Speed Force

Do you want to own a piece of Flash: Rebirth? Now’s your chance. Ethan Van Sciver has posted two pieces of original art from the miniseries on eBay: the Flash: Rebirth #2 Cover and a Flash: Rebirth #4 splash page featuring Jay Garrick and Bart Allen smacking down the Reverse Flash.

Both auctions end on Thursday, February 18. So far the cover is up to $267.00, and the splash page is up to $108.50.

Lia Brown reports that this isn’t the first time original art from the series has made it to the online auction site, though this appears to be the first time the artist has put it up for auction there himself.

Update (Friday): The cover sold for $2,310 and the splash page went for $1,152.

Some upcoming convention and signing appearances by Flash-related people:

Emerald City Con (March 13-14 in Seattle, Washington) has added long-time Flash writer Mark Waid. Geoff Johns and Impulse artist Humberto Ramos are already on the guest list. — @emeraldcitycon

MegaCon (March 12-14, Orlando Florida) has Ethan Van Sciver — @MegaConvention

WonderCon (April 2-4, San Francisco, California) has the Flash: Rebirth team of Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver.

C2E2 (April 16-18, Chicago, Illinois) has the Flash: Rebirth team of Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver. (Note: This means they will not appear at Anaheim Comic Con the same weekend.) — @c2e2

Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con (June 11-13, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) has Ethan Van Sciver. — @WizardWorld

Florida Supercon (June 18-20 in Miami, Florida) recently confirmed John Wesley Shipp, the lead in the 1990 Flash TV series, for the convention. — @FLSupercon

I finally finished listening to last week’s Word Balloon Podcast with Ethan Van Sciver this morning. During the 90-minute interview, he talks about Flash: Rebirth, the personal issues that caused the delays, redesigning Wally West’s costume, bringing back Impulse, the balance of power between writers and artists, and Cyberfrog.

Some points that Flash readers will find interesting:

Last spring, Ethan Van Sciver started experiencing chest pains and was told that if he didn’t do something about his health, he was going to have a heart attack. So he embarked on a complete lifestyle change, which threw off his work schedule, slowing down Flash: Rebirth. The final issue, originally scheduled for September 30 of last year, will be out in two weeks on February 24.

It was his idea to make Iris “Irey” West II the new Impulse. He wanted the character back, and deliberately made Iris and Jai younger than they had been previously because of that (and because he didn’t like them as tweens). He also made an effort to draw Bart Allen as Kid Flash looking a bit more like he appeared as Impulse: round face, big feet, slightly exaggerated features. On a related note: Geoff Johns has plans for Jai.

He had a really hard time redesigning Wally West’s costume. The way he put it was that it’s easy to design a speedster costume, but it’s hard to design a Flash costume. Whereas with Sinestro Corps War and Blackest Night he basically had free reign with new designs, this time he kept getting notes and had several designs rejected. The final version was quite literally a composite of other Flash costumes: EVS wanted the straight cowl from the TV series & Dark Flash, to make it look like a knight’s helmet (in line with his Barry = King Arthur and Wally = Lancelot metaphor), Geoff Johns came up with using the animated-style emblem, etc. To this day, Van Sciver isn’t happy with the way it turned out.

There’s a lot more in there — it is an hour and a half long — and it’s worth listening to if you have the time. There’s also a discussion at Comic Bloc that’s gotten into the writer/artist balance.

Related note: Daniel Way interviews EVS in connection with Cherry Capital Con.

Over at The Source, DC has posted the variant cover for Flash: Rebirth #6 by Ethan Van Sciver.

More importantly, they’ve listed the release date…and it’s still February 24, 2010…just three weeks away!

We still haven’t seen the full standard cover yet. The one used in solicitations is clearly modified to hide the background and/or other characters. Most likely it’ll appear sometime in the next few weeks, when DC posts a preview of the issue.

Some Flash news broke over the weekend. In case you missed the original posts…

First, Ethan Van Sciver reports that Flash: Rebirth #6 should be out sooner than March after all — he’s almost done with the art, and expects to finish this week!

Second, the Flash Secret Files 2010 solicitation is up. It’s due March 24.

I’ll be back this evening with a run-down of likely Flash appearances in the full March solicitations.

Gee, you go away for one Christmas party, and news starts breaking fast and furious!

So, a couple of days ago, DC rescheduled Flash: Rebirth #6 from January 27 to March 24. On Saturday, Ethan Van Sciver stopped by Comic Bloc to let fans know what was going on:

This March date is strange. The book will be finished this week. I think you’ll see it get bumped back to January in a few days. [Emphasis added.]

The artist has previously stated that he sends the pages to the colorist in batches (of three, IIRC) as he finishes them, so they’ve already started coloring the book.

Meanwhile, Flash Secret Files has been solicited…with that same March 24 release date. Could someone at DC have mistakenly updated the website with the date for the Secret Files book?

Van Sciver also remarked on the delays, saying that it’s been taking him two months to draw each book, plus he had some health problems around the time that issue #3 came out.

(Thanks to Wayne Lippa and @MrEPCOT for letting me know about EVS’ posts!)

Flash: Rebirth artist Ethan Van Sciver posted on Facebook today, saying:

Looks like I’m doing the art for the WONDERCON 2010 t-shirt and book!

The artist and Flash writer Geoff Johns have previously been confirmed as guests for the April 2-4 convention in San Francisco.

(On a side note, does anyone know how to link to a particular status on Facebook?) Update: This should work, though possibly only for people who are (a) logged in and (b) listed as friends: Facebook status link

Artist Ethan Van Sciver dropped in at Comic Bloc this morning (for the first time since July) to apologize for the lateness of Flash: Rebirth and to answer fans’ questions. A couple of items that stand out are, first, on inking one’s own pages:

The allure of inking one’s own work is simply to work in a different medium (drawing with ink, as I do, is smoother…the effect of putting solid blacks down instead of scratchy pencils is often more pleasant.) and to be sure that the final product meets with my approval.

And second, on conventions:

Conventions are not “vacations.” They are a vital function of what we do, to promote the comics and meet fans. I do not ride roller coasters, lie on beaches, or relax in any sense. They are work.

That’s something worth remembering. For you or me as fans, a convention might be a vacation. But for someone who makes comics for a living, it’s a promotional event, it’s professional networking, it’s a trade show.

Of course, the sentence that will probably interest the most readers is this: “Issue 6 is more than halfway finished.”

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…

Just a quick note before the weekend: artist Ethan Van Sciver is among the guests at Comicpalooza, held in Houston, Texas on March 26-28, 2010.

Other speed-related guests listed on the site include artist Humberto Ramos, the original artist on Impulse, and actress Brea Grant, who played speedster Daphne Millbrook on Heroes during the “Villains” and “Fugitives” arcs.

(Tip of the hat to Papa Zero for spotting this.)