Tag Archives: Dead Heat

This Week: Flash Annual #1 and Digital Dead Heat

Flash Annual #1 Cover

  • The Rogues – victorious? If THE FLASH had trouble with them individually, together they’ll kill him!
  • Something worse than The Rogues is just waiting for the right moment to attack….

Written by Francis Manapul & Brian Buccellato
Art by Francis Manapul & Marcus To

DC has a spotlight article and a preview of the issue.

Flash #111As far as back issues go, ComiXology is releasing Flash #110-111 and Impulse #12. This concludes the “Dead Heat” crossover started last week. The Flash and his allies have tracked Savitar to his lair, but can one Flash and a team of powerless speedsters stand against an army of super-speed ninjas? And how can Wally West defeat someone who has dedicated his life to studying the speed force?

In the aftermath, time-lost Legionnaire Jenni Ognats (XS) joins her cousin Bart Allen trying to fit in as a 20th-century teenager.

Flash (1987-2009) on ComiXology
Impulse on ComiXology

This Week: Flash #12, Digital Dead Heat

This week it’s The Flash #12. The regular art team returns as all the individual stories of the Rogues come together, leading into next week’s Flash Annual #1.

  • Setting up The Rogues as a team as the next major storyline for the series begins!
  • Glider takes center stage!

Written by Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato
Art by Francis Manapul

In the digital realm, ComiXology is releasing four issues of “Dead Heat”, the Flash/Impulse crossover from 1995. Flash #108-109 (Mark Waid and Oscar Jimenez) and Impulse #10-11 (Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos) cover chapters 1-3 and 5 of the 6-part story, and I’m sure we’ll see chapters 4 and 6 next week. With any luck, they’ll jump back and release Flash #50 soon as well, since they left of with one heck of a cliffhanger in Flash #49 last week.

Savitar, an old enemy of Max Mercury’s, has returned. Obsessed with speed, he has found a way to divert all of the Speed Force’s energy to himself and his followers. But there’s one speedster still in the running, someone who recently connected himself more closely to the speed force than even Savitar: Wally West. Jay Garrick, Johnny Quick, Jesse Quick, Max Mercury, Impulse and XS team up to stop Savitar, but more than one speedster won’t make it out alive!

Flash (1987-2009) on ComiXology
Impulse on ComiXology

Speed Reading: Recommendations

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.

These Are The Greatest Wally West Stories Ever Told

Comics Should Be Good has posted the results of their reader poll for the Greatest Wally West stories ever told. It’s technically a top ten list, but they included eleven stories because the #10 winner was essentially a prologue for one of the other winners.

It’s interesting to break down the results by writer:

  • 7 by Mark Waid (including the top three)
  • 2 by Geoff Johns
  • 2 by William Messner-Loebs

In a way it’s surprising that Geoff Johns, DC’s current superstar writer, isn’t more heavily represented, but it also makes sense. Mark Waid’s run on The Flash was very much about Wally West and his journey through young adulthood (Messner-Loebs’ run even more so!), while Geoff Johns’ run tilted a bit more toward the Rogues.

Head over to Comics Should Be Good for the full list!

Speed Reading: Flash in the 1990s

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.