Speed Reading

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Now that the site’s up and I have a little time to collect these, here’s your regularly-scheduled weekend linkblogging!

Flash-specific

More DC

More Comics

We’re Back!

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Sorry for the extended outage last night. It was one of those perfect storm situations: Ordinarily, it would have rebooted on its own and been back up within minutes, but it locked up instead. Ordinarily, I would have been reading my email and seen the alert quickly, but I didn’t turn on my computer until almost midnight, and wasn’t reading it on my phone. Ordinarily, rebooting the webserver manually would have solved the problem, but it couldn’t connect to the DB. Ordinarly, tech support would have responded to my trouble report sooner, but they were doing planned maintenance on another system.

For the techies & tech-curious: Something caused memory usage on the web server to spike and lock up. Rebooting (hours later) solved that issue, but the web server couldn’t connect to the database. As far as I could tell the DB server wasn’t responding, but when tech support got involved, it turned out to be a network issue on the webserver.

It’s really frustrating. There were problems earlier last year, but they’d mostly settled out by late summer. From then on it was a few minutes here, a few minutes there. In fact, there was no downtime at all between early December and last Thursday. And now to be out for ~10 hours? It’s especially frustrating because I just consolidated all my domain names at Dreamhost last week.

In the future, if the site’s down and you want to know what’s going on or whether I already know about it, please check @SpeedForceOrg on Twitter. I’ll post updates on the site status there, and you can read the page even if you don’t have a Twitter account. If you don’t see anything there, please e-mail me at speedforce at pobox dot com. And if you just want to read recent posts, you can always check the Tumblr blog.

Flash Still in Top 10, Four Months into the New 52

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Diamond’s December sales rankings are out, and The Flash #4 is ranked the month’s #8 comic by units sold. Four issues in a row in the top 10 is, as far as I know, a first for The Flash (at least in recent memory). Volume three spent most of its time in the 10-20 range, and even Flash: Rebirth dropped to #14 in the fourth issue. Only Flashpoint held in the top 10 longer…for all five issues of the miniseries, in fact, including both August issues.

Detailed estimates will likely be available sometime next week.

Brian Buccellato’s FOSTER #1 Now Available

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The first issue of Flash co-writer Brian Buccellato’s creator-owned comic, Foster, is now available in a special, 500-print signed limited edition at…

It’s also available digitally (again at the writer/artist’s website), and will be released in a more general print run soon.

FOSTER, a haunted war veteran trying to forget the world at the bottom of a bottle, becomes the guardian of a 6 YEAR-OLD BOY who is the offspring of a woman and a PRIMAL RACE OF SUPERNATURAL CREATURES that lurk on the fringes of society and need him to repopulate. In a world where technology is stuck in the analog ’70s and danger lurks around every corner, three rival factions want the half-breed child. Now Foster must navigate the shadow world, twisted scientists and his own past in order to keep the boy safe while winning his trust, nurturing his humanity, and trying to prevent him from giving in to the monster within. [Read more…]

Last week, Buccellato spoke to Newsarama and Comic Vine about the 6-issue miniseries, which he’s self-publishing through his Dog Year imprint. Check out the interviews for preview pages.

FOSTER
Created by Brian Buccellato
Written and Colored by Brian Buccellato
Art by Noel Tuazon
Letters by Troy Peteri
Cover by Mike Henderson & Brian Buccellato

Captain Cold Story Moved Up

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Old news, but I missed it with all the Christmas/New Year/catching up with family from out of town/etc.:

Flash co-writer Brian Buccellato posted in a couple of forums last week that the Captain Cold arc originally scheduled for issue #7 has been moved up to #6, replacing the stand-alone CSI mystery originally solicited.

From the CBR thread:

Speaking of Captain Cold…

I wanted to give you all a heads up that we’ve moved the Captain Cold storyline up to ISSUE #6. Rumor has it that the folks REALLY wanna see the Snart. Done and done. 🙂

Jingle Bells!

In response to questions, he adds:

Hey guys… as it stand now, the Captain Cold arc is gonna be 3 issues. As far as the original #6 with the mystery… not sure when we are gonna get to that one. We still want to do it, though. 🙂

Personally, I’m kind of disappointed, since I was really looking forward to reading about the history of Central and Keystone Cities, and a straight CSI story would really take advantage of the fact that DC chose Barry Allen for this universe’s Flash. (To be honest, I was more intrigued by the 150-year-old cold case than by the Captain Cold story.)

Still, I can understand the decision. If there’s anything DC learned from “The Wild Wests” and “Lightning in a Bottle,” it’s that the Flash audience wants to see Rogues. And then there’s the “Eh, it’s just filler” attitude that many readers have toward done-in-ones. I can imagine DC might be afraid of losing momentum on the book.

Here’s hoping that they’ll be able to fit in the cold case story sometime soon!

(via The Rogues Kick Ass)

2011: The Year in Francis Manapul Flash Artwork!

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It’s hard to believe that Francis Manapul’s first issue of Flash appeared in April, 2010.  Over less than two years, and 13 total issues, Manapul has already left an indelible mark on the character’s artistic history, pushing to join the ranks of inimitable long-term Flash artists alongside names like Carmine Infantino, Irv Novick, Greg LaRocque, Mike Wieringo and Scott Kolins.

Using innovative layouts and inventive portrayals of sound and perception, Manapul has brought readers deeper into the world of the Flash.  To celebrate a year that saw Manapul take over writing the Flash title with Brian Buccellato – a then-unexpected extension of his Flash run – we present the finest in Francis Manapul Flash artwork from 2011!  Drawing from The Road to Flashpoint and the first four issues of the New 52 story Mob Rule, there’s far more than we could fit into one post.  Check out the highlights after the jump…

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