Category Archives: Flash News

Francis Manapul Talks Flash & Beast Legends

Comic Vine interviews Francis Manapul about his work on The Flash and his role on the TV series Beast Legends.

Key Flash items:

  • The two Rogue Profile issues with art by Scott Kolins were planned to help get the book back on schedule, as well as to add depth to the villains. (No big surprise, here.)
  • The second story arc will be even “crazier” than the first. On a scale of 1–10, “we’re gonna aim for 15!”
  • Flashpoint will run concurrently with the third story arc in The Flash.
  • He can’t say anything about Wally West, but we “may have an answer in a few months.”

The rest of the article focuses on Beast Legends, which is all about tracing the origins of mythological creatures and using modern science to figure out what they would be like if they were real.

He touches briefly on the delays that have plagued The Flash from #4 onward. While working on the show, he’d come back to the hotel from a shoot, sleep, then wake up at 1am to draw through the night and send scans on to DC. “We were able to minimize any major delays to the book, ironically enough it was SDCC that wreaked havoc to the schedule.”

Head over to Comic Vine to read the whole interview!

Beast Legends premieres in the US on SyFy this Thursday, and has been running in Canada on History Television.

Guggenheim: Flash Movie Treatment Finished

Newsarama’s Vaneta Rogers interviews Marc Guggenheim about the Green Lantern and Flash movies. Readers of this blog will no doubt appreciate his first quote:

“We’ve turned in the treatment for Flash.”

Next up: the script. “It’s very much one step at a time for The Flash.”

Since Guggenheim, Greg Berlanti and Michael Green are also working on the story for Green Lantern 2, Rogers asked him about possible Flash sequels. They’re not planning one at this stage, but they are open to it.

Guggenheim will be covering two other speedsters while The Flash is in development. He takes over Justice Society of America with issue #44 (scheduled for October), where he’ll write the original Flash, Jay Garrick. He’s also a consulting producer on Berlanti’s TV show No Ordinary Family, which features a speedster played by Julie Benz (Dexter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and premieres on September 28.

DC 75th Anniversary Soundtrack

DC has announced a soundtrack compilation featuring music from movie and TV adaptations of their characters. The collection goes all the way back to the 1941 Superman cartoons by Max Fleischer Studios and runs up through Green Lantern: First Flight. A lot of it is previously unavailable material, like music from the 1967 Filmation cartoons, Super Friends and Justice League Unlimited, and the live-action Swamp Thing and Shazam! TV shows. There are also familiar tracks like John Williams’ Superman theme, Danny Elfman’s Batman, and the themes from the 1960s Batman and 1970s Wonder Woman TV series.

CBR has a detailed article, and The Source has the track list. Neither article has a release date more detailed than “later this year,” but Amazon lists September 28.

I was surprised not to see anything from the 1990 Flash TV series (though they do have the Flash intro from the Filmation cartoons), but they may have decided it didn’t represent the Flash appropriately. Danny Elfman’s theme for the show does sound a lot like his Batman theme.

If you do want to pick up music from the Flash TV series, you can still get La La Land Records’ limited edition 2-CD soundtrack, featuring Elfman’s theme and Shirley Walker’s score from eight episodes.

Doin’ the Speedster Shuffle (Schedule Changes)

DC’s website has some more scheduling changes for upcoming Flash issues:

Meanwhile, over at Top Cow, Velocity #2 is still in its most recent spot on September 15.

Update September 2:

  • The Flash #7 is now November 17.
  • The Flash #8 is now December 8.
  • Velocity #2 is now September 22. That means Velocity and The Flash are synced up again.

Flash Hints from Baltimore & Toronto: Flashpoint in Adventure, Secret Origin – UPDATED

This weekend features two comic book conventions: the comics track at FanExpo in Toronto, and Baltimore Comic Con. DC has had a presence at both, splitting their events between Dan Didio in Toronto and Ian Sattler in Baltimore.

CBR covers FanExpo’s DC Nation without revealing any Flash news, though they did plug Francis Manapul’s role on the TV show Beast Legends.

@liabrown1 caught a few bits of info at today’s DC Universe panel:

  • Flash will intro a new character in the 2nd story arc. Afterwards will be Secret Origins. #
  • Flashpoint will greatly affect the Justice League, but otherwise DiDio refused to talk about it. #
  • On Adventure Comics: currently the Legion, then Flashpoint, then a new char will lead the book. #

Update: CBR’s FanExpo DC Universe report is now online.

Newsarama covers Baltimore’s DC Nation with a live-blog, including this exchange:

Q: Is Sterling Gates’s Kid Flash book coming out?
Gates: nope.
Sattler: “But we have something really cool in its place that we can’t talk about.”

They may be talking about the second Flash book, Flash: Speed Force, that Geoff Johns leaked/announced in San Diego. (I got the impression that they weren’t quite ready to announce it at the time.) Or they may have something else in the works.

Update: CBR’s Baltimore DC Nation report is up as well.

Update (Monday): a bit more news from DC’s Sunday Conversation (Baltimore, via CBR):

Where should fans of Wally West be directing their attention? “It’s coming,” Gates said. “Geoff Johns is world-building for Barry Allen right now.”

Yeah, and tomorrow is a rest day. As much as I’m enjoying the new series, I’m really cynical when it comes to DC’s treatment of Wally West these days.

Update (Monday): ComicsAlliance’s FanExpo DC Nation write-up includes Dan Didio explaining that “the constant reinventing of the same characters was getting confusing and factionalizing our audience,” so they decided to pick one Flash, one Atom, etc. and standardize on the “classic” version.

Never mind that in some cases, the “classic” version was dead or retired before they made this decision, and never mind the fact that they also insist that Blue Beetle Ted Kord will stay dead, and Renee Montoya will continue to be the Question. And I don’t see Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, either. So the explanation doesn’t quite add up.