Category Archives: Timely

THUNDER Agents Strike in November

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Last year at Comic-Con, DC announced that they had acquired the rights to the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, a covert team of international super-heroes operating under the authority of the United Nations. The characters were originally published in the late 1960s by Tower Comics, and have been revived several times over the last few decades.

Among the classic members of the team is Lightning: former Special Forces agent Guy Gilbert wears a suit that gives him super-speed…but every time he uses that speed, it ages him.

Today at The Source, DC announced that the new series will launch in November, featuring lead stories by writer Nick Spencer and artist CAFU and backup stories by a team still to be announced. The series will focus on a new team of recruits. Editor will Moss describes it this way:

The new series casts the team as a covert special ops force dealing with global threats the rest of the DCU don’t even know exist — all the while struggling with their own choices to become agents and the tortured pasts they’re running from. With character-first storytelling and threats exploding from real-world headlines, this relaunch of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS will offer something new, different, and daring for both today’s broader comics audience and fans of the original team.

DC Universe Classics Fan Choice Poll 2010 featuring…Girder!!!

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TNI reports that Toyfare has announced Mattel’s third annual DC Universe Classics Fan Choice Poll:

DC UNIVERSE FAN CHOICE POLL 2010
The stakes are larger than ever (literally!) in our third annual DC Universe Classics Fan Choice Poll
You know what they say: once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is really friggin’ awesome. Especially when the third time is bigger and better than ever before!

ToyFare is honored to host the third Mattel DC Universe Classics Fan Choice Poll. You’ll remember that in 2008 fans chose The Question, and last year you guys selected Teen Titans’ own Raven (who’ll be appearing in Wave 15 this fall). But for this third poll, the winner will actually become a wave-anchoring Collect and Connect build-a-figure figure for 2011’s DCUC Wave 20, standing between 8 and 10 inches tall. Choose from a wretched hive of scum and villainy, a nominee list populated mostly with big baddies and assorted other n’er-do-wells. The winner will become a larger-than-life plastic reality. And the choice is in your hands!

Have a hands-down favorite? Cast your vote today—voting ends August 31!

The list of names looks pretty familiar:

BLOCKBUSTER
We don’t want to call Blockbuster a hulking character, but…he is a super-strong but mindless scientist in torn purple pants. Unfortunately, under the influence of his criminal brother (who would later go on to be the second Blockbuster, and a major crime boss), the brutish Blockbuster committed a series of crimes armed with only his brute strength and a burning hatred for Batman and Robin. Seeking a cure for his condition, he was recruited into the very first incarnation of Amanda Waller’s Suicide Squad…and promptly killed by Brimstone (himself a previous Mattel Collect-and-Connect figure!) Hey, hulking characters in torn purple pants have made successful figures before…

GIRDER
One of the coolest looking new villains of the past decade, Girder is a nouveau-Flash Rogue, first encountered in Keystone City’s metahuman prison, Iron Heights. Girder has one of those classic “falling into a vat of something” origin stories–in this case, a vat of molten steel that turned his body into living (but continuously rusting) metal. Aside from continually clashing with the Flash, Girder has run up against the Teen Titans and the Justice Society. Also, he has a beard made out of metal. Dude would make one awesome looking toy.

KING SHARK
Sure, DCUC already has a humanoid shark guy (GL villain The Shark), but this is King Shark! The former Superboy villain cuts a much more imposing figure than the aforementioned regular Shark, and he’s used his size and strength to take on guys like Superman. Supposedly the son of a shark god (that’s even better than a king!), King Shark took a heroic turn for a while as a mentor to the new Aquaman, but he’s been back to his villainous ways of late. Which is exactly what we like from giant, hideous shark people.

NEKRON
Nekron, embodiment of Death in the DC Universe—well, one of them, at least—has been around for nearly 30 years, but his profile got a huge boost earlier this year when he was revealed as the big bad behind the mega-event Blackest Night (plus the guy behind every superhero resurrection ever.) Nekron’s one of the only guys on this list to actually have an action figure (as part of DC Direct’s Blackest Night line), but 2011 is going to be a huge year for Green Lantern, and there should be no shortage of DCUC Lanterns of every shade for Nekron to battle with or to control. Are fans dying for a giant Nekron figure?

SHAGGY MAN
The super-strong and indestructible Shaggy Man was initially only defeated by the creation of a second Shaggy Man. Of late he’s been best known in a much less shaggy form, ever since a dying General Eiling transplanted his brain into the Shaggy Man’s body, shaved it and called himself The General. Fun fact: on the cover of his first appearance, Shaggy Man is depicted holding Flash and Batman in each hand, slamming them into each other. If that’s not the set-up for an action figure display, we don’t know what is.

