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.

Review: Flash — Emergency Stop

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Flash Week continues at Collected Editions with my guest review of Flash: Emergency Stop. The trade covers the first half of the year-long Grant Morrison/Mark Millar run with art by Paul Ryan and covers four stories:

Emergency Stop (Flash vs. the Suit)
Through the Looking Glass (Flash vs. Mirror Master)
Still Life in the Fast Lane (a focus on Jay Garrick)
Three of a Kind: Part Three (a courtroom drama dealing with the aftermath of a Flash/Green Lantern/Green Arrow team-up)

Read the review at Collected Editions, or order the book at Amazon.

Flash #3 Preview

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DC has posted a 5-page preview of next week’s The Flash #3.

It may be BRIGHTEST DAY, but when a mysterious group of so-called heroes turns up, another Rogue ends up dead. Plus, the mystery deepens as The Flash witnesses another murder — his own!

The preview picks up the Brightest Day angle and focuses on Captain Boomerang. “Digger” Harkness discovers that he’s a bit…different now that he’s back from the dead. It’s an interesting development, but if what’s seen here can be taken at face value, I’m not sure it’s necessary. It seems like a second attempt (after Owen’s super-speed) to give a villain who throws weaponized boomerangs an extra edge. It’s an odd choice for Geoff Johns, who managed to revitalize the rest of the Rogues simply by taking them seriously.

The Flash #3 arrives in stores next week, on June 30.

Update: I’ve added this issue to my gallery of Dead Flash Covers!

Flash Sales for May 2010

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ICv2’s top 300 comics for May are up, and The Flash #2 is ranked #12 with an estimated 76,560 copies sold.

Here’s the round-up of how Flash vol.3 compares to other recent Flash relaunches.

Issue	Rank	Month	Units Sold	2nd-Issue Drop
Flash:TFMA #1	7	June 2006	120,404
Flash: FMA #2	25	July 2006	77,487	(-35.6%)
All-Flash #1	22	July 2007	78,955
Flash v.2 #231	26	August 2007	72,898
Flash v.2 #232	32	Sep 2007	56,969	(-21.9%)
Flash: Rebirth #1	2	April 2009	102,429
Flash: Rebirth #2	4	May	86,183	(-15.9%)
Flash v.3 #1	2	April 2010	100,903
Flash v.3 #2	12	May 2010	76,560	(-24.1%)

That’s…steeper than I expected. Not as bad as the plunge from Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #1 to #2, but it’s bigger than the drop on between the first two issues of “The Wild Wests.” And it’s a lot steeper than the second-issue drop on Rebirth.

These are, of course, based on retailers’ orders, so it’s not a reflection of actual readers’ purchases, but how retailers anticipated those purchases. After the last several relaunches failed to catch on, perhaps we can forgive them for being skeptical.

The real test, as always, will be to see how orders for issue #4 and on hold up. With three months’ lead time, that’s the first issue on which stores will have placed orders after seeing how well the actual book sold.

Update: The Beat has posted a detailed analysis of DC’s May sales and seems to think these numbers are average.

Flash Week at Collected Editions

Time Masters: Vanishing Point to Flashpoint

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Comics Nexus picked up on an interesting comment from Dan Jurgens about his miniseries, Time Masters: Vanishing Point. In addition to telling a Rip Hunter Story and acting as the flip side to Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, his third goal is “to put a few pieces in place for Flashpoint, for which Geoff Johns is sculpting some incredibly fun stuff down the road!”

CBR has more on the miniseries, though considerably less about the Flashpoint connection.

(Hat tip to Live Pa for the link!)

Speed Force

Tracking the Flash – the Fastest Man Alive