Monthly Archives: March 2009

Future Rogue

Over at Speedster Site, West spots a Flash-related item in Gerry Conway’s Newsarama interview on his upcoming miniseries, The Last Days of Animal Man. The book takes place 15 years in the future and features two new villains, including:

The other character is a woman called Prismatik, and she is the illegitimate daughter of Evan McCulloch, the Mirror Master. So she has her own axe to grind, both as a person and against Buddy.

Quick Thoughts: Twitter Through 2009-03-15

  • ABC’s video player: nice picture, but a FRIGGING PAIN to use. I shouldn’t have to go up to the comp & click a button after each commercial.
  • Watched the premiere of Castle. Could definitely watch more of this. Yeah, it’s Murder He Wrote as a cop-buddy show, but it’s fun so far.
  • Trying to decide whether to hit the comic store today, tomorrow, or just let it slide until next week
  • Logged into Comicon.com for first time since redesign. Couldn’t think of anything to say. Still have only one post. Must lurk for a bit.
  • WWLA would have started tomorrow if it hadn’t been canceled. Might have gone if they had guests who skipped WonderCon for MegaCon.
  • Getting hits from a site called halforum. Turns out it’s named for HAL 9000, not Hal Jordan. Or Half-O-Rum.
  • More thorough write-up of WonderCon Friday at my other blog
  • Best thing about Snakes on a Plane was the Cobra Starship song at the end. Thank you, #iPod for reminding me!
  • Cool! RT @iversecomics: Dynamo 5 #1 and #2 are available on iPhone and Android right now! Dynamo 5 #1 is FREE — GO GET IT!
  • Post of the day: “if comic book fans aren’t complaining…the universe will explode. Do you want the universe to explode?”

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Golden-Age Art Mystery

Flash stippled portrait (All-Flash #13)Comic Coverage is seeking help in solving an All-Flash Art Mystery — namely, this stippled portrait of the Flash from All-Flash #13 (reprinted in the 1973 Flash 100 Page Spectacular ) in a dramatically different style than regular artist E.E. Hibbard‘s usual (of which the faces in the border are more typical).

(My take: I don’t see any reason to believe it’s not Hibbard’s own work, judging by some of the panels he did for creator cameos and wildlife paintings he did in the years after his comics career. And in The Flash Companion, Tom Brevoort recalls being astonished by this page, and believes it to be Hibbard’s work.)

Speed Reading: Silver-Age Guest Stars, Action Figures, Van Sciver and More

Victoria Wayne comments on Captain Boomerang’s first appearance

Crimson Lightning has finished reviewing the entire 1990-1991 Flash TV series, and now presents a round-up of Live Action: The Worst.

Silver Age Comics looks at Barry Allen’s childhood sweetheart, future actress Daphne Dean, as The Other Woman. (She returned a few times in the Bronze Age, including the 4-part story that introduced the Golden Glider.)

Newsarama has a video interview with Todd Dezago, former Impulse writer, in which he talks about Perhapanauts.

DCU Classics Flash Action FigurePOE Ghostal reviews the new DCU Classics Barry Allen action figure.

Geek Stuff Daily looks at the history of the Flash.

Ethan Van Sciver’s weekly column is up to #11, and at least this week he’s renamed it from “Your Time Is Now Mine” to “Hope, Understanding and Compassion.” He links to a discussion thread his wife Sharis started about her experience with a dog rescue gone wrong earlier this week:

This was the worst day of my life. I don’t blame the dog, and I’m especially grateful for Officer Guardian Angel this morning, and the fact that it was ME that was bitten, not a small child, which is easily could have been. But I dedicate my entire life to rescue, and to see the dog shot, to hear it scream in pain and watch it die…this was entirely too much to cope with today.

Please keep supporting rescue efforts and animal cruelty legislation, folks, not the hysteria that causes people to deem all “vicious” dogs “bad dogs.”

There are no bad dogs, just bad owners.

Sharis also posted a link in the thread to her own blog entry about the incident.

Co-Features, or How To Make All Flash Fans Happy

Over the past month, DC has announced a (somewhat) new format for some of its books: the co-feature. It’s essentially the same as the classic lead+backup format, except that the lead story is a full 22 pages.* The upcoming Doom Patrol relaunch will co-feature the Metal Men, and now Booster Gold and Teen Titans will be getting Blue Beetle and Ravager backups. The books will jump to $3.99, but they’ll have more story pages than the standard $2.99 book.

Thinking about this, I realized: This is the perfect way to satisfy all Flash fans! Relaunch the series after Flash: Rebirth as a co-feature book. Make the lead 22-page story focus on Barry Allen. Make the backup story focus on Wally West, or rotate through Wally, Jay and Bart. I’ve been vocal in my displeasure at losing a regular series focusing on Wally, but I would buy this in a hot second with no complaints (unless the stories turned out bad, of course). It also seems more viable in this market than a second Flash book.

So how about you, readers? Does this sound like a good idea?

Edit: Went to post this on ComicBloc and realized that The Speedster posted the same idea a week ago. And I responded in the thread. Clearly I need either more sleep or more coffee.

*It’s not clear how long the backups are, but I’m guessing probably 12 or 16. 16 would make it roughly equivalent to a 40-page book, which is the format that Final Crisis and tie-ins like Rogues Revenge have used.