Some artist & Bronze Age linkblogging for the weekend…
CBR interviews Ethan Van Sciver on Flash: Rebirth and Blackest Night.
Chris Samnee posts a great sketch of the Flash.
New Flash artist Francis Manapul has been posting more convention sketches, including the Fastest Man Alive.
DC Comics 40 Years Ago looks at Flash #192: The Day Flash Failed!
Some more linkblogging (almost done, honest!)
Collected Editions reviews Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge.
Speedster Site wants to know: What artist do you want for Flash? Also: an EVS Barry Allen sketch from Fan Expo.
The Cool Kidz Table lists his five favorite Flash artists.
iFanboy wonders if heroes can just stay dead.
At MTV Splash Page, Adam Brody Remembers His Flash Suit from the Justice League movie that never happened.
Between Ethan Van Sciver’s presence and the fact that Flash: Rebirth #4 had just been released two days earlier, there was a lot of Flash talk at Friday’s DC Nation panel at Fan Expo.
Newsarama’s article has a lot of Flash coverage, including this interesting statement by Flash: Rebirth artist Ethan Van Sciver:
I’m having a great time. It’s the book I pestered [Dan Didio] for over three years. I love Barry Allen. I love the Flash. The Flash is probably my favorite superhero. Barry has been gone 25 years and I though that was a pretty fair homage to pay for Crisis, but it was time to bring him back. When Geoff and I finally convinced Dan to let us do it, we built a huge gigantic story that really needed every single Flash, even some that had been missing, in order for it to work.
Flash Rebirth is Part 1 of that. It’s assembling all the pieces, putting them back together where we needed them to be, and then explain one little segment of what the speed force is. Again, Geoff is only giving you a taste of what it is. It’s so much more broad. Professor Zoom ties into it big time and it’s going to lead to a long, fruitful, and very successful ongoing series after this.
He added that Jesse Quick/Liberty Belle “has a great scene” in issue #5, and Dan Didio remarked that DC will be “exploring more about” Liberty Belle and Hourman. “They could be one of the more fun DC couples coming out right now.”
CBR’s coverage includes some remarks that Ethan Van Sciver made about Kid Flash:
“How great is it to see Bart Allen again? I started on Impulse…I fed my family drawing Bart Allen as a young husband,” Sciver recalled “the look on Bart’s face in issue #4 was the look on my face when I drew it.”
Joey Cavalieri Ethan Van Sciver joked that, as far as Wally West’s role in the rest of the series, we should “See Blackest Night.” Nice.
Didio went on to state that, unlike with Green Lantern, “Wally was the perfect replacement. Everybody had moved on so now it’s not a story about somebody who has to fix something broken in his absence, but somebody who is coming back to see if he was relevant still. What I’m talking about actually plays into what the story is about.”
There’s also apparently a “nasty trick” coming up, regarding which EVS said, “Keep reading, it’ll all make sense.” I’m beginning to wonder whether Cavalieri’s joke about Wally may have been hiding the truth in plain sight.
We know Blackest Night: Flash focuses on Barry and Wally and has live Rogues vs. dead Rogues. What if Wally West dies at the end of Flash: Rebirth, and Blackest Night: Flash has live Barry vs. Black Lantern Wally West? There has been speculation that at least some of the Black Lanterns will return to life by the end of Blackest Night, and Wally could be brought back by the end of the event. Kind of like the way Kyle Rayner was temporarily bonded to Parallax during Sinestro Corps War.
And now for a scoop by @liabrown1: At the DC Universe panel on Saturday, they announced that the Flash ongoing series will launch in March 2010. This lines up with the 3-issue Blackest Night: Flash miniseries starting in December. With any luck, September may be our last month without a Flash book for a long time!
She adds that DC is “not ready to announce” the artist on the Kid Flash series, which implies that they’ve at least got someone in mind.
Update: CBR’s coverage of the DCU panel is up.
Update 2: Newsarma’s DCU Editorial write-up is up too, and there’s a bit of confusion as to how many Flash books are launching when.
