A new trailer for the game Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is out:
A lot of the video with the Flash is familiar from last week’s GTTV episode, but some of it is new…including a fatality at the end. (Apparently someone decided this was a Crisis.)
Via Blog@Newsarama. (Thanks to The Dan of Steel for pointing it out.
Newsarama has posted a 5-page preview of Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge #1, due in stores on Wednesday.
One of the best things about Geoff Johns’ run on The Flash was his handle on the Rogues. During his time on the book, he did five “Rogue Profile” issues, each with one of the villains as the viewpoint character. He’d get inside their heads, show how they thought, why they ran around with high-tech mirrors, or freeze guns, etc. When he left the book, I’d kind of hoped he’d drop in once a year or so to do another Rogue issue between the regular writers’ story arcs. Obviously, it didn’t happen
The preview pages show that Johns’ characterization is still spot-on, and the art by Scott Kolins shows a team of villains who have been through hell. (Actually, they have been through hell, but that was a while back, between Underworld Unleashed and “Hell to Pay.”)
(Thanks to Craig M.D. for pointing this one out.)
ComicMix reports that the 1990 Flash TV series starring John Wesley Shipp has been added to the DC Comics Network on Xbox Live Marketplace. This means you can watch episodes on your Xbox 360.
It was a fun show, one that had its cheesy moments and its dramatic moments, elements that worked and elements that didn’t. I never could understand why Amanda Pays disappeared into occasional-guest-spot limbo after the show ended.
When it finally came out on DVD in 2006, I rewatched it for the first time in years. I was happy to find that most of the things that bothered me about the pilot episode this time through were the same things that had bothered me when I was a teenager watching it for the first time.
I did a little digging around, and found that while the show doesn’t seem to be on iTunes, (it seemed like a good bet, with all the DC animation added recently) it is available as a download from Amazon Unbox. I also managed to find two seasons of Justice League, one season of Super Friends, and Justice League: The New Frontier on Unbox (but, oddly, no sign of Justice League Unlimited).
(Thanks to Esteban Pedreros for reminding me I need to post this!)
The Flash (or Kid Flash) appears in two DVD sets being released this week, as well as one upcoming release and a whole set of digital downloads.
The review by Comics Worth Reading reminds me that Teen Titans season 5 is out on DVD this week. This features the episode, “Lightspeed,” in which the animated version of Kid Flash goes up against the Hive Five and makes a special connection with Jinx. While it’s never been made clear just how Teen Titans relates to Justice League Unlimited, they did cast Michael Rosenbaum, the voice of the Flash on that series, as Kid Flash.
I’ve got this one on pre-order. At the time it aired, I wasn’t watching the show, but I made a point to watch “Lightspeed” and enjoyed it. I’ve since seen the other 4 seasons on DVD, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the fifth.
Comic Bloc poster BESTBUY points out that The Batman season 5 (2007-2008) is also out this week, featuring several episodes with the Justice League as well as “A Mirror Darkly,” in which Batman and Robin team up with the Flash against Mirror Master.
He also mentions the upcoming DVD release of DC Superheroes: The Filmation Adventures, set for August 12. These are cartoons from 1967, featuring DC’s classic cast of heroes, the Flash included. I’ve never seen them myself — my experience with DC-based animation starts with the early 1980s and Super-Friends. From what I understand, these originally aired as part of The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure. Update: Check out my review of these cartoons.
Finally, Blog@Newsarama reports that iTunes now has a number of classic DC cartoons, including Super Friends and Season 2 of Superman: The Animated Series. That’s the season that includes “Speed Demons,” the episode that introduced the DCAU Flash in 1997.
Thinking about it, it was probably Super Friends that first introduced me to DC’s heroes. I certainly was watching the show long before I started reading comics. I remember very little of the cartoons now, except for the general tone, and a few moments like Superman trying to pronounce Mxytzptlk, or me getting confused as to why Cyborg’s voice was so high in the commercial (by the time he was introduced, I’d started reading The New Teen Titans) — it turned out they’d run one of Wonder Woman’s lines over a picture of his face. And while I remembered the additional super-heroes like Apache Chief and Samurai, I’d completely forgotten the standard Hanna Barbera additions like Wendy and Marvin, or the Wonder Twins and Gleek, until I started reading commentary about the show online a decade later. I still can’t bring to mind any of their voices, though I imagine Marvin sounding like Shaggy from Scooby Doo
At a July 1 press conference for The Dark Knight, producer Charles Roven discussed the long-delayed film adaptation of The Flash with iF Magazine. David Dobkin (The Wedding Crashers) is still director, but there isn’t much more to say, since they’re “not even writing it yet.”
Back in December 2004, the project was first announced with Batman Begins’ David Goyer as writer/director. His version would have “showcase[d] the legacy aspect of the hero” and played up the sci-fi elements, “playing with relativity, Doppler effects and all kinds of things like that.” Goyer actually wrote and finished a script.
By February 2007, DC had decided to abandon Goyer’s draft, hired Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum), and re-positioned it to be a spin-off of the planned Justice League movie. Just 8 months later, they’d handed the film to Dobkin.
Last Year’s Writers Guild of America strike put both films on hold. And with continuing delays on Justice League: Mortal (currently scheduled for 2011), it’s unclear whether The Flash will still have to wait its turn, or if it’ll run out of the gate first.
Game Trailers TV has posted an episode on Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Most of the 21-minute episode is a “making of” feature on MK vs. DCU, with interviews and video clips showing various characters in battle: Superman vs. Sub-Zero, Flash vs. Sonya, Batman vs. Scorpion, and more.
There’s a little about the storyline: cataclysmic events occur in both the DC and Mortal Kombat that result in the worlds merging (it’s called “Worlds Collide” after all), and each set of characters thinks the other is responsible.