-year hiatus, the native of Burlington, Ont., is back with a sonic boom as the smoking hot artist of DC’s The Flash, The Fastest Man Alive #1.
“It’s a long time (away from comics),” said Lashley, 39, best known for his work in the mid-to-late ’90s on Marvel’s Excalibur and X-Calibre.
“I was busy doing things for LucasFilms and Hasbro and all these other places, but I started thinking, ‘Well, it would be nice to get back to my roots’ and I was able to do that.
“I’m very, very fortunate to have a change to go back and getting a pretty big book like Flash is pretty cool, too.”
Lashley’s path back to comic book illustration began after he started making inquiries to people at Wildstorm Productions, an imprint of DC.
“DC got wind that I was willing to do comics again and that was it,” Lashley said. “They looked at my stuff and I got the gig.”
Nabbing the job on The Flash, one of DC’s hotly anticipated summer releases, was unexpected, the artist said.
“I hadn’t done comics for a while, so I figured they’d be giving big titles to guys who’ve been working their way up doing smaller books,” Lashley said. “But they just put it out there and said ‘Hey, do you want to do it?’ and I said ‘Sure.’”
The fan response to Lashley’s signing on to The Flash has quickly gone from first gear to overdrive, he said.
“At first I think they were kind of like: ‘Who?’ and ‘When was the last time he did a book?’ But once people got a look at the work I’ve been doing and some of the drawings for the book, there’s definitely been a lot of positive things,” Lashley said.
The new Flash book opens with a major mystery: What happened to the most recent Scarlet Speedster, Wally West, when he disappeared during DC’s mega-crossover Infinite Crisis and who’s going to be the man in the red-and-gold suit now?
“The speculation over who The Flash really is has been great,” Lashley said.
“I think people will be really surprised over how it all plays out in the end.”