Speed Force

The Beat is running a poll called You are what you read, asking about people’s comic reading habits from a company perspective. I used to read mainly DC, but in the last 10 years or so I’ve branched out a lot, to the point where actual DC-labeled books are less than half of my current reading list (though if you factor in other DC-owned labels like Vertigo, it climbs to just over half).

Last month I went into why I read what I read, but I didn’t run any numbers on the list. Before filling out the Beat’s poll, I figured I’d break them down by label and see how they turned out:

7 DC: Flash, Secret Six, Tangent: Superman’s Reign, Final Crisis, Rogues’ Revenge, Legion of Three Worlds, and All-Star Superman.
3 Vertigo: Fables, House of Mystery, Madame Xanadu.
3 Image: Noble Causes, Gemini, Dynamo 5. (Yes, they’re all written by Jay Faerber)
2 Marvel: The Twelve, True Believers.
1 WildStorm: Astro City.
1 Dark Horse: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
1 IDW: Fallen Angel.

So that works out at 7/18=39% for DC proper, or 11/18=61% for all DC-owned books.

Of course, a lot of those are miniseries, and All-Star Superman just ended. Looking only at ongoing books: (more…)

Coverage of Baltimore Comic-Con’s DC Nation panel is up at Newsarama and at CBR, and they’re dropping more hints about the future of the Flash franchise.

Q: How will Barry Allen react to the modern heroes when he returns?

A: Johns: “Part of the fun of exploring Barry Allen is seeing Barry get along with all of the other DC heroes – in a modern setting, he did get along with Bruce Wayne, and Hal, and didn’t with Green Arrow.” Johns said that both Rebirth and Flash will be very science based, but will also blend in the quasi-science of the Speed Force; and will allow readers to learn a lot about Barry Allen before the lightning hit – what did he do, and why did he wear a bow tie?”

Comic Bloc poster BESTBUY points out that the phrasing was “both Rebirth and Flash” — another hint that perhaps, Geoff Johns may be continuing on the series that launches after Flash: Rebirth concludes.

According to Johns, we’ll find out who’s in the Lightning Rod in Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #3. (Since that’s the only reason I’m reading the series, my main interest in the Legion of Super-Heroes being in the one version of the Legion that isn’t represented in the series — the Five-Year-Gap Legion — maybe I can skip issue #2.)

Also, while it seems that every other dead character asked about is fair game to be reanimated as a Black Lantern, Bart Allen will be spared that fate.

Intriguingly, “events playing out of Geoff Johns’ recent Legion stories in Superman and Justice Society of America will have repercussions in the contemporary DCU, especially for The Flash.”

Friday Night Lists is running a list of the 15 Most Expensive Comic Books, and a copy of Flash Comics #1 — specifically the Mile High pedigree copy rated CGC NM+ 9.6 — ranks at #5, valued at an estimated $274,000.

As recently as 2006, it was estimated at “only” 250,000. That’s still a bit out of my price range, though. I think I’ll stick with my $35 copy of The Golden Age Flash Archives Vol. 1 for now.

The post also says that the “milestone issue is currently ranked as the eighth most valuable comic book of all.” I’m not entirely sure how that fits with the ranking at #5 in the list.

Looking at this weeks new releases, I noticed the CMX manga title, The Girl Who Runs Through Time by Gaku Tsugano. From the description, it sounds like the character’s origin may have been inspired by the Flash:

Kazuko is a high school senior who has no idea what she wants to do in the future. Alone one day after school, she discovers a broken beaker in the science lab. She smells something sweet in the air, passes out, and finds herself transported back to her own past! Will Kazuko use her ability to travel through time wisely or selfishly?

Fumes from a broken beaker in a school science lab? Sounds like Jay Garrick’s origin to me! Time travel by running? Positively Flashy! (Though it looks like the “running” is actually metaphorical.)

The manga appears to be based on a 1976 1965 Japanese novel, The Girl Who Could Run Through Time by Yasutaka Tsutsui. According to Wikipedia, it’s been adapted to many media including at least two live-action films, an anime, and two TV series. To make matters more confusing, there’s a manga adaptation of the anime (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) in addition to this manga adaptation of the book.

The Girl Who Runs Through Time is a 2-parter, with Volume 1 out this week and Volume 2 coming in November.

The latest DC Direct Channel newsletter has more shipping changes for Final Crisis.

Final Crisis #4 has been pushed back again to October 22, and the next few issues have been rescheduled accordingly. That puts Final Crisis #5 on November 26, and Final Crisis #6 on December 31. (FC6 isn’t on the list, but the new date is on DC’s website.)

So it looks like December will have an issue of Final Crisis, after all.

There’s no new Flash comics this week, but Salvation Run is being collected, and Kingdom Come is being reprinted.

Salvation Run

Written by Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges; Art by Sean Chen and Walden Wong; Cover by Joe Corroney

The hit 7-issue miniseries spinning out of Countdown to Final Crisis is collected in this new trade paperback. Exiled to a distant hell planet, the villains of the DCU split into two warring factions led by Lex Luthor and The Joker!

