Tag Archives: 2010

Flash & Speed Force in 2010: A Look Back

2010 was a big year for the Flash. After five years of meandering (since DC decided to cancel Wally West’s series during Infinite Crisis because, hey, you can’t have a Crisis without a dead Flash, but couldn’t figure out what to do with the relaunch), it’s beginning to look like DC has finally gotten the character back on track.

The year opened with the wrap-ups of the Flash: Rebirth and Blackest Night: The Flash miniseries, then ran headlong into the Flash vol.3 relaunch in April by Geoff Johns and Francis Manapul. The new series starring Barry Allen has completed its first story arc, introduced new characters in the form of reverse-Rogues, and presented two Rogue Profile spotlight issues. On the downside, the series has been plagued by delays since summer, and those two Rogue spotlights were added to help get the book back on schedule.

Speedsters Really Get Around

Barry Allen has been all over the place: The Flash, Blackest Night, Brightest Day, Green Lantern… A number of Barry Allen/Flash action figures have also been released or announced this year.

Bart Allen, as Kid Flash, has rejoined the Teen Titans.

Jay Garrick continues to be a mainstay of the Justice Society of America.

On TV, Batman: The Brave and the Bold featured a Flash-focused episode starring Jay Garrick, Barry Allen and Wally West (as Kid Flash)…with John Wesley Shipp voicing Professor Zoom. Cartoon Network’s Young Justice launched with Kid Flash as a main character. And of course there’s the continuing presence of Flash fandom on The Big Bang Theory.

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State of the Blog 2010

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It’s been about a year since I last posted one of these things. Speed Force has grown a lot in that time. I’ve tried to have something new on a daily basis, and over a year and a half the site has grown to a total of 824 posts. It’s also expanded past the blog itself, with nearly 3,000 tweets on Twitter @SpeedForceOrg and with a fan page on Facebook.

Speed Force’s audience has grown a lot too, with an average of 989 views per day (up from 469 a year earlier), 220 fans on Facebook, over 400 followers on Twitter…and almost 3,000 comments! Thank you, everyone!

On the downside: I’m kind of stressed out. The Flash is still in limbo after all this time, and while we have an unofficial launch date, DC has continued to change their plans for the character. I’ve also been finding DC’s output more frustrating and less interesting over the past few years, and I don’t want this to turn into a 24/7 rant station.

So here’s what I’m doing to avoid burning out. Continue reading →

Speed Reading for 2010

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The Flash picked up several mentions in Newsarama’s 10 for 2010 series including the character in 10 Characters to Watch, the series in 10 Comics to Watch, and artist Francis Manapul in 10 Creators to Watch.

The Flash Family also makes Grumpy Old Fan’s list of Ten from the old, ten for the new.

The standard cover of Flash: Rebirth #1 and the Flash-themed cover for DC: The New Frontier #2 are among IO9’s 100 Amazing Comic Covers from the last ten years.

The Perhapablog posts a Craig Rousseau sketch of Impulse reacting to cancellation, along with the Thing drawn by Mike Wieringo.

Remember that Breakfast Club/Teen Titans mashup last summer? Artist Cliff Chiang has recreated more 80s album covers with characters such as Batgirl, Elektra and Vampirella.

Crimson Lightning brings us a “Hi and Lois” strip portraying the Greek gods as super-heroes.

The Rogues’ tailor, Paul Gambi, is named after Paul Gambaccini, a UK-based DJ and long-time comic fan. Bleeding Cool spotted him on a celebrity game show demonstrating his impressive knowledge of DC Comics trivia.

Update: One more item – the New York Times has named Geoff Johns in their “Nifty Fifty” list of up-and-coming talent. (via The Source)

Geoff Johns Talks Flash Update

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Geoff Johns took a few moments out of his holiday travel to update fans on the state of The Flash. Ordinarily I’d pull out a couple of key quotes and point you to the original post, but this time I think I should just quote the whole thing:

Merry Christmas Eve, everyone! I hope you all have save travels if you’re heading somewhere for the holidays.

Obviously, there have been some changes (among many) in DC’s approach to co-features and, in particular, the Flash universe that have raised questions and frustrations. Yes, THE FLASH will no longer have the Wally West co-feature. It’ll remain one of DC’s $2.99 books rather than $3.99 and Barry Allen will be the lead character. Yes, the plans for creating a book title KID FLASH have altered. (The creative team lined up never started on the book.) And, yes, it was a mistake to announce our plans before they were set in stone. Everyone was just excited about the Flash. No one wants to disappoint anyone. That’s not only bad business, it’s bad karma. So all that above? That’s the bad news.

