Tag Archives: CSBG Cool Comics

Speed Reading: Cupcakes & Death, Futurama X-Men and Robots from Space

1 Reply

Some funny links from the last week or so two…

Geoff Johns and Matt Fraction joke about a Green Lantern/Iron Man crossover.

Ah, super-heroes and dead parents! The cliche is so established that it’s been spoofed, as Comics Should Be Good spotlights Kill All Parents in their Year of Cool Comics.

Comics Oughta Be Fun mashes up those Hostess cupcake ads with Gwen Stacy death to reveal…what really happened the night of June 16, 1973.

gottabecarl draws the Futurama cast as the X-Men via IO9 and Ryan the Iowan.

The National Park Service really is having problems with a movie about “Robots from Space” — Transformers 3.

And totally off-topic, but I thought it was funny: a local city is really concerned that you understand that the dead grass is intentional and not a sign of *gasp!* poor maintenance.

Speed Reading: Recommendations

2 Replies

The linkblogging catchup continues!

Comics Should Be Good features Flash #54: “Nobody Dies” (William Messner-Loebs and Greg LaRocque) in their Year of Cool Comics. It’s one of my favorite one-issue stories from Wally West’s run, and not surprisingly it made the reader-selected list of top 10 Wally West stories a few weeks later.

A bit off topic, CSBG also reviews Mysterius the Unfathomable. It was a fun fantasy/horror/comedy miniseries last year, and is now available as a trade paperback.

Multiversity Comics recommends the new Flash series. Among other reasons: “he has a secret identity which actually gets used, instead of being forgotten for more exciting superhero stories.” And of course, “Flash has some of the best and most fleshed out rogues in the business.”

Update: One more! Several Flash storylines appear in CSBG’s Greatest Mark Waid Stories Ever Told list: Dead Heat, Terminal Velocity and The Return of Barry Allen.

Speed Reading: Flash in the 1990s

1 Reply

Strangely enough, a lot of the sites I’ve linked to on Twitter or Facebook over the last few weeks were looking back at the 1990s and Mark Waid’s run on The Flash

Max Mercury.High Five! Comics profiles Max Mercury: The Speedster Time Forgot (for a while). Of course, Max goes back farther than — he started as Quality Comics’ Golden Age hero, Quicksilver — but the version of the character known today was established in “The Return of Barry Allen,” “Terminal Velocity,” “Dead Heat” and Impulse.

Terminal VelocityFor Valentine’s Day, Comics Should be Good’s Year of Cool Comics spotlights Flash: Terminal Velocity and a key event in the relationship between Wally West and Linda Park.

Westfield Comics’ Josh Crawley looks back at Mark Waid’s first run on The Flash, picking up with Flash #0 and running through “Terminal Velocity,” “Dead Heat” and “Race Against Time.”

Mania spotlights the 1990s Flash TV series in 15 more shows that were canceled before their time over the last 25 years. It’s an interesting mix of shows I remember fondly (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), shows I remember hearing about but never watched (Murder One), and shows I’ve completely forgotten (Street Hawk?). It also reminds me that I never got around to watching the last few episodes of Journeyman.

Speed Reading: Sketches, Schedules, Collections and More

1 Reply

Some linkblogging for the weekend…

Artists and a Publisher

Karl Kerschl shares a sketch of Iris West he did while in Italy.

Francis Manapul shares a black and white version of his variant cover for Blackest Night: The Flash #3.

Dan Didio talks to CBR about a number of things including Flash. He reiterates some of the reasons they let the book fall behind rather than put a new team on it to bring it out quickly, like they did with Final Crisis:

That ran with some delays, but at the end of the day we looked at the full package of how that will look as a book, and we wanted to maintain consistency all the way through. The events of that book weren’t essential to what happens with the Flash in “Blackest Night.”

Nothing new. In fact he said more or less the same thing a couple of days earlier to Newsarama. Interestingly, he describes the new Flash series book as spinning out of Blackest Night. Whether that’s simply in publishing terms, or in story terms as well, is not clear.

Fan Commentary

The Flash makes IO9’s 10 Favorite Faux Deaths In Science Fiction. If you want to get technical, it’s really their 12 favorite fake/reversed deaths, because the Flash entry includes Barry Allen (Crisis on Infinite Earths), Wally West (Infinite Crisis) and Bart Allen (Flash: The Fastest Man Alive). Or maybe 13, since it’s got both Phoenix and Jean Grey.

Collected Editions compares the Final Crisis and Blackest Night collections.

The Flash in New Frontier makes Comics Should Be Good’s 313th cool comic book moment. They’re also accepting nominations for a top 100 comic storylines poll.

Other Stuff

Comic Wallet is selling wallets made from pages of Flash: Rebirth.

A bit off-topic, I’ve been running a photo blog, updating three times a week, mostly with shots from around the Orange County, California area. I’ve also reviewed The Gathering Storm, the new Wheel of Time novel that kept me away from the computer for a week.

Classic Flash: Cool Moments, Lame Bits, and…Octopus Fighting?

1 Reply

Some more linkblogging…

Flash Comics #44 (1943)CSBG’s Cool Comic Book Moments #245 features the death of Barry Allen from Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Crimson Lightning finishes up the Super-Powers retrospective with the original mini-comic that came with the action figure.

Silver Age Comics brings up 3 extremely lame bits about Kid Flash. Coincidence, costume change, and…do you dare read on to learn the third?

Indie Squid Kid presents the golden age of octopus fighting. No, really!

Flash #0 (1994)Update: Newsarama’s Friday Flashback looks back at the classic Flash #0 by Mark Waid & Mike Wieringo. This classic post-Zero Hour book told a stand-alone story of Wally West bouncing around in time and, at one point, meeting his younger self, reassuring him that everything would work out. It also set things in motion for the epic Terminal Velocity, which started the following month.

Speed Reading: What If? Cool Moments, and Death

Leave a reply

More linkblogging! This rounds out a week’s worth of Flash-related pages I’ve stumbled across.

Kid Flash has a cameo up in this Adventure Comics #1 preview over at The Source.

Robot 6’s Grumpy Old Fan considers several major creative decisions by DC over the last 25 years, including making Wally West the Flash after Crisis on Infinite Earths, and considers what might have happened if they’d gone differently. In the case of the Flash, if they’d gone for a new, unrelated character instead of Barry’s former sidekick, the 90s focus on legacy characters might never have happened.

Four Color Media Monitor dissects interviews on Flash: Rebirth and Barry Allen given by Dan Didio and Geoff Johns, comparing their statements to the miniseries’ emphasis on death.

Comics Should Be Good highlights another Cool Comic Book Moment from The Flash detailing a pivotal moment from Flash vol.2 #78 — second-to-last chapter of The Return of Barry Allen.