Monthly Archives: September 2009

Super-Hero Weddings

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

Cover: Flash #165Over 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: Continue reading

DC Entertainment and the Flash Movie

DC isn’t making it easy for me to take time away from comics news/discussion this month.

So, you’ve probably heard by now that Warner Bros. is restructuring DC Comics, making it part of a new WB company, DC Entertainment. The announcement mentions several movies currently in production, but says nothing about anything in earlier stages, such as the Flash movie.

However, an article at Deadline Hollywood by Nikki Finke mentioned some movies in the pipeline:

Robinov for months has quietly gone to producers like Chuck Roven and Joel Silver and Akiva Goldman and “called back” all their high profile DC titles in development like The Flash and Wonder Woman.

This made me wonder: what does this mean for the Flash movie? It was only 2 months ago that Warner Bros. announced Geoff Johns had written a story and would be producing. Has it been put on hold again? Has this version been dropped the way the David Goyer story was? What exactly does “called back” mean in this context?

Then I looked back at July’s announcement and saw this:

This past fall, Warners quietly hired three of DC’s biggest writers — Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison and Marv Wolfman — to act as consultants and writers for its superhero line of movies. The move involved taking back the reins on projects being handled by such producers as Charles Roven (”The Flash”) and Akiva Goldsman (”Teen Titans”). [emphasis added]

Aha! Now add in the fact that Jeff Robinov was heavily involved in the big DC/Warner Bros. summit last year that led to July’s announcement, and it looks like the current Flash production is the result of the same process that has been building up to the restructuring.

So until we hear otherwise, we can assume that the Geoff Johns/Dan Mazeau version of the movie is still in development.

50 Years of the Flash at Comic-Con 2006

Flashback Post from 3 years ago. Some of the stuff is old news about the launch of Flash: The Fastest Man Alive, but a lot of it is also a look at Flash history with a number of writers and artists who have worked on the character: Geoff Johns, Carmine Infantino, Mark Waid, Joe Giella, Brian Bolland, Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo.

I missed the first half of Saturday’s “50 Years of the Flash” panel because we missed the red line and got stuck waiting to transfer at America Plaza. The shuttle might have gotten us there faster (maybe even on time), but we were pretty sure they wouldn’t let us on with our coffee.

What I did see of the panel was still mostly retrospective, and mainly Mark Waid, Geoff Johns, and Danny Bilson. Carmine Infantino told a couple of stories (one of which he’d told at Thursday’s panel, about the “war” between him and Julius Schwartz: he’d try to draw ever-more-nasty cliffhangers on his covers, and every time, Julie would come up with a story to go with it. So finally he drew one with the Flash and the Golden Age Flash both racing to save some guy, and said, “There! Top that!” The rest, of course, is history).

After a while they started talking about the new Flash book. While the most common answer in the Q&A session was, “Wait and see,” Bilson and DeMeo did answer a couple of questions that I’ve seen people asking about.

For the “legacy pages” in the first two issues, they did a whole bunch of research, sometimes finding conflicting info. (They didn’t mention this one, but the issue of “Who named Impulse” is probably one of those cases.) Any changes in continuity are accidental, and not intentional.

The reason Bart’s acting so morose in these first few issues is that he’s got this problem to deal with, and once he starts to work through it, his impulsive nature will start taking over again.

I almost got the new #1 signed, but staff kept telling everyone to clear the room, and as near as I can tell, Bilson and DeMeo took a different exit than I did.

Bilson and DeMeo told a good story about how when they pitched the TV show, the powers that be wanted the Flash to be running around in a gray sweat suit. So they got Dave Stevens to design a suit and his rendering convinced them to go with it. Even then, the network resisted bringing costumed villains in until they showed it could work. And apparently what killed it wasn’t bad ratings, but network politics. Someone wanted his show, so he could get a better bonus. A real pity, as the second season opener would have been a two-hour special with the Trickster, Captain Cold, and Mirror Master—a Rogues Gallery episode.

Continue reading

This Week (Sep 10): Thursday Comics, Titans, Tangent

Remember: due to Labor Day this past weekend, comics will arrive in stores on Thursday this week! Which makes Wednesday Comics a little off, but hey, who’s counting?

Wednesday Comics #10

Wednesday ComicsWEDNESDAY COMICS, DC’s new, 12-issue weekly series, reaches its incredible conclusion in September. WEDNESDAY COMICS will arrive in stores folded twice to 7″ x 10″.

7″ x 10″, 16 pg, FC, $3.99 US

Titans #17

Titans #17Written by Pat McCallum
Art by Angel Unzueta & Wayne Faucher
Cover by Angel Unzueta

Spotlight on Beast Boy! Gar Logan grows tired of not being taken seriously by his Titans teammates. And what he plans on doing about it will shock you!

32 pg, FC, $2.99 US

Note: DC has a preview at The Source.

Titans: Lockdown TP

Titans vol.2: LockdownWritten by Judd Winick
Art by Howard Porter, Julian Lopez, J. Calafiore and others
Cover by Howard Porter

There’s a traitor in the Titans’ midst! Now, the Titans headquarters is under lockdown until the team can discover who betrayed them. Will they have the strength to take down one of their own? And will they want to? Collecting Titans #7-11!

128 pg, FC, $14.99 US

Tangent: Superman’s Reign Vol. 2 TP

Tangent: Superman's Reign Vol.2Written by Dan Jurgens and Ron Marz
Art by Wes Craig, Carlos Magno and others
Cover by Ivan Reis and Joe Prado

In this concluding volume of Tangent: Superman’s Reign, the heroes from Tangent Earth and the DC Earth collide — and only one universe can survive! Collecting Tangent: Superman’s Reign #7-12.

144 pg, FC, $19.99 US

Note: I have a profile of the Tangent Universe Flash.

Super-Speed Shipping!

2 trucks: Bartwood Construction & Keystone Freight

I could not believe I managed to spot these next to each other. I mean, Bart and Keystone?

It’s right up there with this one, which I also saw on the back of a truck:

Flash Transport

Check out the design:

  • Red as the main color
  • Sans-serif capital italics (just like the longest-running versions of the Flash logo)
  • A lightning bolt that runs from the upper right to the lower left.

Hmm…

It got me thinking about commercial applications of super-speed. Not something that turns up often in the super-hero genre, but it shows up occasionally. Kapitalist Kouriers is the first one that comes to mind. They were a trio of Soviet defectors who decided to sell their services as couriers and, from time to time, heroes for hire.

Reposted from K-Squared Ramblings: Bart? Keystone? & Flash Transport.