May 31, 2010
The linkblogging catchup continues!
Comics Should Be Good features Flash #54: “Nobody Dies” (William Messner-Loebs and Greg LaRocque) in their Year of Cool Comics. It’s one of my favorite one-issue stories from Wally West’s run, and not surprisingly it made the reader-selected list of top 10 Wally West stories a few weeks later.
A bit off topic, CSBG also reviews Mysterius the Unfathomable. It was a fun fantasy/horror/comedy miniseries last year, and is now available as a trade paperback.
Multiversity Comics recommends the new Flash series. Among other reasons: “he has a secret identity which actually gets used, instead of being forgotten for more exciting superhero stories.” And of course, “Flash has some of the best and most fleshed out rogues in the business.”
Update: One more! Several Flash storylines appear in CSBG’s Greatest Mark Waid Stories Ever Told list: Dead Heat, Terminal Velocity and The Return of Barry Allen.
More linkblogging! Here are some (mostly) non-Flash-related posts on general comics, fandom, and online community issues.
Orbital Vector analyzes an aspect of super-speed that’s usually glossed over: Just How Old is the Flash, subjectively? (via dhusk’s comment on the Flashes’ experience post)
Techland has eight questions for comics creators to consider before putting a book on the market. (via @SpeedsterSite)
Multiversity Comics looks at some of the pros and cons of waiting for the trade.
Comic Vine has 5 Things to be Aware of When Buying Back Issues.
What do websites with open comments do when they realize that people are jerks? Reining in Nasty Comments. (via @ThisIsTrue) I’m reminded of Penny Arcade’s expression of the Greater Internet ****wad Theory (NSFW language): Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total ****wad.
Poll: You find a typo in one of your old blog/LiveJournal/etc. posts. Do you fix it?
Technologizer tracks down the origin of the term Fanboy (via The Beat)
High Five Comics considers The Problem with Madame Lady Girl-Woman.
In the 1940s, Crash Comics introduced a super-hero named Blue Streak. He was a “skilled fighter.” With that name, how did they not make him a speedster?
There have been a lot of articles on the battle for the future of Comic-Con International, but one question jumped out at me in this one at Deadline Hollywood: Jeff Katz asks, “Are you a fan show with trade elements, or are you a trade show that lets in fans…or is there a happy medium?”
May 30, 2010
Some art-related linkblogging…
Yildiray Cinar draws an impressive Reverse Flash (via @SpeedsterSite)
There’s a new Rogue in town…a new Rogues blog, that is: The Rogues Kick Ass (via @liabrown1). So far, it’s mostly comedic scans from published comics. (Context? What context?)
This is Knutz presents: The Rogues as kittens. (via @SpeedsterSite) Hilarious!
The Best Comic Covers looks back on the 9 Best Superman vs Flash Covers.
Various people at DC Comics weigh in on their favorite DC covers. Dan Didio’s is Michael Turner’s Flash #207 (via @SpeedsterSite).
Last week, Once Upon a Geek posted a series of poster galleries, including the JSA, Flash, Green Lantern, Sandman, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and more.
Behind the Scenes
Francis Manapul has been posting a lot of Flash art on Twitter lately: the uncolored art for the Flash #5 cover and five pages from Flash #2.
Val Victory’s review of the Flash: Rebirth hardcover includes scans of Ethan Van Sciver’s discarded designs for Wally West’s new costume.
Lots of places have been posting about Wednesday Comics with the release of the hardcover this week. The Source has some of the extras, including art from Karl Kerschl’s Flash strip.
Comic Strips
OK, none of these strips are Flash-related… but I had to share them anyway.
Comic Critics points out that Gotham City is a bad place to open themed businesses.
Creebobby presents Batman after a bad night on patrol: Bat-Fail.
nedroid has been posting comic strips based on LOST, including Ben and Hurley #2: An Amazing Discovery. (via @TheNerdyBird)
A few brief news items:
Top Cow’s delayed Velocity #1 is shipping June 16. I’ve been looking forward to this since reading the Pilot Season book, though of course this is an entirely new creative team. On the plus side, it’s a miniseries, so there’s not a huge commitment to picking it up.
Cartoon Network will be producing a Green Lantern animated series. Green Lantern: First Flight
was pretty good, but of course there’s no guarantee that any of the same people will be working on this.
DC will be teaming up with TASCHEN Books to produce 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking. Basically it’s a history of DC Comics. How soon can I pre-order this?
