Monthly Archives: September 2010

Speed Reading

Some Monday morning linkblogging….

Collected Editions reviews Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corps Vol. 2 (Flash, Wonder Woman & JSA)
The Snark Files presents: The Flash in a Marathon.
Remember Mopee? Major Spoilers reviews Flash Vol. 1 #167 – the “real” origin of the Flash (1967).
Grumpy Old Fan looks at Earth-Two, where second-generation heroes created their own identities.
Comic Book Revolution asks: Can super-heroes have long-term relationships?
Quick Time has declared September to be Zoom Month.

Speed Reading: Comics and the Internet

Digital comics and piracy have been a hot topic over the past week, starting with Mark Waid’s speech at the Harvey Awards last weekend. His main two points: copyright is a balance between the creator and society, and file sharing is here to stay – so the industry is better off harnessing it instead of futilely trying to destroy it.

At Newsarama, Vinnie Bartilucci sums up the fallout from Waid’s speech, then asks the key question: can piracy become profit? He draws the obvious comparison to the music industry, in which MP3 sharing sites gave way to a legitimate market spearheaded by Apple’s iTunes store, and considers how digital distribution changes the market.

Finally, at Comics Alliance, David Brothers is frustrated with the comics industry’s overly-cautious approach to digital comics. The time for dancing around the issue is over — just kiss digital comics on the mouth, already! Instead of sabotaging their own efforts for fear of what will happen to the paper market, he argues that the industry should jump in with both feet and take advantage of the opportunities that digital distribution will bring.

Speed Reading: BATB Video Clip, Young Justice, EVS on WildStorm & CyberFrog

Baltimore Impulse Graduates to Kid Flash

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Remember the eight-year-old Impulse at last year’s Baltimore Comic-Con? He’s back!

Caleb as Kid Flash with Craig Rousseau and Todd Dezago (Baltimore)

Caleb’s father sent in some photos of the now-nine-year-old dressed up not as Impulse, but this time as Kid Flash! Among the writers and artists they met were Greg LaRocque (Flash), Mike McKone (Teen Titans), and Todd Dezago & Craig Rousseau (Impulse, pictured).

Dragon*Con Flash-Back

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The Irredeemable Shag of Once Upon a Geek has been posting photos from past Dragon*Cons in advance of year’s convention. Among them: This 2007 photo of a fan dressed as the future Barry Allen from Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again.

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone in this costume before.

Reader Survey Results: How Did You Discover Speed Force?

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Thanks to everyone who responded to my poll on how you discovered this site. It’s an interesting picture of how (one corner of) the comics Internet works.

More than half of you came over from my longer-established site, Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning, and just over a fifth of you discovered this blog through some sort of search. Another 10% learned about the site through another blog, either through an article or through a sidebar link.

A handful or respondents found out about the site through forums and social networks (Twitter, Facebook and Buzz).

What I found particularly interesting: Not one person reported discovering the site though StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, or another link sharing site. I get a fair amount of traffic from StumbleUpon and Reddit, but it seems that even if they’re good at bringing in casual viewers, they’re not terribly effective at creating regular readers.

Thanks again, everyone!

Full results after the cut:

Update: I’ve pulled in the comments from the announcement post, since it’s really one discussion.

Update 2: Twtpoll has purged the results, and I didn’t think to copy them over first. :grumble: