Speed Force

Check out each and every Flash Christmas cover here!  Merry Christmas!

Just a quick note: Today’s DC Holiday Special ’09 does feature a Flash story, “The Flash Before Christmas” by Amy Wolfram and Daniel Leister. Surprisingly, it’s a Wally West story, in which the speedster tries to do what the rest of us do just before Christmas: Take care of a zillion last-minute tasks.

Once Flash: Rebirth #5 was pushed back to November 11, I don’t think anyone really expected the final issue to come out just two weeks later. Now DC has made it official, rescheduling Flash: Rebirth #6 for December 23. Merry Christmas, Flash fans!

Dates for Blackest Night: The Flash have not changed.

Some interesting facts:

• That’s 6 weeks after issue #5′s current release date.
• It’s 12 weeks after the issue’s original release date (September 30).
• Oddly enough, it’s 3 weeks after Blackest Night: The Flash #1 is scheduled to ship. (Thank you, DC, for not postponing it!)
• It makes the miniseries 38 weeks, or almost 9 months, from start to end.
• That makes it an average of 7.6 weeks between issues. The first three issues, which shipped on time, were 5 weeks apart.
• Last year, the final issue of Wally West’s solo series, The Flash #247 was released on December 24. If this sticks, that means that two years in a row, a Flash series will have ended the Wednesday before Christmas.

Thanks to @kukheart for spotting this change. I’ve been checking daily, but he got there first today!

When I thought of doing this feature, I figured there would be more of these. But there are surprisingly few. Most of them, as it turns out, are from Comic Cavalcade back in the 1940s. None appeared during Barry Allen’s run, and only two during Wally West’s. (One of them I only included because the cover quoted “Jingle Bells.”) Impulse, however, managed three.

Interesting notes:

• 5 feature Santa Claus.
• 5 feature Christmas Trees.
• 4 name the holiday.

I even went hunting for team books — Justice League, Teen Titans, Justice Society, etc. Oddly enough, I couldn’t find many that were both Christmas-themed and featured a Flash.

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for the covers.