Category Archives: Creators

Speed Reading: Infantino, Fan Films, Johns at Meltdown & Isotope, and EVS

Two Artists and a Writer

NYC Graphic Novelists has an interview with Carmine Infantino. He talks about growing up in the depression, breaking into the fledgling comic industry, building the Silver Age, and his tenure as editor at DC. Update: There’s been some fallout from this interview, with Infantino feeling he was misrepresented.

Geoff Johns ~~will appear at a Blackest Night launch party at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles on Tuesday, July 14~~. Update: The Tuesday event at Meltdown has been canceled. He will also be signing at Isotope Comics in San Francisco on Saturday, July 18.

The Green Lantern Spotlight Podcast has an interview with Ethan Van Sciver. It’s long at 99 minutes, but it’s worth a listen. He talks about everything from deadlines and inking to why he’s drawing Iris Allen younger to designs for Black Lanterns.

Review

The Captain’s JLA Blog reviews “Speed Demons”, the Superman: The Animated Series episode that guest-starred the Flash and introduced the scarlet speedster to the DC Animated Universe.

The Flash-Back Podcast reviews The Return of Barry Allen.

Fan Creations

Flash endorses Green Lantern for Mayor! (via Robot6)

The Heretics Blog has a collection of fan films, including the Flash getting a speeding ticket.

Hal & Barry as Butch & Sundance

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Newsarama’s Vaneta Rogers has an interview with Geoff Johns on…Everything related to Blackest Night. At one point he talks about writing Barry Allen and Hal Jordan.

The biggest surprise is how easy it is to write when Hal and Barry are together. These two know each other so well, and there’s such a strong tie to them…it’s like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And something happens to Hal when he’s with Barry. It happens to me when I hang out with my friend, Matt. He’s so organized and punctual that a little part of my brain shuts off. I don’t need to worry about the time or where we’re going. I feel like that happens to Hal when he’s around Barry. Hal goes with the flow a little more, while Barry’s taking up the slack of figuring out where to go. I have more Barry and Hal scenes written down because they just keep writing themselves. Introvert and extrovert. Saint and sinner. Time and space.

The “saint and sinner” characterization has actually been brought out in the text of Flash: Rebirth, and he’s talked before about the Flashes being connected to time in the way Green Lanterns are connected to space.

As I recall, though, Butch and Sundance’s partnership didn’t end very well…

Another bit I found interesting was where Johns talks about background characters.

There are Black Lanterns in the background, and if you know who they are, that’s fun, but it’s not always important to this story. It’s like, who is Dengar in Empire Strikes Back? He’s a bounty hunter in the background, and you don’t go, “You know what? I can’t figure this movie out because I don’t know who that guy is! I’m outta here!”

I think that’s a good comparison, because some comics fans actually do that! Maybe it’s just being detail-oriented. Or maybe it’s a consequence of the way that reading comics, for many fans, is not a matter of just following individual stories, but following a universe. Continuity over everything. So fans expect to recognize everyone, and find it confusing when they don’t.

Any other thoughts as to why that might be?

Creator Catch-Up: Video, Appearances, and a Twitter War

Speed Reading: Secret ID, Impulse Alumni, and More

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At CBR, Geoff Johns wants your questions! Submit questions for the next Q&A by Monday, June 29.

Scans_Daily demonstrates how Barry Allen kept his secret identity. Or, rather, didn’t.

Comic Bloc has Noah Van Sciver’s comedic recap of Flash: Rebirth #3.

An old post turned up on my other blog a few days ago, reminding me of those “world’s fastest man” commercials for MovieTickets.com. Remember those, with the superhero who had wings on his head, a round symbol on his chest, yellow boots, and a lightning motif (but the website was still faster)? Okay, so the costume was blue, but still…

Beyond the Flash

I’ve written a guest review of Perhapanauts: First Blood at Collected Editions. Perhapanauts, an adventure series about strange creatures like Bigfoot, chupacabras etc. created by Impulse alumni Todd Dezago and Craig Rousseau.

