Speed Force has set up on Instagram as @SpeedForceOrg. We’ll be posting *ahem* Flash photography by members of the blog team, starting with Ed’s photos from HeroesCon, and very soon we’ll be running…well, that would spoil the surprise. Keep an eye out!
Happy new year! To celebrate 2013, we’re going to do something we haven’t done in a while at Speed Force: Turn the reigns over to you! That’s right, we’re looking for guest writers to shake things up a bit.
Here’s the kind of post that we’re looking for:
If you’re interested in writing a guest post for Speed Force, please email me at speedforce – at – pobox – dot – com or let me know through the contact form. Include the topic(s) you’d like to write about (but feel free to change your mind later if you think of something better).
Depending on how many responses we get, we’ll probably run two or three each week starting the second half of January or beginning of February.
So, who’s interested?
Do you visit Speed Force using a tablet? If so, I have a few really quick questions for you.
Thanks!
Our celebration of Speed Force’s fourth anniversary (last Friday) continues with a look back the Top 4s of the last four years.
Don’t forget to share your favorite Flash memory for our contest! Only a few hours left!
4. Young Justice: Bloodlines (June 2012, 61 responses). The recent episode featuring four generations of Flashes. People started out commenting on the big reveal of Impulse, then moved into discussing the episode when it aired. The response to this post, and the images posted on Facebook, Tumblr, and yes, even Google+, convinced me of two things: 1. People like photos more than text. 2. Young Justice has more fans than the Flash comic book. Which isn’t surprising, since Young Justice probably has more viewers than the most popular comic book has readers.
(I wasn’t sure how to count posts with the new comment system, since it includes Likes and Retweets along with local comments, Facebook comments and Twitter replies. Filtering out the Likes and retweets knocks it down to 50, just behind Wally West’s New Costume at 51.)
3. Jay Garrick Redesign Revealed (April 2012, 64 comments). The Earth 2 redesign has been…polarizing? This was a simple repost of the cover from Earth 2 #2 when DC released it alongside a James Robinson interview.
2. Why I Don’t Like Barry Allen Generating the Speed Force (April 2011, 73 comments). An opinion piece about a retcon to the way the speed force works. Judging by the heated responses from some people, I’m not sure everyone read past the first six words in the title.
Can you believe it’s been four years since the first post at Speed Force?
Amazing, isn’t it?
Back when it started, it was just me, running WordPress on a shared webserver at work. It’s since grown to four regular writers, the occasional guest writer, a bunch of regular commenters and lots of readers.
This was a time when the iPad didn’t exist, the iPhone had only been around two years, and Android had yet to release a single phone. Digital comics were something that the print publishers still looked at as maybe a threat, or maybe a fad, but certainly not something viable, even though webcomics had been around for over a decade. Wally West was still the main Flash and Barry Allen’s return had only been hinted at on panel. The previous Comic-Con International had still sold tickets at the door, and the next Comic-Con wouldn’t sell out until about a week before the event. No one had ever complained that Twilight “ruined” Comic-Con, because the movie hadn’t come out yet. No one had heard of a Black Lantern.
For comparison, here are the covers of the most recent Flash issues at the time the site launched vs. today.
Hmm, two relaunches (three if you count Flash vol.3 separate from Flash: Rebirth) later, and they’re still monkeying around…
I launched Speed Force on June 15, 2008, because I wanted to write about the Morrison/Millar Flash run being collected. A few days later I lucked into my first “scoop:” images of the Flash in Mortal Kombat vs. DCU. That and the reputation of Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning helped the blog hit the ground running (so to speak), and it’s been a mad dash ever since.
Over the next four days, each of us at Speed Force — me, Devin, Greg and Lia — will be writing something special for the event. We’ll have a contest, too, so be sure to check in over the weekend!
Thanks to all of you for coming along on this ride!
Heads up!
You’ve probably noticed a few site outages here at Speed Force over the last few months. Well, here’s warning for another one. My webhost will be upgrading the network this Thursday evening after 10:00 pm PDT.
DreamHost is allowing four hours for the planned maintenance, but they expect actual downtime to be “minimal.”
With luck, the improvements will prevent the sort of unplanned downtime that’s been a problem lately.
In the event of an extended outage (this week or any other time), you can usually find me on Twitter at @SpeedForceOrg, and you can catch up on recent posts on the SpeedForce Tumblr. If you don’t see anything about it in one of those places, please let me know – it’s possible I’ve missed an alert and don’t know yet.
UPDATE It looks like either I misread the announcement or Dreamhost swapped the LAX & Irvine plans (judging by the URL on the now-404ed original post, I’m guessing the former). In any case, the site was down for about half an hour Wednesday evening during the maintenance window. The funny thing is that I spent three hours tonight working on a network migration for my job. Now there’s timing!