Speed Force

We’re back with our series of notes and commentary on Cary Bates‘ “Death of Iris Allen” story from 1979-1980!  We’re leading up to the release of Showcase Presents: The Trial of the Flash, due in stores August 9th.  Links to artwork and research are included throughout this post.  For previous issues, click here!

UP TO SPEED: Iris Allen’s killer remains at large.  Professor Zoom has returned.  As he dispatches Flash, Zoom reveals that he knows the killer’s identity…

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In response to last week’s survey, we’re adding a Tumblr blog to Speed Force. Like the Facebook Page and Twitter stream, it’ll automatically pick up updates from the main site, plus there’ll be link & photo sharing and occasional short commentary that fits better on Tumblr.

We’re still settling in — and still working out the kinks in the cross-posting — but feel free to stop by, check it out, and if you see something isn’t working quite right, please let us know.

» SpeedForceOrg.tumblr.com

Speed Force contributors Devin “Flash” Johnson and Greg Elias take a look at last week’s Flashpoint: Reverse Flash one-shot, written by longtime Flash artist Scott Kolins and illustrated by Joel Gomez, with colors by Brian Buccellato.

Check out the comments after the jump…

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Salutations Speed Readers,

About a month ago popular shoe retailer, Journeys announced that Converse and DC Comics would be teaming up again to release another round of DC Comics inspired Chuck Taylor’s (or just Chucks) with five of them being Journeys store exclusives. Out of the five exclusives we finally got a pair of official Flash Chucks. I preordered my own pair a month ago and they finally arrived yesterday.

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Comic Book Resources posted a 3-page preview of Flashpoint: Green Arrow Industries, a one-shot due in stores this Wednesday. Of possible interest to Flash fans: These panels, in which Oliver Queen explains how they studied equipment confiscated from super-villains and used it to improve their own weapons technology.

It’s a counterpoint to an idea that comes up occasionally in reference to high-tech villains: Why don’t they just patent their inventions and rake in more money than they could possibly have made on bank heists, without worrying about getting beaten up and thrown in jail? The answer is usually that they do it for the thrill…but then why doesn’t anyone else come up with business uses for the technology?

Chances are these one-panel appearances are all we’ll see of these villains in that particular issue (though we’ve already seen more of the Trickster in Flashpoint: Citizen Cold), but it’s interesting that all three of them are Flash villains: The Trickster, the Folded Man, and the Top.

This post has an “Atomic Top Grenade” value of 3.

Starting in July, DC Comics Retroactive series will bring back classic creators to the characters they helped define.  Covering the last three decades of the 20th Century, the three Flash issues will feature writer Cary Bates (1970s), writer William Messner-Loebs and artist Greg LaRocque (1980s), and writer Brian Augustyn (1990s).

LaRocque was the penciller on Flash for the entirety of Messner-Loebs’ tenure from 1988 – 1991, and illustrated a portion of Mark Waid’s run including the classic “Born to Run” and “The Return of Barry Allen”.  In all, LaRocque pencilled nearly 60 issues of Flash over a five-year stretch.

We’ve previously interviewed LaRocque about his work on “The Return of Barry Allen,” and contacted him via email when the Retroactive issue was announced.  Once the artwork was complete, he provided us with some details.  He also posted preview images on Facebook last week, and those are included below along with the solicited cover.  See what the man has to say after the jump…

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A local movie theater has been running special screenings of the extended-edition Lord of the Rings trilogy over the last few weeks (almost certainly in connection with this week’s Blu-Ray release). I just watched Green Lantern, another movie in which a ring figures prominently, at the same theater. And of course we’re knee-deep in Flashpoint. The stories collided in a mental three-car pile-up during an afternoon running errands, and I started thinking: What would The Lord of the Rings have been like as a modern “event” comic book like Final Crisis or Blackest Night?

