Speed Force

In the spirit of Crisis on Earth-Blog and the Super-Powers 25th Anniversary, over 20 blogs have gotten together to create…The DC Challenge.

The name comes from a 12-part miniseries that DC Comics produced in the 1980s, in which each issue had a new creative team that had to pick up from where the previous team left off, round-robin style. This DC Challenge is a set of games, puzzles and trivia questions linked across nearly two dozen super-hero blogs. Speed Force isn’t involved this time, but the Flash is well-represented by Crimson Lightning.

So, step up to the DC Challenge with The Flash at Crimson Lightning, or any of these characters:

• The Aquaman Shrine
• The Atom: Tiny Titan
• Hawkman/Hawkwoman at Being Carter Hall
• Metal Men at Comics Make Me Happy
• Flash at Crimson Lightning
• Green Arrow at Dispatches from the Arrow Cave
• Black Lightning and Unknown Soldier at El Jacone’s Comic Book Bunker
• Firestorm Fan
• Black Canary at Girls Gone Geek and Wonder Woman at Girls Gone Geek
• I Am The Phantom Stranger
• Martian Manhunter at The Idol-Head of Diabolu
• Elongated Man and Zatanna at Justice League Detroit
• Captain Comet at …nurgh…
• Doctor Fate at Once Upon a Geek
• Mister Miracle at random picture day
• Adam Strange at Reilly2040’s Blog
• Supergirl Comic Box Commentary
• Sgt. Rock at when is evil cool?
• Batgirl at The Anti-Didio League of America
• Plastic Man at The Continuity Blog
• General support from Toyriffic

Can you solve it?

Some linkblogging for the weekend…

Fortress of Baileytude starts JSA Week by declaring that Jay Garrick is the Man.

Once Upon a Geek looks back at a Justice League Monopoly board game from 1999.

For the ladies: A Comic Blog starts off their Top 10 Sexiest Comic Guys list with Wally West.

Joey Cavalieri talks about the Battle of the Bulge and Brave and the Bold #28, this week’s J. Michael Straczynski/Jesus Saiz team-up between the Flash and the Blackhawks. IGN reviews the issue.

Billy Tucci talks about his Flash/Superman race in this week’s DC Universe Halloween Special.

Dan Didio talks about legacies and characters growing up in his latest 10 Answers column.

Some linkblogging for the week…

Flashy

What Were They Thinking?! approves of Joan Garrick, even in her original Golden Age appearances.

High Five! Comics looks at Flash #206: 24 Hours of Immortality and Nurse Barry.

The Idol-Head of Diabolu has located a 1967 board game featuring the Flash (via Crimson Lightning).

The Flash-Back podcast reviews “Blitz.”

Wednesday Comics artist and co-writer Karl Kerschl announces a European tour along with Ramón Pérez and Cameron Stewart over the next month.

Artist Evan “Doc” Shaner presents his 5-member Justice League (well, 7). It’s rather unconventional, featuring the Viking Prince, Jonah Hex and Sergeant Rock…but he puts the Flash front and center (via @FrancisManapul).

Screen Rant casts the Flash, both Barry Allen and Wally West, with some…Horribly familiar choices.

I finally updated the profile of Bart Allen on Smallville.

Wide View

Indy Comic Book Week encourages writers and artists to self-publish books for the week of December 30, when Diamond won’t be shipping any comics, and offer them through their local comic stores.

My Modern Metropolis collects 25 re-imagined movie posters. They’re all great, but Flash fans should pay particular attention to the Incredibles poster.

Today’s flashback post at K-Squared Ramblings covers MovieTickets.com’s “World’s Fastest Man” ad campaign from a couple of years ago. A bit more current: I write about rereading Flashforward.

Speaking of other Flashes, Sociological Images wonders: Can Ming the Merciless be redeemed?

I’m not entirely sure how I missed this when it was posted in June, but check this out:

According to the user who posted it on YouTube:

This is early game footage from the cancelled Flash video game. When our publisher Brash folded we were about 6 months into full production with about a year still to go on the game so please excuse the roughness of how it looks at this stage. A lot of the core elements were just starting to surface and we were all really saddened that the game couldn’t be saved. It was showing much potential. As such we just wanted to share a sample of what the game could have been like. Enjoy!

