Category Archives: Flash History

Speed Reading: Flash in the 1990s

1 Reply

Strangely enough, a lot of the sites I’ve linked to on Twitter or Facebook over the last few weeks were looking back at the 1990s and Mark Waid’s run on The Flash

Max Mercury.High Five! Comics profiles Max Mercury: The Speedster Time Forgot (for a while). Of course, Max goes back farther than — he started as Quality Comics’ Golden Age hero, Quicksilver — but the version of the character known today was established in “The Return of Barry Allen,” “Terminal Velocity,” “Dead Heat” and Impulse.

Terminal VelocityFor Valentine’s Day, Comics Should be Good’s Year of Cool Comics spotlights Flash: Terminal Velocity and a key event in the relationship between Wally West and Linda Park.

Westfield Comics’ Josh Crawley looks back at Mark Waid’s first run on The Flash, picking up with Flash #0 and running through “Terminal Velocity,” “Dead Heat” and “Race Against Time.”

Mania spotlights the 1990s Flash TV series in 15 more shows that were canceled before their time over the last 25 years. It’s an interesting mix of shows I remember fondly (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), shows I remember hearing about but never watched (Murder One), and shows I’ve completely forgotten (Street Hawk?). It also reminds me that I never got around to watching the last few episodes of Journeyman.

Speed Reading: Fan Art, Blackest Night & More

Some linkblogging highlights from Twitter over the last few weeks:

Fan Art

Blue Lantern Flash Custom Figure at The Green Lantern Corps Forum.

Death Race on Reality Prime by Dave Myers and Kurt Christenson.

Blackest Night: The Rogues by xanychaos at Comic Bloc.

Commentary

Uncanny Comic Book Scans just finished a week of Flash posts featuring single pages from throughout Wally West’s run on the book.

Broken Frontier unearths the dead Rogues.

Bleeding Cool spots an error in Blackest Night: The Flash #2 – Barry Allen’s narration boxes feature the wrong Lantern Corps symbol!

Beyond the Flash

LiveScience: Humans Could Run 40 mph, in Theory (via Devin “The Flash” Johnson).

Perspective: schmevil reminds us all that Your fandom is not Fandom. (Via Comics Worth Reading).

Team Turmoil and Dynamo 5

1 Reply

I was recently looking through old scans and ran into an image of Team Turmoil. Readers from the 1990s will recognize them as a group of generic villains who would show up anytime Mark Waid needed the Flash to have a short battle as part of a larger story about something else.

The funny thing is that their costumes reminded me of another team — a much more developed team with actual characters: Dynamo 5. Continue reading →

Sidekick Corner: Ignition

7 Replies

So as I am the new kid around here I wanted to name my posts something that can identify them different to our glorious leader and I feel that right now being the new kid on the block sidekick is a good way to identify myself. Kelson is the guy that channels the speed force. I am impulse to his wally at the moment. I might change the name later but for now I think it is a nice way to let you know when I am speaking.

So this is the place that I will be looking at The Flash and his universe at the characters and events that have shaped each person that has worn the lightning.

Ignition: the end of one age, the birth of a new one.

So today I wanted to look at the Ignition storyline that begins with Issue 201 and what the story meant to the character of the Flash and the Flash universe in general.

Ignition is an interesting issue from the perspective of serialised super hero story telling. It is a great example of how you can make large scale changes to the status quo and still maintain the integrity of the character and honour the audiences expectations.

This is the reboot that I feel the people involved with “One More Day,” the Spider-Man story that was intended to create a new paradigm for the character. But where they failed with “One More Day,” Geoff Johns succeeded: execution. Geoff Johns took the subplot that ran through the Flash starting in the last half of Mark Waid’s run (the fear of loss) and used that theme as the reason for the changes made in this story.

Continue reading →

Flash in DC’s Most Iconic Covers

1 Reply

Comics Should Be Good has completed their list of the Top 75 Most Iconic DC Covers as voted on by the site’s readers, and the Flash has made a solid showing!

#73. Flash Comics #1

Flash Comics #1
1940. The first-ever appearance of the Flash, starring Jay Garrick. Also, the first time the Flash catches a bullet. Homaged by Impulse #84.

(Tied with Green Lantern #73.)

Read on to see 8 more covers. Continue reading →

Geoff Johns: Already the Longest Run on Flash Since 2005

6 Replies

Something just occurred to me: Between Flash: Rebirth and Blackest Night: The Flash, DC has scheduled 9 Flash comics in a row by the same writer. This hasn’t happened since 2005, when Geoff Johns finished his previous run on The Flash. We’re looking at the most creatively-consistent period the Flash has had in four years, even though we haven’t seen a single issue of the regular series!

The Flash has historically had very stable writing teams. The Golden Age was mostly Gardner Fox; the Silver age mostly John Broome. Robert Kanigher contributed to both. The Bronze Age was almost entirely Cary Bates. William Messner-Loebs did several years in the late 1980s, Mark Waid had the 1990s sewn up, and Geoff Johns took the first half of the 2000s.

But since 2005, the longest run had been just 8 issues by Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo.

It’s nice to finally have some stability back for the Flash. Even if we didn’t already know Geoff Johns would be sticking around for the new series, it already feels like a minor miracle.