Well, I said I wanted this issue to knock my socks off, and Geoff Johns & Ethan Van Sciver certainly delivered! After three issues of setup, Flash: Rebirth #4 kicks the story into high gear. Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash, stands revealed as the villain behind Barry Allen’s troubles, the mythology of the speed force expands, and everyone gets involved in a high-stakes battle for the legacy of the Flash.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the Reverse Flash. Sure, there’s a reason the evil counterpart is a standard villain type. For one thing, it’s always interesting to see what a villain can do with the same powers but no scruples (as demonstrated admirably when Lex Luthor and the Flash have their minds switched in “The Great Brain Robbery” episode of Justice League Unlimited). For another, when the villain has the same powers as the hero, it cancels out the hero’s usual advantages — but the side effects of their struggle are often doubled.
The thing is, Professor Zoom always struck me as an overdone, melodramatic villain, evil or the sake of being evil — the kind who would twirl his mustache while tying Iris to the railroad tracks. Maybe that was because he never really got updated with modern storytelling the way the Rogues did, except for a single story — appropriately enough, Mark Waid’s “The Return of Barry Allen.” By contrast, I found Hunter Zolomon a much more interesting character with unusual motivations, though one who should be used sparingly. So having Zoom II taken off the playing field in Rogues’ Revenge and Zoom I brought back at the same time as his own arch-nemesis seemed, well, lazy.
This issue, however, presents a Zoom who is thoroughly menacing. Barry’s internal monologue zeroes in on the key constant in Zoom’s appearances: he’s a predatory stalker. And now he’s been reimagined as — like his opposite number — a scientist. A scientist with an obsession and no ethics committee, who has spent his life experimenting on the subject of his fixation.
There’s so much going on in this issue that the first time through I didn’t realize what a huge chunk of exposition is dropped at the beginning of the issue. For one thing, it’s interspersed with a battle. For another, despite Thawne’s academic affectations, it’s much more straight-forward than the technobabble at the beginning of the last issue.
Also: a couple of items bring home the fact that this entire miniseries (or at least what we’ve seen so far) takes place in the space of one day. The first issue established a number of celebrations and parades that were going to happen later that day — and this issue, one of the battles crashes through that parade.
I don’t think I can say much more without giving away plot points, so be warned: Spoilers after the cut.
Yesterday I re-read Flash: Rebirth #1-3 by Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver. Today I bought Flash: Rebirth #4 (and even managed to pick up the variant cover) and read it during lunch. Here are my first impressions, with a full review to come later tonight:
The story has really picked up. It seemed like twice as much happened as last issue.
It had some genuinely tense moments, including one at which I thought to myself, “If they actually go there, I’m done. Out. Finished.” Which made the subsequent save all the more satisfying.
In fact, there were at least three “HELL, YEAH!!” moments in the book, and Ethan Van Sciver made very effective use of splash pages for them.
Now that I’ve read the whole issue, Professor Zoom’s “negative speed force” concept (mentioned in the preview) makes sense. That said, there’s another revelation about the speed force that really, really bothers me. Yes, it’s been hinted for at least a year, but it feels extremely, well, forced. Also illogical, considering one of the primary functions of the speed force.
Overall much more satisfying than last issue, and the ending actually makes me want to read more.
I’ll post a full review tonight after I have time for a second read-through. Update: The full review is up!
The Hollywood Reporter, well, reports that Geoff Johns will co-write a Shazam! movie with Billy Birch. So, what do you think? Is Geoff Johns cut out to write a super-hero with a red costume that has yellow and white trim and a lightning motif? featuring Captain Marvel (via CBR and )
Flash artists Ethan Van Sciver (Flash: Rebirth) and Jackson Guice (early Wally West solo issues) are among the guests of honor at C2E2 in Chicago next year.
Ain’t It Cool News talks with Geoff Johns about Blackest Night, Flash: Rebirth, and the Flash and Green Lantern movies.
More sites remember Mike Wieringo: Panels on Pages remembers the artist through Tellos. Pipeline reprints the original column with some updates on matters such as the ‘Ringo scholarship, the What If…? tribute book, and so forth.