But there is good news too. You will see the stories Scott Kolins and I have been working on. You will see Wally and Bart and everyone (Jesse will surprise a lot of people!). You will see the Flash universe grow organically. No one wants the Flash universe to achieve the same heights Green Lantern has more than me and the creative and editorial team working on it (and maybe the bean counters at DC! ). I’m also working hard on the movie. Despite what it looks like, the plans have grown for the Flash universe, although the rollout for things has changed. Imagine something more like how Green Lantern grew. The Flash universe is set for something VERY big in 2011 as well. It’ll take a bit more time to build (not too much), but in the long run I do believe the foundation will be stronger for it. I can’t get into specifics too much and I don’t want to until we literally have covers to show – which I’m sure will frustrate some people – but I don’t want to see anyone disappointed.

I am incredibly excited about the future of the Flash and I think when things are finally rolling in April, you all will be too.

I’ll try and answer any questions I can when I can over the next few days.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!

Geoff

Head over to Comic Bloc to read the original post and comment thread.

Edit: In reading through the thread, I’ve spotted one more answer by Johns so far, to a question about Wally West:

Think of it this way — Wally will continue to do what he’s always done, continue and build the Flash legacy, only in ways more insanely epic in scope and adventure than ever. Barry is the Flash who started the spark, Wally is the one who fans the fire.

Cooling Off

First off, I’d like to apologize for the meltdown in yesterday’s post. I’m still extremely disappointed in DC’s decision to cancel the Kid Flash series and Wally West backups, but instead of flying off the handle, I should have made a terse, neutral news post, then waited a few hours before writing a more considered opinion piece.

Well, it’s too late to stuff all the feathers back into the bag. As much as I’d like to delete it and start over, a lot of people have already read it, and I’d rather keep the original available so that people can read what I actually said, not what someone else said that I said.

So, about the future. Over the last few years, I’ve been slowly losing interest in super-heroes in general and the DC Universe in particular, to the point that right now, the only DCU books I’m reading are Flash: Rebirth and Blackest Night: The Flash.

Meanwhile, I’ve spent four years in “wait and see” mode with The Flash as DC has changed direction seemingly every 6 months. I’m frustrated. So frustrated that I’m getting bitter about what used to be my favorite book.

You know the kind of fan who constantly writes angry rants about how he hates the current version of a book or TV series? The fan who stands up in panels at conventions and complains about books he doesn’t like? The fan who puts “Only Bob is the real Ultraguy!” in his forum signature? The fan who shows up to say “You should be happy that your favorite book is being canceled! Now you can enjoy my favorite book! Isn’t it great?” You know, that guy?

I don’t want to be “that guy.”

So I think I need to take a step back for a bit.

I’ve got a few informational and linkblogging posts lined up for the rest of the week, but I think unless major news hits, I’m going to sit things out until after Christmas (I’ve got enough holiday stress already) while I figure out what I want to do, both as a reader and as a blogger.

Flash in 2010=100% Barry Allen – Kid Flash Series & Wally West Backups Canceled

So…DC’s latest 20 Questions with Dan Didio video has some bad news for fans of the extended Flash family. He answered my question about the Flash and Kid Flash books, explaining that they’ve decided to go back to “the original game plan” and focus on a single Flash book starring Barry Allen.

Wally West’s backup stories, by Geoff Johns & Scott Kolins? “On hold.” [Edit: This may be the result of DC restructuring the second features.]

The Kid Flash book by Sterling Gates? “On hold.”

He goes on to say, “Your Flash fix will be Barry Allen, pure and simple, for 2010.”

Warning: Rant Ahead

Edit: The rest of this post is a rant, bashed out in the heat of the moment immediately after watching that video. If I’d had the sense to wait until I’d cooled down, I wouldn’t have written it.

To clarify what I did write, it’s not just that Barry’s getting the limelight that has me pissed off. I’ve had a year and a half to get used to that. What really has me steamed is that DC announced ongoing stories starring Bart and Wally, then changed their minds and yanked that away.

I picked up Flash: Rebirth hoping that it would convince me to like the idea of new Barry stories. It hasn’t. If it had, this news would have still been disappointing, but wouldn’t have gotten me so angry.

Anyway, onto the original post…

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