Speed Force

Some linkblogging for the weekend.

Flash

• Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep talks about how he’d write The Flash. Three words: Barry and Iris. (via Michael Kaiser)
• Quick Time contemplates the Boomerangs: What went wrong with Captain Boomerang, Jr.? And just what is White Lantern Captain Boomerang’s mission?
• That F’ing Monkey explains: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Flash.
• Firestorm Fan digs out an old Super-Powers adventure: Darkseid… of the Moon

Other speedsters

• Impulse Flashback: Bart Allen’s first day of school at Comics Should Be Good’s Year of Cool Comics
• First Comics News’ Sonic The Hedgehog Month is almost over
• Top Cow will be selling the SDCC and Supercon Velocity #1 variants through retail in November

Other comics

• Young Justice cartoon: Comic Book Movie interviews producers Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti.
• Comics Alliance analyzes the Brightest Day/White Lantern Teaser. Also worth a look: The most divisive character types in comics.
• Grumpy Old Fan looks at the real history of the DC Universe: its characters.
• Girls Gone Geek (G3) considers DC’s Legacy of Legacies (via @FlashJohnson)
• A Dispensible List of Comic Book Lists presents the stories behind the discoveries of 11 incredible comic collections. #
• Girls Read Comics Too tackles the question of DC vs. Marvel, asking: Why is it even a debate?(via @SpeedsterSite)
• Chewie and Han T-shirt (in the style of Calvin and Hobbes)
• Geekscape asks: have we had our fill of super-heroes?

I’ve updated the Iris West Allen profile and added Flash #3 to the variant cover list. I’ll probably take another pass at Iris soon, first to give her a more current headshot, then to simplify the biography. Even after the changes I made today, it’s still very focused on her time traveling days.

With the release of the Flash #1 preview, there’s been renewed talk about Iris Allen’s youth. After all, she lived long enough in the future to have children, watch them grow up, and have grandchildren, and when she came back with Bart, she looked visibly older: graying hair, crow’s feet, etc.

The question came up a lot when Flash: Rebirth launched last year, and I recall Ethan Van Sciver mentioning in one of his podcast interviews that he tried to draw her somewhat older, but that she and Barry didn’t look right together, so he and Geoff Johns decided to make her look closer to his age.

Now, there are a lot of reasons one can give for her looking 30 instead of 50 or 60: better medical care in the 31st century, the fact that she’s been transplanted into a new body at least once (don’t ask!), and the suggestion made in Flash: Rebirth #5 that exposure to the speed force keeps people young. This had actually been established before with Jay and to a lesser extent Joan Garrick.

Of course, it doesn’t explain why Iris would appear older in Flash vol.2 and Impulse, then younger in Flash: Rebirth and Flash vol.3, but since then, DC has established Superboy Punches, the “New Earth” rearrangement of history in Infinite Crisis, and Flash: Rebirth‘s alterations of Barry Allen’s past — including how and when he and Iris met.

But let’s not forget: When she returned after an extended absence during Geoff Johns’ run on Wally West’s series, Iris made her entrance looking like this: Read the rest of this entry »

Originally posted way back in 2003, long before the infamous Green Arrow/Black Canary wedding!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been going through the Silver Age Flash series, cataloging character appearances. I’m almost done – only 25 issues left – but it reminded me of something:

Why is it that super-hero weddings are almost always interrupted by super-villains – even when the hero’s identity is secret?

Is it just that readers expect a story with some sort of fight in it, and if it’s just a wedding they’ll be disappointed?

Consider these examples:

• Flash II (Barry Allen) and Iris West: the wedding is interrupted when Professor Zoom disguises himself as the groom, and the Flash has to get rid of him and then make it to the wedding himself.
• Flash II (Barry Allen) and Fiona Webb (after Iris’ death): Zoom returns, Flash spends the whole day chasing him around the globe, and eventually Fiona gives up and runs out of the chapel, just in time for Zoom to try to kill her. (Flash stops him with a last-second choke-hold which breaks his neck, leading to a manslaughter trial, the disappearance of Barry Allen, and finally the cancellation of the series.)
• Flash III (Wally West) and Linda Park: at the moment the rings are exchanged, Abra Kadabra kidnaps Linda, sends everyone home, and casts a massive forget spell, erasing all memory and records of her back to the point she met Wally. Eventually she escapes, Kadabra is tricked into reversing the spell, and they hold a new wedding – 18 issues later.

And it’s not just the main characters who get this treatment: Read the rest of this entry »