• The Hobbit would have been subtitled, “Countdown to Lord of the Rings,” and continuity wouldn’t have lined up quite right with the main series.*
• The core story would have been six volumes, with the first three shipping on time, and increasing delays for volumes four, five and six.
• We would have seen side stories and flashbacks in specials or miniseries such as “Lord of the Rings: War in the North,” “Lord of the Rings: Arwen’s Story,” “Lord of the Rings: Faramir’s War” and “Lord of the Rings: Balin’s Last Stand.”
• The first issue of the main series would have been accompanied by plastic replicas of The One Ring. The first issue of each tie-in miniseries would have included one of the rings given to elves, dwarves, or men.
• To fill the gaps in the schedule, they would have added additional character specials like “Lord of the Rings: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil” and “Lord of the Rings: Radagast the Brown.”
• The main series would have ended with destroying the ring, and a group of follow-up miniseries would have detailed “Lord of the Rings Aftermath: The Scouring of the Shire”, “Lord of the Rings Aftermath: The Greening of Isengard” and “Lord of the Rings Aftermath: Quest for the Entwives”
• “Bow and Axe,” an adventure-comedy-buddy series starring Legolas and Gimli, would be the most successful of several ongoing spinoffs. “Settlers of Mordor,” on the other hand, would be canceled after just a few issues.

And then there are all the alternate-universe stories that would show up several years down the line, set in a world in which they failed to destroy the ring.

So…what do you think would have changed?

*Actually, this one really did happen. In the original edition of The Hobbit, Gollum gives Bilbo the ring as the prize for winning the riddle contest. By the time Tolkein got to The Lord of the Rings, that completely contradicted the ring’s effect on its bearers. He revised The Hobbit so that Bilbo finds the ring on his own, then wrote into LOTR that Bilbo had lied in the first edition to make himself look better.

Linkblogging for the weekend…

Flash and Flashpoint:

• That F’ing Monkey: Flash Friday: Holy Grails reveals a Flash board game from 1967.
• A Noob’s View of Flashpoint at Primary Ignition
• Remember Jerome K. Moore’s Young Justice Flash Family Portrait? Here’s a follow-up: Young Justice Flash Family 2.
• Geoff Johns gets profiled by the Detroit Free Press

The DC Relaunch is still a hot topic:

• Agent of S.T.Y.L.E.: The Fashion of the DCnU! Part 2
• Reboot? Revamp? Make up your mind! Comic Book Revolution calls out DC Comics
• Another pass at an alternate DCU relaunch from She Has No Head! at CSBG
• Newsarama talks to the M.I.A. CREATORS of the DCnU
• A Visual Guide To The DC Relaunch at Bleeding Cool
• The Grumpy Color: Robot 6′s Grumpy Old Fan and Fifth Color get together to dig into the DCU relaunch in a two-part article.
  New Jim Lee Justice League art from the ‘Toon Tumblers series of collectible glasses.

Speed Force is currently on Facebook, Twitter, and Buzz, and by that I mean that updates are pushed to those sites, and I try to post links and respond to comments on those sites. (Well, Facebook and Twitter, anyway. Buzz has kind of fallen by the wayside, but with roughly 750 followers on Twitter, 600 on Facebook, and 22 on Buzz, it doesn’t seem like there’s much demand. Updates are automatic, though.)

In the interest of making it easy for you to keep up with the site, so I wonder what else is out there that might be worth connecting to the blog. Obviously, there are a lot of sites out there, but one key piece of social media advice has stuck in my head: “What’s the best social network to use? The one you’ll actually keep up with.”

So here’s my question:

If I were to add Speed Force to one more social network, what would you want it to be?

Follow @SpeedForceOrg

Awesometoyblog.com announced earlier this week that an exclusive Flashpoint Edition Professor Zoom will be available at San Diego Comic Con 2011.  Just like the exclusive White Lantern Flash released at C2E2 and Wondercon, this figure will be distributed by popular pop culture T-Shirt company, Graphitti Designs and will be limited to 4000 pieces (fairly big leap from the 1000 available for White Lantern Flash).

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