Notes: While Salvation Run tended to focus on Luthor and the Joker, each issue was told from the point of view of one of the Flash’s Rogues, the first group of villains to be exiled to the planet for murdering Bart Allen.

Kingdom Come - New Edition

Written by Mark Waid; Art and Cover by Alex Ross

Eisner Award-winning artist Alex Ross provides an amazing new cover painting for this new edition of KINGDOM COME, which features a deluxe foldout cover only on its first printing! (Subsequent printings will not include the foldout.)

Written by Mark Waid and illustrated by Ross, this is the unforgettable, best-selling tale of a world spinning inexorably out of control. Waid and Ross weave a tale of youth versus experience, tradition versus change, and what defines a hero. KINGDOM COME is a riveting epic that pits the old guard – Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and their allies – against a new, uncompromising generation of heroes.

First off, Newsarama interviews Alan Burnett, whose 4-issue arc on The Flash started last week. He very carefully avoids giving out any spoilers, but talks about how he got the assignment and his history with reading The Flash.

Former Flash writer Mark Waid, now Editor-in-Chief of BOOM! Studios, speaks with writer Rockne O’Bannon about his upcoming Farscape comic books at Newsarama.

Marc Guggenheim, the final writer on Flash: The Fastest Man Alive, talks to the Pulse about Spider-Man, where he applies the Chewbacca Defense to “One More Day” and the end of the Spider-marriage, and to CBR about Eli Stone. (Pulse link via Lying in the Gutters; Comics Should be Good riffs on the OMD comments)

Monday’s Heroes featured the show’s first on-screen speedster, Daphne Millbrook. It was also a very good premiere. Season 3 is off to a much stronger start than last year.

Todd Klein, who designed the first post-Crisis Flash logo in 1987, looks at dots and dashes in comic lettering, and how the typewriter gave comics the double-dash (--) instead of the more standard em-dash (—). Among his examples: the last issue of Flash Comics and the lead story from Showcase #4, the last and first solo Golden Age and Silver Age Flash stories.

Speaking of Todd Klein, last Spring he wrote up a 4-part study of the Flash Logo from 1940 through the present day: Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4.

ABC has bought the TV rights to Robert J. Sawyer’s novel, Flashforward, based on a script by David S. Goyer (Batman Begins and the Flash movie that never happened) and Brannon Braga (Star Trek, 24). The network wants to turn it into a series, and thinks it could become a companion piece to Lost.

As described by Pop Critics (where I learned about the deal):

During [a scientific] experiment, as the button is pressed, the unexpected occurs: everyone in the world goes to sleep for a few moments while everyone’s consciousness is catapulted more than twenty years into the future. At the end of those moments, when the world reawakens, all human life is transformed by foreknowledge.

Why am I mentioning it here? Because I really like Robert J. Sawyer’s novels, and the word Flash is in the title. I discovered him through his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, and since then I’ve read Calculating God, Mindscan, and Rollback. I haven’t gotten to Flashforward yet, but it’s on my to-read list.

Sawyer tends to write social science-fiction: if X technological advance occurs, or Y scientific principle is discovered, what impact will that have on society? How would we react to discovering an alternate reality in which Neanderthals developed civilization instead of us? Or if aliens landed and claimed they had scientific proof that God exists and created the universe 14 billion years ago? What are the legal implications of being able to copy your personality into a virtually immortal, lifelike robot?

Regarding the title: In Sawyer’s blog, he mentions that the actual title is Flashforward, but because it was split into two words on the cover, it tends to get referred to as “Flash Forward.”

Arr! Barry Allen may not know how to celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day, but he do celebrate Jog Like a Pirate Day!

From Showcase #13, it’s “Around the World in 80 Minutes,” a tale of the Flash. (Mostly he runs around the world, helps people out, and gets kissed by women. Aye, it be good to be a superhero.)

(Cover via GCD. This story appears in Showcase Presents: The Flash vol.1 and The Flash Archives vol.1. And yeah, it’s a repost, but it’s from a year ago on my other blog, so I figure it’s fair game.)

In January, DC’s villains will take over the entire line for Faces of Evil. Each regular DC title will spotlight a villain for the month — much like the Rogue Profiles that Geoff Johns did during his run on The Flash, or the “New Year’s Evil” specials from 1998. The project was inspired* by the de-motivational posters DC has been running this year, and by the Final Crisis slogan, “The Day Evil Won.”

This might explain why December’s Flash #247, the conclusion of “This Was Your Life, Wally West,” was not solicited as the final issue of the series even though we know the book will stop for Flash: Rebirth. Even if Rebirth starts right on time in January, they could still run a one-shot focusing on, say, Zoom. Though I’d rather see a villain who hasn’t already had a spotlight issue in recent years.

Of course, I’m still holding out for the book to reach #250. So few series reach that milestone, and it would be sad for it to stop two issues short.

*Cynically, it occurs to me that this allows an extra month to finish Final Crisis before the entire line shifts from just before to just after the world-changing event.