Hypergeek notes that the UK graphic novel Whatever Happened to the World’s Fastest Man? has been nominated for the 2009 Eagle Awards. From his review, it looks like it’s not about a speester so much as it’s about a man who can stop time, and reluctantly becomes a hero. I’m going to have to look for this one as well. [Edit: I should note that I stopped reading the review once I decided the book looked interesting, just in case there were spoilers.]
May 27, 2010
The Hollywood Reporter reports on a presentation by Warner Bros. chariman and CEO Barry Meyer to investors. The big news is a release date for the next Sherlock Holmes movie (December 2011), but he also talked about upcoming super-hero movies, saying that the Flash movie is “nearing” a greenlight.
WB has previously said that they intend to make DC’s super-heroes the new “tentpole” movies once the Harry Potter series is over (the last book has been split into two films, with part two coming out in July next year). Green Lantern will arrive in theaters June 17, 2011, and Batman and Superman films are in the works for 2012. Meyer also mentioned Wonder Woman and Aquaman movies in development…and, oddly enough, Mad Magazine characters. (I’m blanking. Maybe a live-action Spy vs. Spy? Could the premise actually sustain a full-length movie?)
The Flash has taken a long, slow road to the silver screen, starting with the David Goyer version announced in 2004. Since then, Warner Bros. has gone darker, lighter, then darker again, dropped Goyer’s script entirely, and run through several directors. The current version of the film is being written by Dan Mazeau from a story treatment by Geoff Johns.
Lucky Aussies. Batman: The Brave and the Bold’s Facebook page announced a couple of hours ago that The Flash Family will be appearing this Saturday for the first time together (although Jay had an appearance in the episode “Trials of the Demon” last year) and it will be airing in Australia first.
Australian fans will be able to watch a brand new, never before seen episode this Saturday on Nine Network’s Kids WB block at 10:35a! “Requiem for a Scarlet Speedster!” Barry Allen has long been presumed dead, but his “ghost” has been haunting Jay Garrick and Kid Flash. When Batman sees it too, they realize he is not dead!
Definitely sounds like a great episode in the making. I have to wonder though, who is under the cowl of Kid Flash? Wally West or Bart Allen? Since Barry has been long presumed dead in this continuity as well, did Wally ever step up to take over the mantle? Or did Jay just jump back into the role after Barry disappeared? And if either is the case how in the heck is Kid Flash still a “Kid”? Just how long are we talking about here?
As usual I can’t wait until we see more toy prospects. We’ve already seen a picture of The Brave and the Bold Flash (Barry Allen), I wonder if there is any chance we will be seeing a Jay Garrick and a Kid Flash in the near future as well? Flash Family box set? Yes please.
Interesting to note, this will be the first time we will ever be seeing The Flash Family all at once in a TV Show or movie. So excited for all the big things they have lined up for The Flash franchise.
-Devin “The Flash” Johnson
May 26, 2010
So we just heard back from Arroba Silver and we finally have a winner for Speed Force and Arroba Silver’s Design and Win Your Own Flash Ring Contest. Please congratulate Joey Forlini on his sleek and stylish Flash ring design bringing home the gold. Or in this case, the silver:
For his efforts, Joey will be receiving a sterling silver replica of his ring design and his ring will be featured for a limited run on Arroba Silver’s product line of officially licensed DC Comics’ rings and jewelry! Date of availability for the ring has not yet been determined but you better believe that Speed Force is on top of it and will get the details out to you all, as soon as they become available.
We have to thank you all yet again for entering and making Speed Force’s first contest a solid success. We will definitely be doing more contests in the future so keep an eye out.
-Devin “The Flash” Johnson
May 25, 2010
The long-awaited hardcover edition of Wednesday Comics is out this week, featuring all 15 strips from last summer’s weekly series in all their 11×17″ oversized glory:
- ADAM STRANGE written and illustrated by Paul Pope
- BATMAN written by Brian Azzarello with art by Eduardo Risso including additional panel art on each page!
