I don’t think I’ve seen anyone in this costume before.

More than half of you came over from my longer-established site, Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning, and just over a fifth of you discovered this blog through some sort of search. Another 10% learned about the site through another blog, either through an article or through a sidebar link.

A handful or respondents found out about the site through forums and social networks (Twitter, Facebook and Buzz).

What I found particularly interesting: Not one person reported discovering the site though StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, or another link sharing site. I get a fair amount of traffic from StumbleUpon and Reddit, but it seems that even if they’re good at bringing in casual viewers, they’re not terribly effective at creating regular readers.

Thanks again, everyone!

Full results after the cut:

DC has posted four variant covers on The Source, including Ale Garza’s cover for The Flash #6. Edit: The solicitation credits Ale Garza and Sandra Hope. I can’t read the signatures, so I’m guessing she’s the inker.

The first four issues of the series featured alternate covers that had little to do with the story: the Flash running, or changing into his costume. The fifth (coming late September) will be part of the massive 12-part White Lantern image for Brightest Day. This is the first one to relate directly to the story, featuring the Flash vs. the Renegades.

The Flash #6 is currently scheduled for October 27.

DC has announced a soundtrack compilation featuring music from movie and TV adaptations of their characters. The collection goes all the way back to the 1941 Superman cartoons by Max Fleischer Studios and runs up through Green Lantern: First Flight. A lot of it is previously unavailable material, like music from the 1967 Filmation cartoons, Super Friends and Justice League Unlimited, and the live-action Swamp Thing and Shazam! TV shows. There are also familiar tracks like John Williams’ Superman theme, Danny Elfman’s Batman, and the themes from the 1960s Batman and 1970s Wonder Woman TV series.

CBR has a detailed article, and The Source has the track list. Neither article has a release date more detailed than “later this year,” but Amazon lists September 28.

I was surprised not to see anything from the 1990 Flash TV series (though they do have the Flash intro from the Filmation cartoons), but they may have decided it didn’t represent the Flash appropriately. Danny Elfman’s theme for the show does sound a lot like his Batman theme.

If you do want to pick up music from the Flash TV series, you can still get La La Land Records’ limited edition 2-CD soundtrack, featuring Elfman’s theme and Shirley Walker’s score from eight episodes.

Like Woot (source of the Flash vs. Apple shirt), TeaFury sells one design each day, but unlike Woot, they don’t offer second chances. The design by artist Joao Lauro Fonte will only be available until midnight EDT (sorry I didn’t spot it earlier), so if you want one, run over and buy it fast. They’ll be gone…in a flash. Update: They’re all gone now.

(via Gfest)

• The Flash #5 is now September 22 (previously September 15).
• The Flash #6 is now October 27 (previously September 29).
• The Flash #7 is now November 10 (previously October 13).
• The Flash #8 is still November 24.

Meanwhile, over at Top Cow, Velocity #2 is still in its most recent spot on September 15.

Update September 2:

• The Flash #7 is now November 17.
• The Flash #8 is now December 8.
• Velocity #2 is now September 22. That means Velocity and The Flash are synced up again.

Flash

• Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep talks about how he’d write The Flash. Three words: Barry and Iris. (via Michael Kaiser)
• Quick Time contemplates the Boomerangs: What went wrong with Captain Boomerang, Jr.? And just what is White Lantern Captain Boomerang’s mission?
• That F’ing Monkey explains: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Flash.
• Firestorm Fan digs out an old Super-Powers adventure: Darkseid… of the Moon

Other speedsters

• Impulse Flashback: Bart Allen’s first day of school at Comics Should Be Good’s Year of Cool Comics
• First Comics News’ Sonic The Hedgehog Month is almost over
• Top Cow will be selling the SDCC and Supercon Velocity #1 variants through retail in November

Other comics

• Young Justice cartoon: Comic Book Movie interviews producers Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti.
• Comics Alliance analyzes the Brightest Day/White Lantern Teaser. Also worth a look: The most divisive character types in comics.
• Grumpy Old Fan looks at the real history of the DC Universe: its characters.
• Girls Gone Geek (G3) considers DC’s Legacy of Legacies (via @FlashJohnson)
• A Dispensible List of Comic Book Lists presents the stories behind the discoveries of 11 incredible comic collections. #
• Girls Read Comics Too tackles the question of DC vs. Marvel, asking: Why is it even a debate?(via @SpeedsterSite)
• Chewie and Han T-shirt (in the style of Calvin and Hobbes)
• Geekscape asks: have we had our fill of super-heroes?

