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.

See the Cosmic Treadmill!

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Poster: For a Limited Time Only! See the Cosmic Treadmill at the Flash Museum!

DC has released 20 new stylized posters to their DC Collectibles store.

(via The Beat and The Source.)

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

Losing Weight The Barry Allen Way! at Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep!!
DCU Club Infinite Earth 2013 Pictures [dead link] of including Wally West, Elongated Man, Larfleeze and more.
That F’ing Monkey: Aw Yeah Comics

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

Art

Great fan art mashups for CSBG’s The Line it is Drawn #100 including Magneto vs the Borg and a lot more
Justice League of the Wild West by Denis Medri
DC steampunk by J.L. Straw at Ladies Making Comics
Get Your Own Parody Comic Book Portrait! – Once Upon a Geek
Art: MFA Superhero Typographic Classifications on the Behance Network – Superheroes drawn using letters and symbols from different styles of fonts.
Davis Willis (Shortpacked!, Dumbing of Age) is working on a COIE homage poster featuring the Walkyverse and DoA versions of his characters. [Edit: linked to a post further along in the process.]
A Compendium of Cool Comics Cosplay: August 3rd

Cons

Fixing the cons of Comic-Con – UTSanDiego
With SDCC over, SoCal comics fans can plan for fall events like Long Beach Comic and Horror Con and Stan Lee’s Comikaze. Here’s my Long Beach 2011 writeup and photos

Comics Industry Commentary

Interesting thoughts: Vertigo Comics – A Decline of an Empire at The Weekly Crisis
Thought-provoking article at The Beat: Why DC and Marvel will never truly target female readers. Don’t miss responses: Even Glaciers Melt at DC Women Kicking Ass and It Ain’t Over at Comic Book Grrrl.
Grumpy Old Fan: Consequences, consistency and idea-making in a shared universe.
Cartoonist Battles Frivolous Lawsuits with Comedic Protest – CBLDF on the Oatmeal/Funnyjunk/Carreon case
The Hobbit being stretched into 3 movies reminds me of last year’s post, What If…Lord of the Rings had been an “Event” Comic?
Interesting question & responses at Newsarama: Is Continuity Really A Draw For Superhero Universes?
DC sales analysis for June at The Beat

More Comics

Read Comics in Public Day is coming up on August 28 (via The Beat)
Dark Knight Rises: Bane as the Cumulative Villain – 4thletter
It’s been nearly 5 years since Flash artist Mike Wieringo’s death. Honor his memory with a donation to The Hero Initiative on M-Day – Mark Gruenwald/Mike Wieringo Memorial (August 12)
It turns out there’s a Tamaran Building in Pasadena, California.
Wild Blue Yonder, a 5-issue miniseries by Zach Howard Mike Raicht Austin Harrison, looks like it could be cool. “In a post-apocalyptic society in the sky, Cola, a teenaged girl fighter pilot fights to protect The Dawn, her flying fortress and home.” They’ve been working on it off and on for a few years and are raising funds on Kickstarter to focus on the project, due for release next year.

Speed Reading: Flash #11 Review Round-Up

This Week: Flash Archives Vol.6, Digital Flash(back) #46-47

This week sees the release of the long-awaited (well, by me anyway) Flash Archives vol.6, featuring Silver Age Flash tales from the mid-1960s.

It’s a Rogues Gallery parade in these tales from THE FLASH #142-150, as the Scarlet Speedster battles The Trickster, Weather Wizard, Mirror Master, Mr. Element, The Reverse Flash, Captain Boomerang and Captain Cold! Plus, a tale guest-starring Green Lantern!

Stories and art by John Broome, Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino, Joe Giella, Frank Giacola. Introduction by Paul Kupperberg. 240 pages – $59.99

If the price seems a bit steep, Amazon has it on 31% discount.

If you prefer your Silver Age reprints in cheap paperpack form, hang on until next week for The Flash Chronicles Vol. 3. The Chronicles are shorter as well as being behind the Archives, so vol.3 only brings us up to Flash #118.

Flash #46: Flash vs. Vixen by Grodd's Command! Also out: digital back-issues of the post-Crisis Flash #46-47. Comixology has been releasing three issues a week for several months now, which makes me wonder whether…

~~it’s a typo~~ (Update: the comics are up now and it’s only #46 & #47)
they’re slowing down
they plan to release Flash #48-50 all in one week.

Flash #46-47 feature parts 2 and 3 of the three-part story in which Gorilla Grodd leads the animals of Keystone City in a revolt against the humans. Vixen guest-stars, teaming up with the Flash to stop the rebellion.

Flash (1987-2009) on ComiXology

Speed Force

Tracking the Flash – the Fastest Man Alive