- METAMORPHO written by Neil Gaiman with art by Michael Allred
- DEADMAN written by Dave Bullock and Vinton Heuck with art by Dave Bullock
- THE DEMON AND CATWOMAN written by Walter Simonson with art by Brian Stelfreeze
- THE FLASH written by Karl Kerschl and Brenden Fletcher with art by Karl Kerschl
- GREEN LANTERN written by Kurt Busiek with art by Joe Quinones
- HAWKMAN written and illustrated by Kyle Baker
- KAMANDI written by Dave Gibbons with art by Ryan Sook
- THE METAL MEN written by Dan DiDio with art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Kevin Nowlan
- SGT. ROCK written by Adam Kubert with art by Joe Kubert
- SUPERGIRL written by Jimmy Palmiotti with art by Amanda Conner
- SUPERMAN written by John Arcudi with art by Lee Bermejo
- TEEN TITANS written by Eddie Berganza with art by Sean Galloway
- WONDER WOMAN written and illustrated by Ben Caldwell
The Fletcher/Kerschl Flash strip was my favorite Flash story of 2009 (yes, I liked it better than Flash: Rebirth or Blackest Night: The Flash). It was fun, full of crazy ideas and adventure, and played around with the format, making use of the fact that it was being told as a newspaper comic strip.
Wednesday Comics sells for $49.99, though you can find it for less if you shop around. (Amazon’s selling it at $31.49
to start, though since they get their inventory on a book publishing schedule, they won’t have Wednesday Comics until next Tuesday.)
Other Flash appearances this week include:
May 24, 2010
During the late 1970s, DC redesigned Adventure Comics as a Golden Age-style anthology series, where each oversized issue would contain four or more different features. It didn’t last very long — after only eight issues, it went back to a standard size and price. The Flash, Deadman, and Justice Society features appeared in every issue, with Wonder Woman and Aquaman appearing in most of them. Edit: I forgot to mention, these features ran through Adventure Comics #459–466.
While the Flash stories in Adventure Comics were written by the regular writer on the book, Cary Bates, they took a drastically different approach. The main series was structured around long, multi-part stories featuring the Flash and Barry Allen’s supporting cast. The Adventure stories were quick one-offs. In fact, only two of the eight stories featured regular Flash villains! Instead they featured strange monsters or bizarre situations. It was sort of a deliberate throwback to the Silver Age during the Bronze Age.
The Adventure Comics run also spanned a period of transition for the Flash: The death of Iris Allen. She appears in three of the early stories (but doesn’t go with Barry to his high school reunion), isn’t mentioned in several, and by the end, Barry is grieving for her.
The Stories
#459: The Crimson Comets of Fallville High – Barry Allen attends his 15th high school reunion and a former classmate picks up his identity through ESP.
#460: A Nightmare To Remember! – After visiting Earth-2, Barry Allen finds himself in a bizarre reversed version of Keystone City, where the Shade has been elected mayor and Joan Garrick has divorced Jay and remarried the Fiddler.
#461: The Multiple Murders of Mapleville – Barry and Iris are traveling, and stop in a small town for gas. Barry gets framed for murder. There’s a major plot hole in this one, where a gun is set up as compelling him to fire it, but the compulsion is never mentioned again.
#462: The She-Demon of the Astral Plane – Iris meets an old flame who is studying astral projection, and has to try it out…but an extra-dimensional creature wants to follow her back and take over her body.
#463: Urtumi the Image-Eater – The Flash encounters an alien monster who formed the basis of local Native American legends. This one was weird enough I had to write it up.
#464: The Day Up Was Down – Abra Kadabra turns Central City upside-down — literally — looking for an applause machine.
#465: Who Is Invading Central City? – A sonic boom causes the Flash to pick up telepathic transmissions from creatures who can’t figure out what the invading humans want.
#466: The Cloud With the Lethal Lining! – The Weather Wizard turns over a new leaf and tries to use his powers to help people. It doesn’t last. And I really shouldn’t be bothered by the Flash running up a lightning bolt in a story where sunspots cause the Weather Wizard to turn good, but there are limits, you know?
Update: I’ve added the issue numbers to the list of stories.
Remember the Battlestar Galactica cake? For last night’s LOST finale, my wife made an authentic DHARMA Initiative chocolate cake, and pizzas with the Swan and Orchid logos.
The cake is chocolate, with homemade buttercream icing (vanilla for the background, chocolate for the design). The pizzas have an outer ring of sausage, with bell pepper strips for the I Ching. The Swan logo is cut from a bell pepper. The Orchid is cut from a tomato, and placed on the pizza after baking.
For more views, including in-progress pictures, close-ups, and making-of commentary, check out the LOST finale food photos on Flickr.
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