CBR covers FanExpo’s DC Nation without revealing any Flash news, though they did plug Francis Manapul’s role on the TV show Beast Legends.

@liabrown1 caught a few bits of info at today’s DC Universe panel:

• Flash will intro a new character in the 2nd story arc. Afterwards will be Secret Origins. #
• Flashpoint will greatly affect the Justice League, but otherwise DiDio refused to talk about it. #
• On Adventure Comics: currently the Legion, then Flashpoint, then a new char will lead the book. #

Update: CBR’s FanExpo DC Universe report is now online.

Newsarama covers Baltimore’s DC Nation with a live-blog, including this exchange:

Q: Is Sterling Gates’s Kid Flash book coming out?
Gates: nope.
Sattler: “But we have something really cool in its place that we can’t talk about.”

They may be talking about the second Flash book, Flash: Speed Force, that Geoff Johns leaked/announced in San Diego. (I got the impression that they weren’t quite ready to announce it at the time.) Or they may have something else in the works.

Update: CBR’s Baltimore DC Nation report is up as well.

Update (Monday): a bit more news from DC’s Sunday Conversation (Baltimore, via CBR):

Where should fans of Wally West be directing their attention? “It’s coming,” Gates said. “Geoff Johns is world-building for Barry Allen right now.”

Yeah, and tomorrow is a rest day. As much as I’m enjoying the new series, I’m really cynical when it comes to DC’s treatment of Wally West these days.

Update (Monday): ComicsAlliance’s FanExpo DC Nation write-up includes Dan Didio explaining that “the constant reinventing of the same characters was getting confusing and factionalizing our audience,” so they decided to pick one Flash, one Atom, etc. and standardize on the “classic” version.

Never mind that in some cases, the “classic” version was dead or retired before they made this decision, and never mind the fact that they also insist that Blue Beetle Ted Kord will stay dead, and Renee Montoya will continue to be the Question. And I don’t see Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, either. So the explanation doesn’t quite add up.

The panel appears in part three of the story, which summarizes the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths and explains the original Multiverse. I’ve labeled the Flashes I recognize, but I believe the rest are new creations. The mask in the upper right with the goggles reminds me a little of the Crime Society Johnny Quick (who would not make his first appearance until the end of 52). The full face mask directly below Barry Allen reminds me a bit of the suit in the JLI Elseworlds Annual.

So why create new Flashes just for one-time cameos instead of using existing obscure characters? There actually weren’t that many alternate realities explored before Crisis — at least, not realities that were similar to the mainstream Earth-1/Earth-2 dynamic with DC’s major heroes. Once you got as far as Earth-4, they were dealing with the Charlton heroes, or the Quality heroes, or the Fawcett heroes, worlds that didn’t have a Flash.

They could have pulled in some examples from Grant Morrison’s “Second Crisis” story in Animal Man, or from some of the settings retroactively added to the pre-Crisis multiverse like Kingdom Come or the Tangent Comics Flash, but they may have wanted to stick with “real” characters who were actually around at the time of COIE. That leaves the Zoo Crew’s Fastback or the Justa Lotta Animals’ Crash, but they were going for a serious tone with this story. A talking turtle with super-speed might have spoiled the mood!

I assume it’s either a wraparound or a pair of 50/50 variant covers.

The Donna Troy vs. Superwoman and Supergirl vs. Ultra-Man battles dominate the image, but there’s also Power Ring vs. Jade, Batman vs. Owlman, and (way in the background) Jesse Quick vs. Johnny Quick.

Ever since James Robinson mentioned that the JLA would be going up against the Crime Syndicate, I’d wondered which version of the villainous team they’d be facing. The original version? The Crime Society on Earth-3? Between this and Syndicate Rules in the previous series, it looks like the Morrison/Quitely version from JLA: Earth-2 has been established as the primary version of the team, though they have gone back to the Kyle Rayner analog for Power Ring.

Update: Here’s a close-up (loosely speaking) of part of the Jesse Quick/Johnny Quick battle.