The Brash/BottleRocket game would have been for XBox 360 and PS3. I’m not much of a gamer myself, but I have to admit that this looks like it would have been really cool!

(Found via Superheroes R Us and Comic Book Movie. There’s a long thread at Topless Robot as well.)

With the success of Batman: Arkham Asylum, Super Punch has a round-up of links to Roger Robinson’s art for BottleRocket’s 2007 Flash video game that never got off the ground. I really like the menu art, and the two sets of storyboards show some interesting design choices, including a mask design reminiscent of Walter West, the “Dark Flash”. (via Comics Alliance)

Sony has just released character designs and a bio of the Flash in DC Universe Online, and Newsarama has the scoop. The Flash has previously appeared in demos and screenshots of the upcoming MMORPG, but I don’t recall seeing the design artwork before…or the character biography.

The surprise here is that Jim Lee’s design is still recognizably Wally West’s costume with the V-shaped belt, rather than Barry Allen’s. Considering that DC has been re-focusing the Flash franchise around Barry Allen, I would have expected them to use him for their next flagship game. And besides, Geoff Johns is writing both Flash: Rebirth and the storylines for DCUO. On the other hand Mortal Kombat vs. DCU used a costume that was closer to Wally’s than Barry’s, and called him Barry Allen. The biography is quite specific, though:

The Fastest Man Alive, Wally West easily runs at light speed, vibrates through objects, create explosions through friction – and, when at agonizing top capacity, can manipulate time and bridge dimensions.

The Flash is a time-honored member of the Justice League. The latest in a long line of Flashes, each with their own unique way of tapping into the primal “Speed Force,” Wally is determined to live up to the noble legacies of speedsters such as Barry Allen, Max Mercury, and Jay Garrick.

It’s hard to get more specific than that!

(Speaking of Jay Garrick, the design for his appearance in the game was released last summer.)

Newsarama has more images and details.

Update: jcbagee points to a gallery of more images at Kotaku. In addition to some slightly larger versions of the same images, there are a bunch of screenshots from the game itself, including this one with some (presumably) player-character speedsters:

Oddly enough, the Flash’s eyes seem blue in the renderings…

Update 2: CBR has the same set of images as Kotaku, and the bio.

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).

Nixgame has a set of screenshots from a canceled game based around the Flash. BottleRocket Entertainment was reportedly building the game for Brash Entertainment, and the project was canceled when Brash went out of business.

Geoff Johns talks to MTV about DC Universe Online, saying that the massively-multiplayer game is likely to ship in early 2010 or late 2009. He also says he’d love to tackle a Flash or Superman movie.

And speaking of movies, Variety reports that the film industry is starting to take super-heroes seriously, and looks into which characters are likely candidates for the big screen.

Michael Doran, co-founder and senior editor of the comicbook news site Newsarama, sees the most movie potential for DC Comics’ the Flash.

“Superspeed just is so elemental,” he says. “The character, especially the Wally West version — the fast-talking, quick-witted type — his personality almost matches his superpowers.”

Back to the fan perspective, Comix 411 has a wishlist for the Flash movie, and Siskoid looks at “The Human Race”.

Superheroes-R-Us has been posting clips from the 1968 record album, Songs and Stories About the Justice League, including the album’s Flash story: “The Three Faces of Mr. Big.”

Ethan Van Sciver’s second Your Time Is Now Mine column is up. No Flash news, just ramblings. Meanwhile, the site talks to Geoff Johns about Superman: Secret Origin.

This week’s Heroes graphic novel, #113: “The Caged Bird” begins the origin story of the show’s morally gray speedster, Daphne Millbrook. (I am waaay behind on these. I’ve read a few here and there, but I really left off somewhere around the start of season 2.)

GamePro is not impressed by the “heroic brutalities” in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, singling out the Flash’s tornado slam to represent them in the 12 Lamest Fatalities in fighting games.