Tag Archives: Infinite Crisis

Flash Profiled in Infinite Crisis Video

DC’s upcoming multiplayer online battle arena game, Infinite Crisis, has released a video profiling the Flash in the game.

Blaze into battle with the blazing speed of Flash, The Fastest Man Alive! This former police scientist is a blur on the battlefield, dashing through obstacles and enemies with devastating effect. Striking with lightning speed, The Flash is the consummate assassin — in and out before you even realize he was there.

Infinite Crisis is currently in beta. You can sign up for a beta key at the game website.

Infinite Crisis MOBA Game Featuring The Flash Announced

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DC Comics is finally diving into the MOBA game genre with Infinite Crisis. Brought to us by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Turbine Studios, the game is set to debut in the Fall.

Now for those unfamiliar with MOBA or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena games they are typically free to play and money is usually made off of micro-transactions within the game. Meaning smaller fees here and there to access additional content as opposed to one large lump fee in the beginning. Most usually don’t require you to pay to enjoy the game, but if you want any additional bells and whistles (often additional uniforms, powers or special content) you would have to pay.

MOBA games are essentially action real-time strategy games but with the multiplayer aspect amped up. Instead of controlling large groups or squads you control one character and work together along with other human characters to complete objectives and challenge each other in combat. They often feature role-playing elements like leveling up and different levels of customization such as being able to choose which powers or moves one would like to focus on and utilize more often.

Instead of playing as a user-created character this game allows you to take control of a version of a DC character from one of the 52 alternate worlds that exist (or so they tell us) in the DC Universe. I’m envisioning a bunch of Batmen facing off against a bunch of different Jokers but we will see.

On the positive side The Flash is among some of the first “champions” profiled at the Infinite Crisis official website. They’ve included a profile, a couple in-game screenshots and descriptions of each of his special moves:

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As you can see Flash’s character type is an assassin. This type of character focuses on striking fast and hard and evasion. They typically can’t take too many blows so it is imperative that they avoid getting hit. I gotta say that I love the detail that they put into the bio. The profile picture is a little derpy but still looks pretty cool overall. Something about that grin though and the lack of pupils in his eyes makes him look very strange.

Flash’s special moves also seem to be done really well:

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Lastly we get a couple in-game screenshots of The Flash’s character model and Flash facing off against Nightmare Batman:

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Of course these are very early screenshots (the game is tentatively scheduled for release Fall 2013) but I’m really liking what we are seeing so far. I will admit that my experience with MOBA video games is quite limited but I’m willing to give just about anything featuring The Flash a shot. We’ve seen no less than three different versions of Batman from the multiverse and so far they have given us a glimpse of the six core Infinite Crisis universes. I’m wondering just what they are going to do with each one in relation to the Scarlet Speedster. I’m betting that the longer the game goes on the more universes we can expect them to add. Infinite possibilities.

Infinite Crisis is being developed by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Turbine Studios and is tentatively scheduled for release later this year.

What do you all think of this new Infinite Crisis MOBA game? What alternate versions of Flash are you hoping to play as? What villains are you hoping to fight against? Please, let us know in the comments below.

Devin

 

 

 

Is “Reboot” The Right Word?

After fans learned that the DC Universe would be massively revised after Flashpoint, DC insisted that it was a relaunch, not a reboot. But with a complete line-wide new start, with many characters being reimagined and given new backstories, it certainly falls under the conventional meaning of “reboot” as applied to a fictional universe. It’s at least as much of a reboot as the DC Universe that emerged out of Crisis on Infinite Earths in the 1980s.

But I’m not sure the metaphor’s correct. It comes from the idea that when you reboot a computer, you start fresh…except usually when you reboot, you have exactly the same “universe” (the operating system, the apps, the files, etc.) as you had before. That’s not the case with a fictional reboot, which tends to alter the settings, characters, histories, and more.

A better comparison might be an operating system upgrade. Going from Windows XP to Windows Vista, or from Vista to Windows 7. Lots of things change about the way the system works. Some apps are altered. Some stay the same. Some might not be compatible and need to be removed until new versions are available. You might even lose some of your data (or access to it). Some changes are improvements, but there’s always something you wish they’d left alone.

The New 52 fits this metaphor. So does the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths relaunch, which took characters from DC’s Earth-1 and Earth-2 settings, plus the characters they had bought from Charlton, Quality and Fawcett, and merged them all into a single timeline. Some characters were erased (Supergirl), others were changed significantly (Superman, Wonder Woman), some stayed more or less the same (the Flashes’ history was mostly unchanged). Most of Superman’s villains were reimagined and introduced as if they were new.

Smaller retcons, those that affect a single character or team, can be looked at as patches. The John Byrne Doom Patrol, which quietly relaunched the Doom Patrol as if they were new characters, but left the rest of the DCU unchanged. The Time Trapper/Glorith mini-reboot in the “Five Years Later” Legion of Super-Heroes, and the Threeboot Legion.

