Tonight’s episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, “The Golden Age of Justice,” features more guest stars than usual: not only the return of the Flash, but the entire Justice Society of America!
CBR has preview images from the episode, which airs at 7:30 tonight (which means it probably just finished on the east coast).
Warner Home Video has released more images from the upcoming home video release, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, including views of the Flash and the Crime Syndicate, including the evil version of Johnny Quick. (via Robot 6)
Rikdad takes an extensive look at science in The Flash — where it makes sense, where it doesn’t, and how various writers have tackled the problem.
Behind the Voice Actors has several pages comparing the Flash’s portrayals in animation and games ranging from the Filmation cartoons through Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. (Thanks to Mike for the link.)
Once Upon a Geek apologizes to Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver for doubting them on Wally West’s future.
Multiversity Comics spotlights Captain Cold.
The Press Democrat’s Four Colors blog sums up the Flash, starting with Barry Allen’s death in Crisis on Infinite Earths and looking at the speedster’s current status in Flash: Rebirth.
It’s time to update that other Flash: the one on your computer! On Tuesday, Adobe release a security fix, so if you haven’t already updated it this week, head over to Adobe’s download page and grab the new version. Details here. Also: If you use Adobe AIR, it’s got an update too.
Robert J. Sawyer explains the FlashForward schedule, and exactly what has changed since the second half of the season was pushed to March.
Newsarama has the trailer for DC’s upcoming direct-to-DVD/Blu-Ray animated film, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, and IESB has details on the release.
Comics Continuum reports that Josh Keaton will voice the Flash in the cartoon, and adds that Keaton is the voice of Peter Parker on The Spectacular Spider-Man.
The movie is currently scheduled to arrive in stores on February 23, 2010.
Comics Alliance has a couple of Flashy items: First, a page from the Shortpacked! coloring book: Batman Can Breathe In Space, But Not The Flash.
Second: they look back at a pair of Baby Ruth commercials from the 1990s, featuring Hawkman and an obvious Flash stand-in called the Blur. They have a video clip of the Blur commercial. Fun fact: The Blur was played by Tim Thomerson, who played Barry Allen’s brother Jay in the pilot episode of the 1990 Flash TV show.
Speaking of the Flash TV series, it makes Comic Book Movie’s list of Top Ten Most Accurate Live Action Superhero Costumes
The Secret of Wednesday’s Haul contrasts Ethan Van Sciver and Carmine Infantino in their approaches to conveying speed.
noscans_daily has a Flash Appreciation Post focusing on the character from the animated Justice League and Justice League Unlimited TV series.
A Trout in the Milk reviews Wednesday Comics and asks the question: “What have we learned?”
InTylerWeTrust82 casts Superman and the Flash, with some interesting choices for the heroes, their supporting casts, and selected villains.
What Were They Thinking? has an example of Golden Age Flashdickery. Jay Garrick was a bit of a prankster in those days…
Comics Should Be Good wraps up the month of iconic covers with the Top 5 Most Iconic Barry Allen Covers.
Ain’t It Cool News has a preview of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, the next direct-to-home video DC animated film. It’s based on a number of Earth-2/Earth-3 stories in which the Justice League goes up against their evil counterparts from another world, the Crime Syndicate. There’s a few frames of the evil Johnny Quick in the preview, sporting an entirely new costume. (Thanks to Jesse for the link.)
Speaking of evil, the “Mark Waid Was Evil” teaser turns out to be for a new series, Incorruptible, intended as the flip side to Irredeemable. This series follows a super-villain who decides to become a hero in response to the Plutonian’s fall to the dark side.
Newsarama evaluates Wednesday Comics, giving the Flash strip a B+.
Avatar Press has started a collaborative map of comic shops around the world. You can help by adding the local store where you buy your comics.
Over at my other blog, I made an amusing discovery about Wizard World Los Angeles, the Long Beach Comic-Con, and two convention centers.
Some linkblogging for the weekend:
NYC Graphic Novelists has an interview with Carmine Infantino. He talks about growing up in the depression, breaking into the fledgling comic industry, building the Silver Age, and his tenure as editor at DC. Update: There’s been some fallout from this interview, with Infantino feeling he was misrepresented.
Geoff Johns will appear at a Blackest Night launch party at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles on Tuesday, July 14. Update: The Tuesday event at Meltdown has been canceled. He will also be signing at Isotope Comics in San Francisco on Saturday, July 18.
The Green Lantern Spotlight Podcast has an interview with Ethan Van Sciver. It’s long at 99 minutes, but it’s worth a listen. He talks about everything from deadlines and inking to why he’s drawing Iris Allen younger to designs for Black Lanterns.
The Captain’s JLA Blog reviews “Speed Demons”, the Superman: The Animated Series episode that guest-starred the Flash and introduced the scarlet speedster to the DC Animated Universe.
The Flash-Back Podcast reviews The Return of Barry Allen.
Flash endorses Green Lantern for Mayor! (via Robot6)
The Heretics Blog has a collection of fan films, including the Flash getting a speeding ticket.
The Absorbascon presents Strange Feelings, with Barry Allen. If you thought it was odd to be turned into a puppet…
ComicBloc’s Creativeartist has put together a Flash: Rebirth animation — in Flash, of course!
The AV Club gives Flash: Rebirth #1 a solid B, but the dissenting opinion “was reminded why I rarely read super-hero comics anymore.”
Panels on Pages asks, Remember Amalgam? Amalgam Comics was the special-event line tied to Marvel vs. DC, filled with mash-ups of Marvel and DC characters, like the Flash/Etrigan/Ghost Rider combination, Speed Demon.
