Speed Force

The first of several linkblogging posts for the day.

Geoff Johns offers hints about his upcoming Smallville episode, Society, featuring the Justice Society. The exact lineup hasn’t been determined yet, but sadly it won’t include the Golden Age Flash or Green Lantern, Jay Garrick and Alan Scott. The season will, however, feature the live-action debut of the Wonder Twins.

CBR interviews Darick Robertson on his career, including his work back in the early 1990s on such books as Justice League Europe, Justice League Quarterly, and the Flash TV Special.

Former Flash artist Freddie Williams II talks about The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics

Heroes Online talks about the Mike Wieringo Scholarship.

Crimson Lightning has posted the best of live-action Flash, featuring his favorite 3 episodes (and an honorable mention) from the 1990 Flash TV series.

The Aquaman Shrine has Flash vs. the Hostess Ads by Fred Hembeck. (There were, to the best of my knowledge, four Hostess ads with the Flash during the late 1970s/early 1980s.)

IO9 wonders, with the Flash reborn, who’s next?

The Heritage Auctions blog talks about Showcase #4 (Barry Allen’s first appearance) and its significance as the start of the Silver Age. The highest-grade copy known to exist (CGC 9.6) is going on auction in May.

Samurai Noir’s Toy Box 2 has pictures of vintage Flash and Aquaman board games.

PrettyFakes contrasts creator-driven vs. crossover-driven storytelling in the context of Iron Man, with references to the Messner-Loebs and Waid runs on Wally West’s Flash series.

The Worlogog talks about weekly comics in general and Wednesday Comics in particular.

The comic strip Epic Tales of the Mundane tackles a trade-waiter’s dilemma when faced with Flash: Rebirth.

Silver Age Comics has a run-down of DC Annuals in the Silver Age.

Blam talks about comics in the 1990s, including Mark Waid’s runs on Flash and Impulse.

The Pulse interviews former Flash artist Freddie Williams II on Final Crisis Aftermath: Run (which, for the record, is not about a speedster, but about the Human Flame).

2008 was a busy, if tumultuous year for the Flash.

The Main Series

As 2008 opened, the Flash was just wrapping up the six-part story “The Wild Wests,” the relaunch featuring Wally West as head of the Flash family and introducing his super-powered twins, Iris and Jai. To put it mildly, it was not received well by fans, and former fan favorite writer Mark Waid quickly left the book.

After a one-shot by Keith Champagne, Tom Peyer picked up the regular writing chores and Freddie Williams II stayed on for the 6-part “Fast Money,” which resolved the twins’ super-speed aging problem and gave us a glimpse of an adult Iris West II.

The series wrapped up with the year, as Alan Burnett, Paco Diaz, and Carlo Barberi brought us “This Was Your Life, Wally West.” The four-part story arc looked back at Wally West’s career as Kid Flash, then the Flash, and his relationship with his wife Linda and their children.

Rogues’ Revenge

The Rogues’ Gallery were off-limits to start with, as they were off-planet for Salvation Run. Early in the year, DC released the news of Flash: Rogues’ Revenge, a miniseries that would spotlight them after they returned to Earth, going after Inertia for tricking them into killing the Flash. Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins would return to the speedster mythos for six issues.

By the time the series was launched, it had become Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge, and instead of six regular-sized issues it was three oversized issues.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re moving into the home stretch, with the second-to-last issue of the current Flash series. Part 3 of “This Was Your Life, Wally West” is written by Alan Burnett with art by Carlo Barberi.

The book was originally solicited with a more story-related cover by Brian Stelfreeze. Normally I prefer covers that have something to do with the story over iconic covers, but I have to say this is one seriously impressive cover by Freddie Williams II.

Carlo Barberi’s art continues to work surprisingly well with the serious tone of the book (I’d previously known his work only from Impulse), and the cast list is combined with the issue’s splash page.

The threats of the Queen Bee and power loss take a back seat to a more personal story: Wally West faces the possibility that he might lose the love of his life, Linda Park West. Much of the first half of the issue is a look back at Wally and Linda’s relationship, starting with their first meeting as reporter and story subject at the end of the “Porcupine Man” saga (Flash v.2 #24–28), working through their tumultuous courtship, interrupted wedding, all the way through to the worldwide memory wipe between Blitz and Ignition.

The flashback is well-integrated with the main line of the story, as it brings up several elements that factor into the second half of the issue as the Queen Bee case takes center stage again.

Oddly, I noticed my local comic store didn’t have any copies of this issue on the shelf. I meant to ask, but forgot, whether they had reduced their order, whether they’d sold more than usual, or whether they simply hadn’t finished putting everything on the shelf. (They were still sorting through customers’ pull lists at the point I got there.)

Spoilers after the cut: Read the rest of this entry »

Comic Bloc poster elias6 noticed that DC has posted a new cover for next week’s Flash #246.

