July 20, 2009
I decided to switch the Twitter digests from weekly to daily for the week of Comic-Con International. This is a bit cleaned up and reorganized.
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April 29, 2009
Yes, it’s actually here! This issue is a lot more story-focused than the last few, which I remember being more about showing the war between the Superman and the three Legions of Super-Heroes on one side and Superboy Prime and the Legion of Super-Villains on the other.
First: the art. It’s George Frelling Pérez. Do I really need to say anything more? Didn’t think so. The book looks fantastic.
The big events:
1. Following through on last issue’s resurrection of Bart Allen. We get a touching reunion between Bart and his cousin Jenni Ognats (XS of the reboot Legion), and Geoff Johns once again shows that he’s found Bart’s voice at last. (Quoting Disney’s Aladdin in the 31st century: absolutely perfect.) We also get some mumbo-jumbo about why Bart returned as a teenager instead of an adult, which doesn’t really make any sense (or fit with what we saw during 52 and Flash: The Fastest Man Alive, but then it’s not as if that’s been particularly consistent to begin with.)
2. Another hero returns from the dead, revealing that the Legionnaires in The Lightning Saga had at least two objectives to their time travel mission.
3. A major character’s true identity is revealed again, and it’s not the same identity as last time. (Shades of Monarch, there.)
Overall, I found it a better read than the earlier issues of the series, because it was much less scattered. I do get a sense that Geoff Johns is treating the “other” legions as expendable, making it possible to kill off “major characters” and still keep the “originals” around.
A couple of spoilery notes behind the cut: Read the rest of this entry »
April 6, 2009
Geoff Johns promises that Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #4 will be out “soon” (DC’s schedule currently shows May 13), and has posted a few panels of Kid Flash (Bart Allen) and XS (Jenni Ognats).
The original on his site is in TIFF format (and a lot bigger), so it may not show up in your web browser.
March 3, 2009
The landmark Crisis on Infinite Earths, by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, came out in 1985-1986, but it took until 1998 for DC to collect the whole series in one volume. The slipcased hardcover featured a wraparound painted cover by Perez and superstar Alex Ross. (That edition is no longer available, but the paperback edition is based around the same cover.)
The Flashes figured prominently in the story. Jay Garrick and Barry Allen shared the story that introduced the concept of the DC Multiverse, “Flash of Two Worlds” (Flash v.1 #123, 1963). And of course, Crisis on Infinite Earths featured Barry Allen’s death, and Wally West taking up the mantle. So naturally, the Flashes had a prominent spot on the cover, arguably the second most-visible after the pair of Supermen holding the bodies of Wonder Woman and Supergirl. A streak of crimson, yellow and white runs along the lower half of the cover, colliding dead center in a burst of lightning, and finally images of the Flash disintegrate and collapse at the end.
The Run-Down
Read on for an in-depth examination of the scarlet speedsters on this cover. Read the rest of this entry »
February 10, 2009
Newsarama interviewed Geoff Johns about Flash: Rebirth at New York Comic-Con. I won’t be able to watch this with sound until I get home tonight, so I don’t know if there’s really anything new in here.
Update: They also have an interview with George Pérez about Legion of Three Worlds.
February 4, 2009
This will be less of a full review and more of a first reaction to the issue.
I’m sure some people won’t believe this, but I actually felt more lost reading the first half of this book than I did reading Final Crisis itself. It’s been months since the last issue came out, and I’ve never been very familiar with the three incarnations of the Legion of Super-Heroes. The only time I read them on a monthly basis was the “Five Years Later” period that started around 1989 or so — and it’s not represented in this story! I have read the occasional issue of other series, particularly the “Reboot” Legion with its connections to Impulse. After a while I just went with it.
That settled out later in the issue, especially as it began to focus on XS and the various lightning-powered Legionnaires as they learned about the legacy of Barry Allen’s brief sojourn in the 30th Century. Geoff Johns attempted to clear up some of the questions of whether Bart Allen was from an alternate universe, and while I think the answer ended up being more complicated than was necessary (since they had already established that sometimes time travelers will end up in an alternate universe), I suspect it’s in the service of setting up threads that will tie into either Flash: Rebirth or the inevitable Flash ongoing that spins out of it.
And speaking as a Flash fan, the conclusion of this issue was fantastic.
Spoilers after the cut: Read the rest of this entry »
