Category Archives: Flash News

Free-Falling Flash Sales

It’s depressing, but sales on The Flash have continued to drop through June. Personally, I’d been hoping to see an uptick in the Tom Peyer/Freddie Williams II “Fast Money” arc, which has been quite good (IMO)…but with figures in for the fourth issue of their run, the numbers just keep dropping. The Beat’s sales charts for June:

02/2008: Flash #237     —  37,719 (-  9.0%)
03/2008: Flash #238 — 35,606 (- 5.6%)
04/2008: Flash #239 — 33,741 (- 5.2%)
05/2008: Flash #240 — 31,944 (- 5.3%)
06/2008: Flash #241 — 30,810 (- 3.6%)

They go on to add:

In what seems like a last-ditch effort to salvage the property, DC are apparently looking to exchange the title character again, which would be the third time since June 2006. Given that it won’t happen until January 2009, however, the next six months worth of The Flash sales are bound to be ugly.

Given that there’s a trend among comics fans to only care about books that “matter” — just look at how stand-alone books like The Brave and the Bold, JLA: Classified and JSA Classified, etc. tend to do vs. Final Infinite Countdown Crisis tie-ins — I can imagine plenty of potential readers will be sitting out the next five months, waiting until Flash: Rebirth not because they’re waiting specifically for Barry, but because they feel the current book is just filler.

It makes me wonder why DC is even bothering with another 4-issue arc, particularly one with a new creative team, when they’ve effectively undercut interest in it by announcing Rebirth before it starts.

Linkage: Rumors of Bart

While many fans seem to be taking it as given that Bart Allen will return in Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, there’s been considerably less certainty as to where he might continue to appear afterward. Will he return to the present, or stay in the 31st century? Will he return as Impulse, Kid Flash, or the Flash? Will he appear on any sort of regular basis, or just be an occasional guest star?

Rumor column Lying in the Gutters suggests he might be staying with the Legion, or at least be available in that setting:

One San Diegoer tells me, “I was waiting at the Aspen booth at Comic-Con getting a sketch done by current Legion Artist Francis Manapul, when Geoff Johns came over and interrupted to talk to him for a second. Johns had a copy of…his first Teen Titans trade, and handed it to Manapul, which Manapul said, ‘I eventually did get my hands on a copy and read it last night.’ The two of them talked about Bart Allen for a couple of minutes, with Manapul being very complimentary of how he was written. Johns looked around, saw people were watching, and turned his back and the two of them continued to talk inaudibly for about 10 minutes about something before Johns left.

“Combine that with the vague question that Johns asked at one panel: ‘Does anyone miss Bart Allen?’ and there has to be something there.”

Rich Johnston gives the rumor a yellow light on his traffic-light scale of reliability, so even he isn’t sure what — if anything — the conversation means. It could mean absolutely nothing.

Linkage: Ethan Van Sciver on the Future of Wally West

CBR reports on last week’s Spotlight on Ethan Van Sciver at Comic-Con. Among other things, he talked about redesigning Wally West’s costume and how he sees the personalities of Barry Allen and Wally West.

“I’m redesigning Wally West’s costume right now, and it’s terrifying.” While Sinestro’s costume, with its seemingly random blue color and “jester collar,” was ready for a redesign in Van Sciver’s eyes, “Wally West is the most perfectly designed costume ever, aside from Green Lantern’s costume, in my opinion.” Van Sciver said the challenge was to redo the costume without either making it less cool or more cool than Barry Allen’s and thus implying that one character is better than the other.

“I want Barry to come back and be King Arthur. He’s the most straight-laced, perfect Flash, rigid in his morality and his ethics,” making the looser, cooler, more laid-back Wally a Lancelot figure. Van Sciver told the audience “Kick me in the ass if I fail.”

So there’s at least some hope for Wally fans that he won’t be totally shoved off to the side. Maybe.

On the other hand, he also confirmed that the monthly Flash series will “stop” for Flash: Rebirth. How it will be relaunched afterward — picking up where it left off, or where Barry’s series left off — or with a new #1 — he wouldn’t say.

Linkage: Scott Kolins on Rogues’ Revenge and the Future of the Flash

Newsarama’s Vaneta Rogers interviewed Scott Kolins on Final Crisis: Rogues Revenge and Barry Allen’s return in Flash: Rebirth

You know, we’ve talked about doing a “Rogues” mini-series since… well, ever since back when I was on The Flash with Geoff. But last year in San Diego, I got a phone call from Geoff saying he’d just had a big meeting, and he said, “Dude! Now’s the time to do Rogues! I’ve got all these ideas. We’re going to do this, and it’s going to lead to all this stuff going on in the DC Universe. We’ve got all these things going on, so now’s the time to do it! Come on back! Come on back!” And I thought, OK, this sounds great! So I came back to DC.