WILDEBEEST
Hero or villain—take your pick with this figure! It could be the robotic exoskeleton worn by the evil members of the Wildebeest society, who wore identical suits to obscure their crimes and befuddle their enemies, and clashed with the Teen Titans. Or it could be Baby Wildebeest, a baby genetically created by the Wildebeest Society who could occasionally grow to adult sizes and was a member of the Teen Titans. Either way, put this guy on your Titans shelf and you’ve got a big, bad-ass centerpiece to display.

GIRDER!!!

Can you believe it? Not only would he make an awesome Collect and Connect Figure it would be a chance to get some more Rogues in the DC Universe Line. I’m all about sooner rather than later but I don’t know if he has a chance. Nekron, Blockbuster, and Shaggy Man could all easily take the top spot due to their higher profiles over the last few years. Which means it falls to us. We Flash Fans have a chance to bring another Rogue to the DC Universe line. Please vote for Girder by following the link below:

You can vote HERE, and if you are a Flash Fan at all, please vote Girder.

–Devin “The Flash” Johnson

Mark Waid Joins Hero Initiative

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The Hero Initiative has announced that long-time Flash Writer Mark Waid has joined its Board of Directors. Waid will take the place of director Guillermo del Toro on the Executive/Fundraising Board.

Among Flash fans, Waid is best known for writing the Wally West series through most of the 1990s. Some of his more notable contributions to the mythos include the speed force, centering the book on the Wally/Linda relationship, co-creating Impulse, more-or-less creating Max Mercury based on the golden-age Quicksilver, and generally building up the Flash Family of characters.

The Hero Initiative is dedicated to helping comics creators in need. You can read more about their mission at www.heroinitiative.org.

Flash #3 and Velocity #1 Ship June 30

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What is it with speedsters and delays?

Top Cow has sent out a press release announcing the June 30 launch of Velocity #1. On a whim, I re-checked DC’s website, and found that Flash #3, previously scheduled for June 23, had been quietly rescheduled for the same day.

The delays on the second half of Flash: Rebirth are the stuff of legend. I know I’m not the only one who hoped that the new series might be able to stay on top of the schedule a bit better, and the first two issues did arrive right on time, but this is the second delay for issue . On the plus side, DC hasn’t rescheduled issues and …at least not yet.

More on Velocity

Velocity has had a long, slow road to release, so a couple of extra weeks won’t make much difference. The short version: The 2007 Pilot Season issue won the fan vote for which comic should get picked up for an ongoing series, but delays and creative differences eventually scuttled the book.

The book is finally seeing print as a 4-issue miniseries by Ron Marz and Kenneth Rocafort. Carin Taylor, the fastest woman alive in the Top Cow universe, must beat the clock to save her own life and the lives of her Cyberforce teammates from a deadly techno-virus.

Quick News: Velocity, DC History, Green Lantern, World’s Fastest Man

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A few brief news items:

Top Cow’s delayed Velocity is shipping June 16. I’ve been looking forward to this since reading the Pilot Season book, though of course this is an entirely new creative team. On the plus side, it’s a miniseries, so there’s not a huge commitment to picking it up.

Cartoon Network will be producing a Green Lantern animated series. Green Lantern: First Flight was pretty good, but of course there’s no guarantee that any of the same people will be working on this.

DC will be teaming up with TASCHEN Books to produce 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking. Basically it’s a history of DC Comics. How soon can I pre-order this?

Hypergeek notes that the UK graphic novel Whatever Happened to the World’s Fastest Man? has been nominated for the 2009 Eagle Awards. From his review, it looks like it’s not about a speester so much as it’s about a man who can stop time, and reluctantly becomes a hero. I’m going to have to look for this one as well. [Edit: I should note that I stopped reading the review once I decided the book looked interesting, just in case there were spoilers.]

Cary Bates Returns to DC with the Last Family of Krypton

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Writer Cary Bates is responsible for the entire Bronze Age of the Flash, but has been missing from the DC Universe since the early 1990s. This August he returns with Superman: The Last Family of Krypton, a 3-issue Elseworlds miniseries (remember those?) about what might have happened if Jor-El and Lara had escaped Krypton along with their infant son Kal-El, and the whole family had arrived on Earth. Renato Arlem handles the art, with covers by Felipe Massafera.

This Elseworlds project, one of very few in recent years, has been in the works almost as long as Bates’ first foray into comics after a decades-long absence, the 2008 Marvel miniseries True Believers. Dan Didio mentioned it at Wizard World Chicago that same year!