December 15, 2008
Okay, some catching up!
Comic Nexus’ Who’s Who in the DCU discusses the “Wally West conundrum”.
4thLetter! mulls the link between Santa Claus and the speed force.
Dan Didio discusses legacy vs. iconic characters (among lots of other stuff) in his latest 20 Questions column
Blog@Newsarama reviews Geoff Johns’ career to date.
DC’s solicitations for March come out later today. There won’t be any new Flash books (though The Flash Archives Vol.5 comes out that month), so it’ll be mainly team books that feature fast guys in red.
Edit: Also, today’s installment of What Were They Thinking shows one of those “classic” Flash/Green Lantern pairings — or rather, super-hero fights — complete with a giant-head Flash!
December 14, 2008
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December 12, 2008
Flash: Rebirth artist Ethan Van Sciver’s latest Your Time is Now Mine column features, as promised last week, a sneak peek at the miniseries’ artwork.
Hmm, looks like Barry Allen visiting the Flash Museum in his secret identity.
Click through for a larger image and lots of random commentary.
Flash: Rebirth #1 of 6 ships in April 2009.
December 9, 2008
Geoff Johns has announced that he will be leaving Justice Society of America — a title that he has co-written even through a relaunch for nearly a decade — after the upcoming Justice Society of America #26.
At the center of his announcement is this:
The JSA to me represents everything good about life, work and superheroes. In life, generations past, present and future all provide different viewpoints. There can be something magical when it’s past from grandfather to father to son or from mother to daughter or son to grandfather. There’s nothing more important than family – and family means a lot more than just blood relatives. That’s what my very first book, STARS & S.T.R.I.P.E., was about and that’s what JSA, and life, is about.
So why am I leaving?
I have more stories to tell, and the characters are endless, but that’s also true for the DC Universe. I’m ready to move on to some other challenges like returning to THE FLASH and SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGIN. And I am also obsessed with making sure that GREEN LANTERN, BLACKEST NIGHT and everything around it is the absolute best it can possibly be.…and that’s only part of 2009. There are some new projects on the horizon.
It’s a shock to see him leave the book after so long, but as he says, the DC Universe is huge, and I can absolutely understand wanting to explore more facets of it.
Of course, this being a Flash blog, I’ll have to point out the phrasing, “returning to The Flash.” That may just be a reference to Flash: Rebirth, but it certainly sounds like he plans to stick around afterward.
(via Comic Book Resources)
And I thought there wouldn’t be any big Flash news to cover this week…
Update: Newsarama has an interview in which Geoff Johns clarifies what he’ll be working on next year:
With my runs on Action Comics and Justice Society of America coming to a close I’ll be focusing on Green Lantern, The Flash: Rebirth, Superman: Secret Origin and Blackest Night. Technically that gives me one monthly book and three mini-series, but by the time 2009 is over I’ll be back on three monthly books. So that’s what it’ll look like a year from now.
Newsarama’s article about the NYCC Premiere of Wonder Woman includes this surprising information:
Other animated films slated to be in development are Batman, Superman, the Flash, Green Lantern, and the Justice League.
It’s undoubtedly a long way off, but we’re likely to see a Flash installment in the home video–market animated series that includes Superman: Doomsday, Justice League: New Frontier, Batman: Gotham Knight and next spring’s Wonder Woman long before we see a live-action theatrical movie.
(Or, Newsarama could be getting the animated series mixed up with the perpetually–in–development hell Flash movie.)
Thanks to reader Theodore rrrr for spotting this!
This week the Flash appears in Final Crisis (yes, it’s on the schedule!), Justice League of America, The Titans, and a new volume of Justice Society of America: Thy Kingdom Come.
Final Crisis #5
Humanity enslaved! Time shattered and bleeding! Anti-Life triumphant! Can Earth’s demoralized, beaten heroes rally their scattered forces for the ultimate super-battle against the nightmare armies of Apokolips when the forces of good meet the forces of evil on the bridge to Blüdhaven? As Darkseid’s presence causes reality itself to sicken and the lights to go out across the universe, as even the Guardians fall, the true power of the evil gods finally reveals itself, and a major character returns for a shocking conclusion.
Does the secret of humankind’s salvation lie in a mysterious cave painting and a bolt of lightning? Or has the Last Day come for us all?
Written by Grant Morrison. Art and covers by J.G. Jones, Carlos Pacheco & Jesus Merino.
More after the cut. Read the rest of this entry »
December 7, 2008
Even with Final Crisis #5 coming out this week, it’s going to have to be a light one for blogging. Deadlines at work, so I may be staying late, plus I’m sick. (Great combination, huh?)
If I have time I’ll try to finish one of several half-done posts I’ve been working on. And I’ll check the usual news sites in the evening, though I doubt there will be much in the way of huge Flash news this week.
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December 6, 2008
Geoff Johns talks to MTV about DC Universe Online, saying that the massively-multiplayer game is likely to ship in early 2010 or late 2009. He also says he’d love to tackle a Flash or Superman movie.
And speaking of movies, Variety reports that the film industry is starting to take super-heroes seriously, and looks into which characters are likely candidates for the big screen.
Michael Doran, co-founder and senior editor of the comicbook news site Newsarama, sees the most movie potential for DC Comics’ the Flash.
“Superspeed just is so elemental,” he says. “The character, especially the Wally West version — the fast-talking, quick-witted type — his personality almost matches his superpowers.”
Back to the fan perspective, Comix 411 has a wishlist for the Flash movie, and Siskoid looks at “The Human Race”.
December 5, 2008
A couple of notes on recent changes here at Speed Force:
1. You may have noticed a welcome banner appearing from time to time on the site. That’s something I’ve been trying out here and at K-Squared Ramblings, and presents an appropriate message to viewers coming from various search sites and social networks. In theory you should only see it once, or at most once a week, if you allow cookies. It’s powered by the Wp Greet Box plugin, and I go into more detail at K²R.
2. I’ve been trying to balance software speed with download speed, especially for visitors on mobile handsets. I used to run WordPress Mobile Edition, which tries to detect most phones and other small-screen, low-bandwidth devices, but it doesn’t work well with server caching. Since I upgraded to a G1 phone, I’ve been trying out WPTouch, which presents a clean interface on the iPhone and on phones that run the Android browser. If you read this site with a mobile device, please let me know how well it works. I’ll probably be tweaking this some more.
3. I’ve updated to a new version of WordPress. Actually, I’ve jumped the gun a bit by installing the WP 2.7 release candidate. (I’ve also dropped the WP_Identicons plugin in favor of the built-in Identicon support, but it generates different avatars than the plugin did. Sorry if you liked your old one better!)
The new version supports threaded comments, but the theme I’m using isn’t compatible with them. I’ll take a stab at updating it manually this weekend.
Anyway, there may be some wonkiness with the upgrade. If you stumble on something odd, please let me know.
4. Holding steady at #8 on Comic Blog Elite. Or at least I was until today.
5. Can’t believe I missed the six-month mark. Half a year! The downside is that I’ve been somewhat neglecting updates at Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning in order to keep this going.
6. More social networking coming up. I’ve added the Twitter account SpeedForceOrg, and I’m working on something to tie this into Facebook. (And yeah, I’ve got a backlog of friend requests. Sorry about that.)
