Speed Force

Some more questions and answers pulled from the search statistics:

What happened to Tarpit in Flash: Blackest Night? – Probably nothing, since (as Captain Boomerang Jr. pointed out) his physical body is actually somewhere else. On the other hand, Captain Cold did freeze Iron Heights.

When does the new Flash Forward come out? – New episodes start Thursday, March 18. ABC will also be running a recap of the first half of the season on Tuesday, March 16, after Lost.

What is the song when Flash goes speed force? – I’m not really sure what you mean by this (unless it’s “What music plays during the climax of the Justice League Unlimited episode, “Divided We Fall”), but allow me to recommend the Jim’s Big Ego song, “The Ballad of Barry Allen.” It’s certainly more appropriate than Queen’s Flash Gordon theme.

Is DC: The New Frontier a sequel to The Golden Age? – No, but it’s a similar concept — enough so that when James Robinson was asked whether he might do a sequel, he said that New Frontier basically covered it.

Which Flash controls the speed force? – Depends on what you mean by “control.” Barry Allen generates it by running, all Flashes use it as fuel, and Wally West is able to manipulate it to perform feats like lending or stealing speed.

How can you speed if you are following someone else? – If they’re driving faster than the speed limit, then it’s entirely possible for you to do the same thing.

Why don’t people like Barry Allen? – Because not everyone has the same tastes that you do. Just as some people prefer the serious tone of the 1990s Batman animated series, while others prefer the zany adventure of Batman: the Brave and the Bold, different people like different takes on the Flash.

What will happen to Wally West? – He’ll probably be a recurring guest star in The Flash, and will almost certainly show up in an issue or two of DC Universe: Legacies. DC has scaled back on the big plans they had for the Flash this year, dropping a set of backup stories that would have featured Wally in The Flash and a Kid Flash series that would have featured Bart. Other than that, we probably won’t see much of him until the next big Flash epic, unless James Robinson pulls a surprise and puts him back on Justice League. In which case we can probably expect to see Irey or Jai killed and Wally’s legs amputated. @#*&^! Cry for Justice.

Edit: One More! – Panels at WonderCon 2010 – They haven’t released a programming schedule yet, but last year it was posted about two weeks before the convention. So we should see something online by mid-March. Update: They’ll post the schedule one day at a time, starting on March 10.

The conclusion of this miniseries — to the extent that it concludes, anyway — is more satisfying than the middle chapter. The story is more solid, and it’s visually more varied as characters with colors beyond black and blue join Blue Lantern Barry Allen onstage.

Speaking of color schemes, I noticed something interesting about the covers: they get progressively brighter. The first issue is mostly black and silver, with a dark blue logo outline. The second issue adds some color by putting Captain Cold in the center, and has a brighter logo outline. By the third issue, Blue Lantern Barry takes up the entire cover, and the logo is again a tiny bit brighter. I don’t know whether it’s intentional, but it’s certainly thematic.

The story follows three main threads: The Rogues in Iron Heights; Captain Boomerang; and the Flashes.

The Rogues’ story gets the least attention this time around. Once again it picks up right where they left off, but instead of focusing on emotional manipulation, it’s basically a dungeon crawl as they try to work out something that will shut down the Black Lantern Rogues. It does, however, give away a little more about the resolution of Flash: Rebirth

Captain Boomerang’s story is a sad one, and while moving, I’m afraid it significantly damages the character for future use. More on this in the spoiler section.

This time around the Flashes’ story works best. Barry Allen is still dealing with an unfamiliar power set, but by this time he’s gotten accustomed to it, rather than spending the entire issue learning how to use the blue ring…plus there are other speedsters around to keep the “Fastest Man Alive” theme on track. There’s also a solid resolution to one of the major story elements from last month.

Of course, since this is a side story to a larger event, it ends — or rather stops — with a big “To be continued” sign as several characters head back into the main Blackest Night story, and the big question from issue #1 is left unanswered.

Spoilers below!

Read the rest of this entry »

As a Flash collector I spend a lot of my time on eBay. Whether it’s looking for good deals on action figures or hunting for some rare gem of a collectible, I spend a lot of time on the site. This afternoon I came across a pretty sweet custom of Blue Lantern Barry Allen up for auction. Interesting to note that the custom is astonishingly pretty accurate to the official action figure of Blue Lantern Flash by DC Direct design wise.

I actually think I dig the custom on eBay a little more though. Especially the way the belt is worked right into the Blue Lantern chest design as opposed to being awkwardly painted over it. The previous design may work in the comic but on an action figure it stands out a lot more than it should. This custom is being brought to us by nissan_nx2004 and Black Lanterns Green Arrow and Hawkman are also included in the auction.

Pretty nice huh? The auction is currently at $75.00 with 2 days and 21 hours left in the auction and you can view it here. The listing also has some additional pics of Blue Lantern Flash and Black Lanterns Green Arrow and Hawkman.