And he told me right then what was going on with the Rogues. And we’d talk every once in awhile, getting ready for it. But there would be a couple weeks that would go by that I wouldn’t hear from him because he was busy writing all his 20 million other books he’s working on. And finally, he called up and said, “I just got something! I want to bounce it off of you and see what you think!” And he does that. He always tells me his latest ideas. And he told me the one about Zoom, and my jaw just fell on the floor.

More at Newsarama.

Filling in the San Diego Gaps

Some Flash news bits from Comic-Con panels that I missed this weekend, dealing with DC news in general and Flash: Rebirth in particular.

DC: A Guide to Your Universe at CBR

A fan asked whether Flash Wally West would be replaced by Barry Allen. “You’ll have to read ‘Flash Rebirth,” Johns said. “I hope I’ve shown I am a Wally West fan–I wrote the book for five years.”

On the final page of “All Flash” which includes an image of a Batman costume coming out of a Flash ring, Johns said “I think Mark [Waid] just wanted to put a Batman suit in a ring.”

A fan asked whether Flash Wally West would be replaced by Barry Allen. “You’ll have to read ‘Flash Rebirth,” Johns said. “I hope I’ve shown I am a Wally West fan–I wrote the book for five years.”

Newsarama adds:

Any chance of a Hal/Barry team-up book? “It’s too early for that,” said Johns, but adding that Hal Jordan will be in The Flash: Rebirth.

As for the Geoff Johns Spotlight, CBR’s write-up has a ton of Flash-related info (and now I’m really annoyed I couldn’t make it). Some highlights:

Were the Rogues’ statements that they didn’t mean to kill Bart Allen a retcon on Johns’s part, or a self-justification on the part of the Rogues themselves? Johns said it was a bit of both, and that more will be revealed regarding their motivations in the next two issues…Johns said he thought they’d be smart enough to know that killing a Flash would bring down a lot of heat, which it did….they mostly feel bad about being caught. Johns teased that we would soon discover that one of the Rogues actually was trying to kill Bart.

He then quoted from his “Flash: Rebirth” script: “One of Barry’s good friends says, ‘Has the world gotten too fast for you?’ Barry smiles and says, ‘The world’s finally catching up.'”

As I said, there’s a ton of Flash info in that panel, and I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

CBR has a video interview with Geoff Johns, which I have not yet had time to watch.

CBR also interviewed Ethan Van Sciver about Rebirth.

Gaming Bits from San Diego

I didn’t manage to try out DC Universe Online myself — there was always a longer line than I wanted to wait for — and I missed the two gaming panels on Friday. (I think it was Friday. It’s all sort of blurred together.) So here are some write-ups I found online.

Newsarama’s J.K. Parkin writes about playing a speedster in the DCU Online demo:

The coolest part, though, was when I hit the right joystick and turned on the Speed Force. Throwing rocks at my enemies and slamming them with my staff was cool and all, but you’d expect that in any superhero-based MMO. Having my character run through the streets of Metropolis at super speed, trailed by what looked like the Speed Force that all comic fans know from the comics? That’s the kind of detail this game needed to really set it apart. And from what I’ve seen so far, it has it in spades.

They’ve also got an article on the DC Universe Online presentation that Sony made Wednesday night.

IGN has extensive coverage of the gaming side of the con, including a write-up of Friday’s DCUO panel, video clips, an interview with Jim Lee before the show, and Greg Miller’s demo experience:

I chose to quit, take Jim Lee’s advice, and try out the speedster.

Named Rock Solid and decked out in black and gold, the speedster was just about everything I could want in a low-level superhero. Clicking L3 put the dude into super-speed mode so that he could scoot around Metropolis with a wicked speed effect at his feet, run up the sides of buildings, and get away from foes, but being earth-based gave him some more nifty powers.

Moving on to Mortal Combat vs. DC Universe, Newsarama’s article on the MK vs. DC panel, includes a description of one of the fights in the preview video:

Finally, the Flash darted around Soyna, leaving her spinning and dazed before running her off a cliff, the pair trading blows all the way down before the Flash got the upper hand and whipped his opponent into the ground, creating a small crater.

Each brutal blow drew “oooohhhs” from the crowd, who also cheered when Superman cut loose with his heat vision, and when Flash delivered several attacks at his trademark speed.

IGN had its own panel write-up, including the video clip, and added that gameplay is structured in chapters, with each character associated with a chapter. That might explain why we keep seeing the same match-ups in the demo footage.

(Images via IGN)