As Joshua Williamson's run on The Flash nears its epic conclusion, the Flash family has rallied together to take on the recently formed Legion of Zoom, led by the sinister Reverse-Flash.
As the battle lines were drawn, however, Eobard Thawne didn't recruit his fellow villains from the relative present of the DC Universe. Instead he traveled to various points in the past to find the perfect foes to take on the Scarlet Speedster. According to Williamson, the specific points in time for the villains' recruitment were based on when they were available and how easy they were for Thawne to subtly manipulate.
"In particular, with Grodd, it's because Grodd is gone: He was tied up with the Legion of Doom stuff in Justice League and Death Metal, he's been kind of off the table. Same thing with the Turtle, he's probably the closest to the present day in this. I wanted [Reverse-Flash] to go and grab people he felt he could manipulate," Williamson explained in an upcoming interview with CBR. "That's a big part of it: He knows their future and didn't grab versions of them where they were at their peaks or at a moment of loss. They had all lost to the Flash already in current time so it went back to when they hadn't lost yet and still had their confidence to basically tell them 'In the future, you're going to lose so I'm going to help you not lose.'"
From Gorilla Grodd and the Turtle to Captain Cold and Golden Glider, the Reverse-Flash hand-picked his evil ensemble and systematically targeted every element of Barry Allen's life. For Williamson and the editors, it was important to pick points in time reflecting the DC Rebirth era instead of the New 52, though The Flash: Year One's revision of Barry's history made his inclusion a little more tricky to reconcile.
"It was about picking how far he would go back. That was actually a weird game with the editors trying to figure what points in time to grab them from because we wanted to be sure it's this version of them, that means it has to be this time period," Williamson continued. "We wanted to be sure we were grabbing them post-New 52 but, in the Turtle's case, it was weird because of The Flash: Year One. So we settled on these and really just came down to where in the timeline did we feel Eobard could manipulate them the most, those were the choices we made."
Written by Joshua Williamson and illustrated by Rafa Sandoval, Scott Kolins, Jordi Tarragona and Arif Prianto, The Flash #759 is on sale now from DC Comics.