Comics Should Be Good’s Greg Hatcher writes about the grail quest — or rather, the thrill of hunting for comics.
I know that searching online I could wrap up all of these in about an hour, especially if money was no object. But money is an object — part of the fun is trying to score these things for under five dollars — and more to the point, the search is part of the pleasure. Google-and-click just isn’t the same.
Mark Evanier has launched a project to Rebuild Len Wein’s Comic Book Collection, after the Swamp Thing and Wolvering co-creator lost his house in a fire earlier this month.
Anthony135 writes in with the news that the Flash — specifically Jay Garrick — will appear in the teaser segment of Friday’s episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold (March 20).
I haven’t been watching this series (actually, I’ve been rewatching Batman: The Animated Series from the early 1990s), but I’ll have to keep an eye out for this one.
Update: Comics Continuum has pictures from the episode.
I recently watched the complete fifth season of The Batman. I’d only ever seen one episode, “A Mirror Darkly” (the one with the Flash, of course!) before, and when I decided to watch the two-parter with the Justice League, I figured I might as well watch the rest of the season.
The series follows Batman, a young Robin, and a teenaged Batgirl as they battle the usual assortment of Gotham City villains. While the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series essentially translated the comic-book versions of these characters into a style suitable for animation, The Batman has redesigned virtually everyone…and that’s the main problem I have with the show. They’ve taken the villains and dehumanized them, making them into little more than monsters.
The main thread for season 5 is showing Batman as he works with the Justice League, with 8 of 13 episodes featuring guest stars. Unlike the Gotham villains, the heroes’ designs are practically lifted from the comics. It’s also a much more Silver Age League (at least compared to the animated Justice League and Justice League Unlimited from earlier this decade)*, with Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, Hawkman as a Thanagarian policeman, and Barry Allen (though his name is never mentioned on screen) as the Flash. Conspicuously absent is Wonder Woman, an oddity considering the larger role given to Batgirl in this series. That, and some of the visuals in the final episode, reminded me of Filmation’s Justice League cartoons from the 1960s.
The season opens with a two-parter pitting Batman against a mind-controlled Superman. Lex Luthor and a host of Batman villains guest star. Oddly enough, I found myself looking up the casting, even though Superman, Lex and Lois are voiced by the same actors as in the Dini/Timm cartoons. The takes on each character were enough different that I didn’t notice the voices at first.
Batman goes on to team up with Green Arrow, the Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman over the course of the season, as they fight Count Vertigo, Mirror Master, Sinestro and the Shadow Thief. The Green Lantern tie-in, “Ring Toss,” was particularly fun, as the Penguin obtains GL’s ring. He figures out the basics pretty quickly, even though he doesn’t have the experience — or willpower — to use it to its full potential.
According to the producers, the Flash in this series is Barry Allen, though his real name is never mentioned onscreen and his personality is somewhere between the Timmverse Flash and Impulse.
The Scarlet Speedster teams up with Batman and Robin in “A Mirror Darkly” (on the first disc of the set). Mirror Master has come to Gotham City seeking components for a weapon (of course), and uses mirror duplicates of heroes — including both Batman and the Flash — to help him steal them. I like the portrayal of Mirror Master as a smug know-it-all mad scientist, and the redesigned costume works fine for me. He’s been given a sidekick/assistant named Smoke, and thankfully the show’s staff resist the urge to point out the pun in the name (though I keep thinking of the episode, erroneously, as “Smoke and Mirrors” because of it).
Mirror Master’s plan proves to be one of those totally bizarre schemes that would ordinarily seem out of place in a Batman story, but feels right at home in a classic Flash story with new pseudo-scientific feats appearing on every page.
On a related note, I could swear I remember an episode of Batman: The Animated Series that also featured a showdown in a room-sized orrery at a planetarium, but I just can’t place it.
In a sense, there are two series finales. “The End of the Batman” has Batman and Robin going up against Wrath and Scorn, opposite numbers who have dedicated themselves to protecting criminals and wiping out the Batman. They bring in half a dozen Batman villains in on the scheme, one which will not only make them all rich, but end the threat of the Batman for good.
Then the two-part “Lost Heroes” brings the Justice League thread to the foreground, as all the heroes who have guest starred over the season show up just long enough to be abducted, leaving Batman and Green Arrow to track them down. The heroes must battle robots that have stolen their powers, then head off another alien invasion. Robin and Batgirl aren’t left out of the action either, and their reactions to meeting the League — and seeing its headquarters — are priceless.
(This story also has the oddest portrayal of Hugo Strange that I’ve seen, but then I’m mainly used to the version from Legends of the Dark Knight, so I’m not sure what “standard” is. Now that I think about it, he looks like a cross between Dr. Scratchensniff and Ralph the Guard, and now I can’t unsee it.)
*I realize I’m probably going to compare almost any animated DC show to the DC Animated Universe for quite a while. Even though I grew up on Superfriends in the early 1980s, it was the 1992 Batman series that really resonated with me and my friends in high school. It was a show that actually managed to present complex characters and storylines without talking down to their audience. It featured the best portrayal of Two-Face until this year’s The Dark Knight. The direct-to-video Batman: Sub-Zero was a better Mr. Freeze movie than Batman and Robin, which came out the same year. And it introduced Harley Quinn. How can you argue with that?
Welcome to SpeedForce.org, a blog focusing on DC Comics' super-hero, The Flash. It's a companion site to Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning, a fan reference site for the Fastest Man Alive.
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