Really, anything that could be explained by a “Superboy punch” can be treated as a patch.

In between are the events that retcon a bunch of characters across the line, but only change the distant past and behind-the-scenes events. The DC Universe after Zero Hour was very much like the DC Universe after Crisis on Infinite Earths. The DC Universe after Infinite Crisis were very much like the DC Universe after Zero Hour. Zero Hour…aside from the reboot Legion, most of the retroactive changes were details. Infinite Crisis may have set up the return of the multiverse, but it happened in a way that no one in the main universe noticed for over a year. I’d compare these to service packs.

So in a way, DC’s right: it’s not a “reboot.” It’s a reinstall.

Why the Flash is the Most Important Character of the DC Universe

Today’s guest post is by Shaun Rosado of Shauncastic!

A Sound of Thunder

The sound of thunder, a crack of lightning and in a flash everything is different. No, I’m not talking about Flashpoint; DC Comics’ current take on a “Flash-centric” Event. I’m talking about the Flash as a character and the profound difference he’s made in comics. Ever since I was a child, I always felt a deep connection to the Flash. Perhaps it was the sense of the character’s long history, reaching all the way back to World War 2 with Jay Garrick as the original Flash. Perhaps it was the idea that when I was at my most impressionable the Flash TV show had just begun and would capture my imagination. Or perhaps it’s because the Flash is the most important character of the DC Universe.

Yeah. You read that right. I typed it. The Flash is the THE most important character of the DC Universe.

Of course, I don’t expect to get away with saying something like this without a little backup.

So let’s take a moment and just go over the finer points of my argument. When the Flash began way back in the 40s, he was a character that was given his own book nearly as soon as he was established. In January 1940, Flash Comics began as a variety comic that would feature new characters and give them a chance to flourish. Some of the most famous of these characters would be Johnny Thunder, Hawkman, Hawkgirl and Black Canary. This began an eerie precedence of the Flash establishing ideas and characters that would last and break out of his book time and time again. The book ran nearly the entire span of the Golden age, ending just a few months shy of the “official” end date.

But this is not a sprint and the above argument certainly does not win the Flash the title of Greatest Character Ever. This is a marathon…and as we all know, the Flash is the Fastest Man Alive. Continue reading

Didio’s Digital Designs: Connecting the Reboot Dots from Infinite Crisis to Flashpoint

At Comic-Con’s Sunday “The New 52” panel, Dan Didio stated that he’d wanted to reboot the DC Universe for five years, since Infinite Crisis*, but that the time didn’t seem right. Why not? And why is it happening now?

It makes more sense to tie it to Infinite Crisis: follow up a classic universe-changing event with a new universe-changing event 20 years later and usher in a new “age” of DC comics.

It seems clear that his plans morphed into One Year Later. Like the New 52, it was an attempt to establish a new status quo and provide a new jumping-on point for the entire line.

Something else Didio wanted to do with Infinite Crisis was bring back Barry Allen. He was coy about it for several years, but in the DC Nation column that ran the week of the last issue of Wally West’s Flash series, he explained that he’d wanted to bring Barry back with Infinite Crisis, but things didn’t work out, so they set up Bart instead. Then he’d wanted to bring Barry back in The Lightning Saga, but again, things didn’t work out, so they brought Wally back instead.

So what does it mean that things didn’t work out? Continue reading

Flash Transition Timeline

To keep the lengths of time in perspective, I’ve put together this timeline from the end of Geoff Johns’ well-regarded run on The Flash through several relaunches and two Crises to next year’s Flash: Rebirth. I’ve taken the cover dates from the GCD and shifted them back two months, since that seems to track with the release dates that I remember.

Dates Span Issues Description
August 2005 Flash #225 Geoff Johns’ last issue.
September 2005–January 2006 5 months Flash #226–230 Wrap up Wally (Cavalieri w/Lightle)
February–May 2006 4 months No Flash Comics
June 2006–January 2007 8 months Flash: TFMA #1–8 Bart as the main Flash (Bilson & De Meo)
February–June 2007 5 months Flash: TFMA Wrap up Bart (Guggenheim)
July 2007 1 month All-Flash Wrap up loose ends from “Full Throttle”
August 2007–August 2008 13 months Flash #231–243 Wally & the Flash Family (Waid, Peyer w/Champagne)
September–December 2008 4 months Flash #244–247 Wrap up Wally Again (Burnett)
January–March 2009 3 months No Flash Comics
April–September(?) 2009 6 months Flash: Rebirth

So from the point DC essentially gave up on Wally’s series (September 2005) to the point that DC will stake everything on a relaunch with Barry (April 2009, assuming it doesn’t get delayed) we’re looking at 3½ years. The longest run of a series during that time would be All-Flash with Flash #231–347 — just 1½ years, of which barely one year focused heavily on Iris and Jai West. (Alan Burnett or his editor shoved the kids off to the side pretty quickly when he came on board to do the wrap-up.)