Monthly Archives: December 2008

This Week (Dec 10): Final Crisis, JLA, Titans

This week the Flash appears in Final Crisis (yes, it’s on the schedule!), Justice League of America, The Titans, and a new volume of Justice Society of America: Thy Kingdom Come.

Final Crisis #5

Final Crisis #5Humanity enslaved! Time shattered and bleeding! Anti-Life triumphant! Can Earth’s demoralized, beaten heroes rally their scattered forces for the ultimate super-battle against the nightmare armies of Apokolips when the forces of good meet the forces of evil on the bridge to Blüdhaven? As Darkseid’s presence causes reality itself to sicken and the lights to go out across the universe, as even the Guardians fall, the true power of the evil gods finally reveals itself, and a major character returns for a shocking conclusion.

Does the secret of humankind’s salvation lie in a mysterious cave painting and a bolt of lightning? Or has the Last Day come for us all?

Written by Grant Morrison. Art and covers by J.G. Jones, Carlos Pacheco & Jesus Merino.

More after the cut. Continue reading

Light Blogging Week

Even with Final Crisis #5 coming out this week, it’s going to have to be a light one for blogging. Deadlines at work, so I may be staying late, plus I’m sick. (Great combination, huh?)

If I have time I’ll try to finish one of several half-done posts I’ve been working on. And I’ll check the usual news sites in the evening, though I doubt there will be much in the way of huge Flash news this week.

Quick Thoughts: Twitter Through 2008-12-07

  • Watching Heroes: Longest. Eclipse. Ever.
  • I saw the Scott Pilgrim #5 cover somewhere yesterday, but didn’t know it had just been released.
  • Now that I think about it, it was probably just the Oni Press website.
  • Is it too much to ask of the new Blog@Newsarama crew to get titles right? Fallen Angel, not Dark Angel. Flashforward, not Fast Forward.
  • D’oh. Somehow missed the fact that comics are on Thurs this week. Thought it was only if Mon/Tues were holidays. When do they actually ship?
  • Possibly of interest: Fire Twirling with Farscape’s Chiana (Gigi Edgley).
  • And more Final Crisis delays: FC #6 pushed 2 weeks to Jan 14, FC:L3W pushed 1 week to Jan 21.
  • Probably not worth driving ~90 miles to San Diego for IDW’s sale on Sat. If it were NEXT week, when I’m going to SD anyway, I might drop by.
  • Wow. I’m actually seeing traffic from ComicSpace. I’ll have to drop in more often!
  • From the suggestion box on my Flash site: “the flash” Wow…I hadn’t thought of that. I really SHOULD add the Flash to my Flash site!
  • Just read Perhapanauts: Second Chances. Will have to read more of this.

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Speed Reading: Movie, Geoff Johns and DCUO

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”.

State of the Blog (Dec 2008)

A couple of notes on recent changes here at Speed Force:

1. You may have noticed a welcome banner appearing from time to time on the site. That’s something I’ve been trying out here and at K-Squared Ramblings, and presents an appropriate message to viewers coming from various search sites and social networks. In theory you should only see it once, or at most once a week, if you allow cookies. It’s powered by the Wp Greet Box plugin.

2. I’ve been trying to balance software speed with download speed, especially for visitors on mobile handsets. I used to run WordPress Mobile Edition, which tries to detect most phones and other small-screen, low-bandwidth devices, but it doesn’t work well with server caching. Since I upgraded to a G1 phone, I’ve been trying out WPTouch, which presents a clean interface on the iPhone and on phones that run the Android browser. If you read this site with a mobile device, please let me know how well it works. I’ll probably be tweaking this some more.

3. I’ve updated to a new version of WordPress. Actually, I’ve jumped the gun a bit by installing the WP 2.7 release candidate. (I’ve also dropped the WP_Identicons plugin in favor of the built-in Identicon support, but it generates different avatars than the plugin did. Sorry if you liked your old one better!)

The new version supports threaded comments, but the theme I’m using isn’t compatible with them. I’ll take a stab at updating it manually this weekend.

Anyway, there may be some wonkiness with the upgrade. If you stumble on something odd, please let me know.

4. Holding steady at #8 on Comic Blog Elite. Or at least I was until today.

5. Can’t believe I missed the six-month mark. Half a year! The downside is that I’ve been somewhat neglecting updates at Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning in order to keep this going.

6. More social networking coming up. I’ve added the Twitter account SpeedForceOrg, and I’m working on something to tie this into Facebook. (And yeah, I’ve got a backlog of friend requests. Sorry about that.)

Marching Toward the Kingdom

One of the themes in “Thy Kingdom Come,” the storyline that’s been running through Justice Society of America this year, has been exploring the link between the present-day DC Universe with the future shown in the groundbreaking 1996 miniseries Kingdom Come. This week’s Justice Society of America #21 looks into the mystery of the Kingdom Come version of the Flash. Continue reading