90s Flash(back): Dick Miller Documentary. Yeah, That Guy.

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Jason writes in with word of a documentary about character actor Dick Miller. Who’s Dick Miller, you ask? This guy:

That Guy Dick Miller

Or rather, “That guy” as in the title of the film, or “Hey, it’s that guy!” which was probably your reaction on seeing that photo. Miller has an impressive 175 acting credits on IMDB in a career spanning 1955-2009. You may recognize him from such movies as Terminator and Gremlins, or TV series like Fame and The Flash.

What’s that? The Flash, you say?

Miller had a recurring role on the 1990 Flash TV series as Fosnight, a small-time con man who acted as an informant for Barry Allen. And his signed copy of the shooting script for “Deadly Nightshade” is one of the incentive rewards for backers on the Kickstarter funding project.

Funding is at $18K of $40K, with 12 days to go.

This Week: Flash Chronicles Vol.3, Digital Flash(back) #48, Impulse #7-8

Following on the heels of last week’s Flash Archives vol.6 for the hardcover collector, DC has the next volume of the softcover series reprinting the Silver Age Flash starring Barry Allen: Flash Chronicles vol.3

In this third collection of 1960s adventures in chronological order, the Fastest Man Alive battles Rogues including The Trickster, Captain Cold, Captain Boomerang, Gorilla Grodd and more. • Collecting THE FLASH #113-118.

Written by John Broome and Gardner Fox, art by Carmine Infantino, Joe Giella, and Murphy Anderson.

The Flash Chronicles Vol. 3 at Amazon

The surprise comes with this week’s back issues from ComiXology. For the last few months, DC has been releasing three issues a week of the Wally West Flash series. Last week, they only released two, and this week, they’re only releasing one…but we’ve also got two issues of Impulse featuring Bart Allen!

Flash #48 by William Messner-Loebs and Greg LaRocque. The Elongated Man guest stars in part one of this three-parter leading up to the big Flash #50. A flood of cheap drugs is causing a devastating crime wave, and the clues point to the return of Vandal Savage…as well as his arch-nemesis, the Immortal Man. Flash v.2 on ComiXology.

Impulse #7–8. The first is a one-shot by Martin Pasko, Nick Gnazzo, Mark Stegbauer, in which Impulse battles the one-shot villain Gridlock. The second features the return of regular writing & art team Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos for an Underworld Unleashed crossover in which Bart faces off against the new improved Blockbuster, who bartered his soul for intelligence…but is even less happy now than he was before.

Impulse on ComiXology.

Flash Sales May-July 2012

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It’s been a while since I’ve written up sales analysis, partly because of time, and partly because I’m really not sure my analysis means anything. So here are three months of rankings from Diamond and the sales estimates* from ICv2: for #19 in May, #31 in June, and #29 in July, selling roughly 53K copies of Flash #11.

There’s a really steep drop with #10. As The Beat points out, DC stopped shipping a 1:200 variant covers with that issue. Additionally, Flash #10 and Flash #11 both have fill-in artists, which may have led retailers to order less.

We’re also seeing, a year into the New 52, the series dropping below the level where volume 3 settled at around 55K.

It’s been dropping in the rankings as well, but a lot of that can be attributed to Avengers vs. X-Men and Before Watchmen. (Note the sharp drop in rankings between April and May, while estimated sales numbers stayed pretty close.) And the Flash isn’t alone. The New 52 seems to have lost a lot of its initial luster, which is no doubt part of why DC plans to revitalize the line with its Zero Month in September.

Numbers

Issue Rank Month Units Sold % Change
Flash vol.4
Flash v.4 #1 4 September 2011 129,260
Flash v.4 #2 5 October 2011 114,137 -11.7%
Flash v.4 #3 9 November 2011 90,417 -20.8%
Flash v.4 #4 8 December 2011 77,336 -14.5%
Flash v.4 #5 8 January 2012 71,611 -7.4%
Flash v.4 #6 8 February2012 68,061 -5.0%
Flash v.4 #7 11 March 2012 64,975 -4.5%
Flash v.4 #8 11 April 2012 63,702 -2.0%
Flash v.4 #9 19 May 2012 62,807 -1.4%
Flash v.4 #10 31 June 2012 55,681 -11.3%
Flash v.4 #11 29 July 2012 53,674 -3.6%

A few key articles covering past sales (with lots of numbers):

*What these numbers measure: US-only sales, wholesale from Diamond to comics retailers. They don’t count sales through bookstores, they don’t count international sales, and they don’t count how many copies were actually bought and read…but they do measure the same thing every month, which means they can be used to spot trends.

Speed Reading

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Catching up on linkblogging…

Flashy Links

And of course there’s always new stuff at The Rogues Kick Ass and The Fastest Fan Alive.

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