Category Archives: Flash News

Flash Sales Leveling Out?

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ICv2 has posted July sales estimates. The entire comics market is down, but the Flash numbers are better than expected. Flash #242 sold an estimated 30,325 copies. It’s still down from June, but only by 1.5% — and total comics sales have been declining over the last few months. This is the same data that The Beat uses for their sales commentary, so I can use the numbers from earlier posts.

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%)
07/2008: Flash #242     —  30,325 (-  1.5%)

Meanwhile, Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge #1 sold an estimated 62,482 copies — more than twice the numbers on the main Flash title, despite costing more ($3.99 vs. $2.99). Factors at work: Final Crisis, Geoff Johns, Scott Kolins, multiple covers.

I mentioned that the overall market was in decline. ICv2 cites a 3% drop in sales, but I can’t tell whether they mean 3% between June and July 2008, or 3% between July 2007 and July 2008. If the former, then Flash actually dropped less than the overall market. (The 1.5% drop for Flash is in units sold, and the 3% drop overall is for dollar amount — but the price on Flash didn’t change between June and July, so it works out the same.)

Flash Comics For November 2008

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DC’s solicitations for comics shipping in November are up, and things don’t look terribly good for Wally West’s future. It’s beginning to look like DC wants to clear the deck before starting over with Flash: Rebirth.

The Flash #246

As Queen Bee circles in closer for the kill, everything The Flash holds dear starts slipping away from him. His powers, his wife — what’s next to go?

On sale November 19. Written by Alan Burnett. Art by Carlo Barberi & Drew Geraci. Cover by Brian Stelfreeze.

Notes: Interesting that Paco Diaz has been replaced by Carlo Barberi — who used to draw Impulse. Also, this doesn’t look good for some of the things I want to see after Flash: Rebirth.

Team books and tie-ins after the cut. Continue reading →

XS in Legion of Three Worlds

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CBR has an interview with Geoff Johns on Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, and hints at certain… flashy elements to the story.

“If people liked Bart Allen, they should probably read the book. XS is in it.”

And while he wouldn’t come right out and say whether or not the five-issue miniseries absolutely, positively marked the return of the speedster formerly known as The Flash, Johns teased, “Obviously, one of the big things in ‘Lightning Saga’ that we still haven’t addressed is the lightning rod and what that’s all about. That will be a central focus of the series.”

An image caption also indicates that XS (Jenni Ognats, Bart’s cousin and Barry’s granddaughter) will appear in Flash: Rebirth. While that’s entirely possible, given the apparent scope of the story — and I think it would be great to have the entire Allen/West clan involved — I have to wonder whether the caption writer was misreading an ambiguous paragraph early in the article, which explained XS’ ties to Barry Allen, then added that “The popular character will be showcased… [in] The Flash: Rebirth.“

Word Balloon interviews EVS on Flash: Rebirth

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The latest Word Balloon podcast interviews artist Ethan Van Sciver on his role in Flash: Rebirth. Newsarama has posted selected quotes, including this:

I’ve been talking about bring Barry back for years. He’s been dead for 23 years I think we’ve paid sufficient homage to the greatness of the original Crisis…you know there’s still great stories to tell about this character let’s bring him back NOW. He’s a crime scene investigator, and we can tell stories in a pg-13 way that couldn’t be done in the silver age.

People are going to focus on Barry Allen being back …but really what Flash Rebirth is about is restoring the entire Flash mythos. We want to realign everything up again, have it all make sense, and make it more palatable for every Flash fan. The Flash mythos is only partly understood now…There’s going to be a big map that explains concepts that people already kind of have an inkling about, will be totally explained therein.

I’m going to have to listen to this later.

Free-Falling Flash Sales

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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

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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.