Flash (and other speedster) linkblogging…
DC posted more of its Flashpoint writers Q&A on Friday, including Citizen Cold writer/artist Scott Kolins and Grodd of War writer Sean Ryan.
Ryan says of Grodd of War:
Since my one-shot is about one of Flash’s greatest villains, Grodd, the conflict is what does Grodd do without his archenemy. He gets everything he’s ever wanted, but there’s no more challenges in his life. He’s got everything he wants, but he’s miserable.
When asked about his favorite Flashpoint character and a “surprise” character who “will have fans talking,” Kolins says:
I am having so much fun with Cold. Geoff and I have talked many times about how great it would be for Cold to have his own monthly series. Surprise character? Flash fans will be very interested in a mysterious masked character who plays a crucial part in the story.
As for personal stories, “It doesn’t get more personal than CITIZEN COLD. Can a hero with a bad secret fall in love?”
Check out part one, part two and part three from last week, including Scott Kolins’ Flashpoint Rogues, and go onto part four of the interview.
We’re back with the latest entry in our series of Flash breakdowns. This week’s focus is issue #274, the last chapter on the way to the momentous issue #275! Links to additional artwork and research are included throughout this post.
UP TO SPEED: Last week, Flash attempted to unravel the mysterious appearance of a psychic female fan, while dealing with an internal drug smuggling operation at the Central City Police Department in his civilian guise. Iris continued to reach for Barry’s attention, but lost out to a massive prison riot spurred by the controversial Nephron Project!
It is convention season, and Flash fans across the country have been asking the same question: “Where is Wally West?”
While we do not know where Wally is now, where he will be, or how long it will be until he is anywhere, we certainly know where he was! With that knowledge, we introduce our new ongoing contest feature, “Where Was Wally West?”
On Wednesdays, we will post a panel or sequence from a classic comic featuring Wally West visiting an alternate reality, the past or a “possible future”. Every fan who can tell us the issue, writer, artist(s) and a reasonable description of the locale/era, by Friday, will be entered into a raffle for a cool Flash prize! Just send your responses to this email address, and we’ll announce the winner next week!
So check out the image below and ask yourself, WWWW?
This week’s prize is a copy of the Return of Barry Allen trade paperback by Mark Waid and Greg LaRocque!
Following up on the retailer perspective, here’s what DC wants the reader perspective to be:
I’ve always been kind of ambivalent about this sort of thing. On one hand, it’s nice to have a complete list. On the other, calling it a checklist does sort of imply that you should be getting everything. And while I’m sure the publishers would be thrilled if we all did that, it’s just not feasible for most of us. And I’m sure most DC Comics fans don’t want to read all of these books, just like they don’t want to read every comic that DC publishes.
I’ll give Geoff Johns props for stating up front that it’s a central story with a lot of side stories, and that you only need to read the main miniseries to get a complete story. That’s much better than, for instance, The OMAC Project, where the most important event in the book — the one that continues to have repercussions to this day — happened between two issues of the miniseries, in another comic book.
But it’s still a struggle between the creative team saying, “Read what you want, and I hope you’ll want to read a lot of it,” and the marketing department saying, “Read it all!”
At least it’s not presented as an actual checklist (as these often are), or worse: an ordered list that implies that you have to read the books –all of them — in a particular order to understand what’s going on.
