Speed Force

Wow. Hard to believe it’s been three years since Speed Force launched!

Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting, and a huge thanks to fellow Speed Force writers Devin, Greg and Lia!

I replaced a couple of performance-enhancing plugins on this site today, and ran into some glitches during the switchover.

For various reasons, I’ve switched from W3 Total Cache back to WP Super-Cache. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, and the only thing stopping me was W3TC’s built-in support for uploading images to a CDN (Content Delivery Network). I found a plugin that works with WP Super-Cache, and made the switch.

Unfortunately, it’s built for a newer version of PHP than I have available, so I had to jump through some hoops to get it to work right. So if you’ve seen broken images here today, that’s why.

I think it’s all cleared up, but if you still have any problems, please let me know.

I remember staring at the Greg LaRocque cover for Flash #48 for the better part of an afternoon, terror frozen in time while a flare of hands stopped a hail of bullets.

Weekly trips to the general store turned into transparent check-ins for the latest issue of Flash.  Galvanized by the TV show, fandom took over.  After receiving and wearing-out a copy of The Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told, I saw the avenues and inroads throughout Flash’s fictional history.

I had fallen in love with the concept of moving faster than humanly possible, and the implications and consequences therein.  Challenging the limits of time and reality, while remaining grounded in a world of human limitations…what more could comics offer?

As I grew up, I was especially thrilled by something I had managed to overlook: the prose piece in the Greatest Flash Stories, “The Final Flash Storyline”.  I sought out each original installment at once.

Those waning days of almost unending tribulation and tragedy, spent in the constant specter of death, were unlike any other hero story I had read.  Written by longtime Flash scribe Cary Bates, the issue-by-issue cascade of the Final Flash Storyline broke my heart.  It also provided context, and weight.

The new world of The Flash’s protégé, carrying on in his name and dealing with a different set of challenges, made it simple for me to stay dyed crimson in the comic book wool.  What an amazing hook.

Along the way, I immersed myself in Kelson’s unparalleled Those Who Ride the Lightning site, a major source of information and reading material when I was putting together the bulk of my Flash collection.  I was of course very excited, as a fan, when the Speed Force blog launched.  Concentrated Flash news!

I hope I’m able to do justice to the standard set by Kelson, and Devin.
With a few interviews on the board, I’m looking forward to working and collaborating on some projects for this space, including:

• Annotations for the contents of the upcoming Trial of the Flash reprint, and related reading
• Reviews and analysis of the Flashpoint event and tie-ins
• More interviews with creators, and others linked to the generation of Flash stories, artwork and other media

You can follow me on Twitter, www.twitter.com/greg_elias.
Many thanks to Kelson!

So, yeah, the site’s been having some stability problems. Dreamhost has changed some settings to deal with disk issues, but the new settings require more memory, and it’s just been one big swallow-the-spider-to-catch-the-fly experience. It’s mostly working at this point, but if you end up having problems loading the site or making a comment, please let me know by email at speedforce at pobox.com or on Twitter at @speedforceorg.

Also, a lot of comment spam has been slipping through the last couple of days. It’s mostly the “I found your site on Google and this is such a fascinating analysis” type of robot-generated flattery (even on things like linkposts) that quietly links back to the spamvertised site. I’ve been clearing it out as quickly as I can, but they keep posting at times like when I’m on the road or in a meeting at work, etc.

The upshot is that I’ve turned on moderation for now. I don’t like to pre-moderate everything because that can slow down discussion, but I’ve set it to let through returning commenters and hold comments from new people until I have a chance to review them.

A few updates at Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning:

I’ve finally added an index of storylines from Rebirth onward, including the upcoming “Hot Pursuit” and Flashpoint stories. I also ended up combining the 1987-2006 and 2006-2008 indexes together in a 1987-2008 index that covers all of Wally West’s series, plus the brief Flash: The Fastest Man Alive.

Also added: the 75th Anniversary cover for Action Comics #892, referring back to the first Flash/Superman race in Superman #199. Check out the list of cover homages.

And I’ve updated the index of Rogue Profiles to include the last two issues featuring Captain Boomerang and the Reverse-Flash.

I’m trying out another web hosting option to see if it’ll clear up some of the database issues on the site. The switchover should happen around midnight Pacific Standard Time. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes, and the home page & posts should still be visible during that time, but of course with any server change there’s a possibility that something will go wrong or take longer than expected.

Update: It looks like the merge went smoothly. Yay!

Quick note – you may have noticed that the last few days have been guest posts and reposts. That’s because late Sunday night, my first son was born! I haven’t exactly had much time on the computer (other than transferring photos!), but I did schedule out 2 weeks of posts before we went into the hospital, so Speed Force will still be active while my wife and I are getting to know the baby. We’re all new at this!

Thanks to everyone who’s sent in a guest post so far, and to anyone still thinking of writing one, please submit it! I can definitely find room for it over the next few weeks!

I decided to take a little time this weekend (while I still had some!) to update a few items on Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning. I’ve finally posted an article on the Renegades (a.k.a. the Reverse-Flash Task Force), and put up a placeholder for Hot Pursuit even though the story arc dealing with him won’t launch until at least January. I also updated the cover variants list with Flash #6 and the preview art we’ve seen for Flash #7 & #8.

I wasn’t really sure where to file the Renegades. They play the role of villains, or at least antagonists, in “The Dastardly Death of the Rogues,” but from what we can see, they do appear to be the “good guys” of their era, acting on what they thought was solid information. I finally ended up putting them in the Heroes category, figuring that if they show up again, they’re more likely to play that role.

Everything seems to be up on the new server. I’m blogging from the train, so there’s only so much I can test, but with luck this will not only fix the problems the site has been having for the last few days, but also the behind-the-scenes flakiness of the previous few weeks.

There’s been a delay in the server move, and I’m kind of reluctant to add anything substantial until that’s resolved. Soon, I hope.

Meanwhile, my commute is such that I can’t get to the comic store until the weekend, so it’ll be a couple of days (at least) before I can pick up The Flash #6. It’s weird: I mostly don’t mind not being part of the Wednesday crowd anymore, but this is one case where it is kind of frustrating.

I guess at some point I’m going to have to find a new store and move my pull list.