-Devin “The Flash” Johnson

Diamond has released their top 100 comics for January, and Blackest Night: The Flash takes the #9 spot. Once again, it beat out the other two Blackest Night tie-in miniseries (Wonder Woman and JSA), though this probably has more to do with the fact that Blackest Night writer Geoff Johns penned it than with the Flash’s popularity. ICv2 has sales estimates for the top 300, showing a typical second-issue drop of about 14% to roughly 69K.

The drop is comparable to the one from the first to second issue of Flash: Rebirth, and considerably less than the steep 35% drop from the first to second issue of Flash: The Fastest Man Alive.

Toy Fair 2010 is upon us and with that comes some awesome DC Comics toy news. IGN.com reports that DC Direct will have at least four new Blackest Night Action Figures on display at Toy Fair including Blue Lantern Barry Allen! I knew they would eventually get to him but I never thought it would be this soon. Color this toy collector extremely excited for the possibility of more Flash-oriented collectibles. And with The Flash series finally getting back on track, and with Barry being a key player in the upcoming Brightest Day there is a possibility of more fun stuff being rolled out before the end. IGN has the first pics including this one of Barry as a Blue Lantern:

This is probably the cleanest image we have of Barry in the Blue Lantern gear so far and I’m definitely digging the design. Here is hoping for more great Flash stuff.

-Devin “The Flash” Johnson

HeroClix is working on a Blackest Night starter set featuring the heroes and villains deputized in Blackest Night #6, and has been releasing photos and descriptions over at the WizKids Games blog. Today’s entry isn’t up yet…but ICv2 has the Blue Lantern Barry Allen figure.

I think this is the clearest depiction I’ve seen of Barry Allen’s Blue Lantern costume. The BN:Flash #3 cover comes close, but parts of the design are still obscured by lightning.

Click over to ICv2 for the description, card and dial.

DC has posted the main covers to three Blackest Night books including Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, and Scott Kolins’ cover to Blackest Night: The Flash #3. (The variant was posted last week.)

What do you know? It turns out they were keeping it under wraps to avoid spoiling Blue Lantern Barry Allen.

I’m mostly linkblogging via Twitter these days, and you can follow along at @SpeedForceOrg. Some highlights from the last few weeks include:

Fan Art

Blue Lantern Flash Custom Figure at The Green Lantern Corps Forum.

Death Race on Reality Prime by Dave Myers and Kurt Christenson.

Blackest Night: The Rogues by xanychaos at Comic Bloc.

Commentary

Uncanny Comic Book Scans just finished a week of Flash posts featuring single pages from throughout Wally West’s run on the book.

Broken Frontier unearths the dead Rogues.

Bleeding Cool spots an error in Blackest Night: The Flash #2 – Barry Allen’s narration boxes feature the wrong Lantern Corps symbol!

Beyond the Flash

LiveScience: Humans Could Run 40 mph, in Theory (via Devin “The Flash” Johnson).

Perspective: schmevil reminds us all that Your fandom is not Fandom. (Via Comics Worth Reading).

Myth Adventures, Phil Foglio’s comic-book adaptation of Robert Asprin’s comedic fantasy novel, Another fine Myth, is now available online as a free webcomic. They’ve just started serializing it a page a day, three days a week.

For more frequent updates, follow me on Twitter at @SpeedForceOrg.

DC has posted three variant covers at The Source, for upcoming issues of Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, and Blackest Night: The Flash. Francis Manapul’s cover for Blackest Night: The Flash #3 features the Rogues.

Oddly enough, we still haven’t seen the standard cover for the issue (scheduled for February 17). It was originally solicited using the variant cover for #1, and that cover still appears on DC’s website. I briefly wondered whether they might be hiding a giant picture of Blue Lantern Barry Allen for spoiler reasons (the solicitations went up in November), but the costume is similar enough that they could easily redraw the symbol and color his costume red for the preview, like they disguised Professor Zoom as the Black Flash on the preview image for Flash: Rebirth #5.

Update: Francis Manapul has posted the inks and watercolor version of this cover.

If there’s one thing that best describes Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins’ Blackest Night: The Flash #2, it’s “caught in the middle.” It’s the middle of a three-part story. It takes place between chapters of a larger story. It fits between the end of one Flash series and the beginning of another. It’s about people caught between life and death.

It’s also about mirror images, both in terms of opposites and in terms of forcing characters to look at themselves.

Unfortunately, it looks like this miniseries isn’t going to stand on its own very well, for the simple reason that it’s not a self-contained chapter of Blackest Night. Each issue is interleaved within other chapters of the larger story. The first issue brought readers up to speed with Blackest Night #4. This one doesn’t pick up where the last issue left off, but skips ahead and has to recap a couple of major events from Blackest Night #5 & #6.

That may be a big part of why I liked the Rogues’ story a lot better than the Flash’s: their story actually does seem to be a solid story, not a loose collection of scenes that fit between panels in another series. In that way, it reminds me a lot of Battlestar Galactica: The Plan.

Of course, another reason I liked the Rogues’ story is that it’s hard to go wrong with Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins on the Rogues. As I mentioned last time, Johns’ grim-and-gritty storytelling and Kolins’ angular art style are perfectly suited for the hardened Central/Keystone criminals…and for the undead Black Lanterns.

And now…it’s spoiler time! Read the rest of this entry »