Robot 6 reports on Katelyn Rae Rochelle, first winner of the Ringo Scholarship. The Ringo is named after the late Mike Wieringo, who co-created Impulse during his run as Flash artist.

Lots of sites have linked to this guide to comic book message boards. Seems pretty accurate for the boards I visit from time to time. The DC Message Boards really are that scary, and Newsarama is only marginally better.

Tickets are now available for the Long Beach Comic-Con coming up in October. I’m going to have to figure out which day I want to go!

Speed Reading: Mystery Villain, Anticipation, iPhone Comics, and More

Flash: Rebirth…

First, I’ve got a guest post up at The Weekly Crisis detailing 5 Possible Candidates for The Flash: Rebirth‘s Mystery Villain.

‘Twas the Night Before Wednesday’s J. Caleb Mozzocco (Blog@Newsarama) is more enthused about the collected edition of Flash: The Human Race with “Huge Silver Age cosmic action and huge stakes” than about Flash: Rebirth #3, “in which your dad’s Flash races Superman.”

Can’t Wait for Wednesday’s JK Parkin (Robot 6), on the other hand, is solidly on board. “I wasn’t wild about the first issue, but the second one really sucked me in. This issue features the return of a classic: Superman racing The Flash.”

Update: I noticed a post from 2007 on my other blog is getting more attention than usual, probably because it links Barry Allen and the Black Flash.

…And Beyond

You will soon be able to read Perhapanauts and Tellos on the iPhone. The two creator-owned series have strong Impulse connections. Tellos is a fantasy adventure story created by Impulse writer Todd Dezago and Flash artist Mike Wieringo — Bart Allen’s co-creator. Perhapanauts an action/horror/comedy created by Dezago and Impulse artist Craig Rousseau. I highly recommend both series.

DC Collector posts a sketch of a Jay Garrick figurine from the Eaglemoss DC Super-Hero Collection. It makes me wish I lived in the UK.

Silver Age Comics profiles Julius Schwartz, legendary editor of DC’s Silver Age who oversaw the 1956 revamp of the Flash.

Cartoon Flophouse doesn’t shy away from strong opinions in 5 DC Comics Characters Which Would Translate Better to Film Than Wonder Woman or The Flash.

A bit off-topic, Watch This Space wants to know which of several serialized stories on the blog should not return.

Speed Reading: Lightning Blades, Bronze Age, Variant Covers and More

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RikDad identifies a precedent for those lightning-bolt blades seen in Flash: Rebirth…way back in the Golden Age.

Comic Bronze Age tries to identify…What IS the Bronze Age of Comics? Considering that many fans today are of the opinion that the Silver Age lasted through 1985, it’s a good question.

The podcast Views From the Longbox has their second installment of Views from the Speed Force, focusing on Flash: Rebirth #2.

Newsarama asks retailers, do variant covers sell more books? Personally, when a comic has alternate covers that are distributed equally (like they’ve done with the Final Crisis books) I’ll just pick the one I like better. When the variant is rare, like the 1-in-25 alternate covers they’re doing for Flash: Rebirth, I usually won’t bother. Though I am going to try to pick up the alternate cover for #3, which is 100% more interesting than the standard cover.

Speaking of variant covers, it looks like I forgot to link to the site updates I did last weekend: I updated the collections of variant covers and cover homages to include current and upcoming Flash: Rebirth covers. Still need to work through an email backlog of homages, though.

Crimson Lightning is back from a three-week hiatus with new posts.

Mania’s Top 20 writers of all time includes long-term Flash writers Mark Waid, Geoff Johns and Gardner Fox.

Speaking of foxes, and still somewhat relevant to this blog’s topic, Firefox is holding a video contest called “Show Us Your Speed“ to promote the upcoming Firefox 3.5 release. Submit a 30-second video of your fastest talent to www.fastestfirefox.com.