DC initially released the cover on the left by Brian Stelfreeze, showing Wally’s wife Linda West vanishing into thin air. (Stelfreeze did the covers for issues #244 and #245, as well as the cover that’s been solicited for #247, the final issue.) The newly released cover, showing a profile of the Flash’s head with reflections running along his costume, is by Freddie Williams II, who recently wrapped up a 10-issue run on the series.

There hasn’t been much in the way of announcements out of Wizard World Texas, but one item from Aron Head’s Blog@Newsarama write-up stands out:

Matt Sturges will be writing the post-Final Crisis story Run!, which will feature a pivotal super-villain character from Final Crisis as the central character. [Senior Story Editor Ian] Sattler said the book will be surprising with three-water-cooler-moments in every issue.

Freddie Williams will handle the art.

With a title like Run! a speedster seems likely. And Zoom just lost his powers, not to mention his ability to walk. It could be about Hunter Zolomon trying to regain his ability to run…but then, Zoom hasn’t been that “pivotal” in Final Crisis itself, only in Rogues’ Revenge.

On the other hand, there’s all that speculation, fueled by the return of Barry Allen and the way he’s been contrasted with Libra since DC Universe #0, that Libra might be the long-dead Eobard Thawne, a.k.a. Professor Zoom, the Reverse-Flash.

Update: To make matters more confusing, ComicMix suggests that the mini is actually titled, Final Crisis: Run, and is “the last miniseries tie-in to their mega-event.” I guess that would make it like the “52 Aftermath” books. Personally, I suspect this might prove counterproductive, given that even though Final Crisis has had fewer tie-ins (post-Countdown, anyway) than most big comic-book events of its stature, people have been complaining about too many tie-ins for months.

Flash #243 marks the last issue of the Tom Peyer/Freddie Williams II run on the series, and the final issue of the “Fast Money” storyline. It resolves a number of plotlines from the past year, leaving other possibilities open.

Artist Freddie Williams II has really hit his stride on this book, which makes it a shame that he’s leaving. It took a while to get used to it, but a few issues ago I started to like it. It seemed to have more life, more energy, than it did at first — and in a book that’s all about speed, that’s critical. (Interestingly, when I spoke with him at Comic-Con, he mentioned that the editor had initially insisted on a slightly different style than his usual, and he’d been allowed to go back to his regular style around the same point that I started liking the art. He also had a page of original art from Flash #241 that I would have been seriously tempted by if I’d had a spare $250…)

Story-wise, I’ve really enjoyed the last three issues (parts 3-5), but I felt that the final chapter fell short. In part, there were three major plot threads to resolve, and only one really got any focus. Additionally, that resolution seemed to hinge on a piece of knowledge which they should already have had.

At this point I’ll have to break into spoilers. You have been warned. Read the rest of this entry »

I stumbled on Freddie Williams II’s Artist’s Alley table at Comic-Con today, and commissioned a sketch of Iris West II in her Flash phase.

I had time, so I waited around while he did the sketch, looked through his portfolio, and talked about the book. Several other people came by to talk, or to look at his art, or to commission sketches of their own. When he was almost done, Dan Didio dropped by to say hello. (To the artist, of course!)

He had original art for sale, including a few pages from the last few issues of The Flash. I was seriously tempted by the page that showed Wally, Iris and Jai running into battle from #241, but I just don’t have the spare $250 lying around…

I mentioned that I’d really liked his run with Tom Peyer, especially the last few issues, and he mentioned that the editor had previously asked him to go with a more open, flat, happy style to his art, and he actually felt better about the art the last few issues. We talked about the harshness of internet fandom — when people like something, they don’t always go out of their way to post about it, but when they dislike it, and when they can hide behind anonymity, it’s almost a compulsion to say so, loudly, as brutally as possible.

The Flash’s current writer Tom Peyer and artist Freddie Williams II will both wrap up their runs with the conclusion of “Fast Money” in August’s Flash #243. So what’s next on their plates?

CBR spoke with Tom Peyer about his work on Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen at Oni and back-up stories for the upcoming Marvel Apes miniseries.

As for the artist half of the team, The Pulse interviewed Freddie Williams II about his past and current work at DC, including his return to Robin. He answered several questions about The Flash, including how drawing a super-speed family differs from drawing Batman’s protege.

Visually, they are almost completely opposite. Even though Robin can get a bit animated, he was pretty grim and hid in the shadows allot, as well being able to use his cape and his mop of hair to show motion and movement. As opposed to Flash, which was art directed to be more open and cartoony. Flash is basically just a naked figured with nothing except for lightening to help in showing motion. Also, drawing the team dynamic was a bit different as well – having to account for some many figures.

When asked which artists most influenced his work on The Flash, Williams cited Daniel Acuña (his immediate predecessor), and Mike Wieringo.