Geoff Johns and the Flash have made it to the final round in three of Newsarama’s Favorites of 2009 polls!
The Flash: Reschedule saga continues, but this time with some potentially good news. While DC’s website still lists a March 24, 2010 release date for Flash: Rebirth #6, Diamond Comics has posted on their shipping updates page that the title will appear on February 24, 2010. Still later than the January 27 date we had before, and still arriving after Blackest Night: The Flash wraps (though by only a week!), but much more reasonable than the 4-month gap between issues previously announced.
Thanks to PyroTwilight at Comic Bloc for the news!
The rest of Newsarama’s Favorites of 2009 polls have moved on to round 2.
Covers: Ethan Van Sciver’s Flash: Rebirth #1 won its bracket in the first round of Favorite Covers, and goes up against Alex Ross’ Justice Society of America #26. I’m a little confused, because I could swear the gallery for round 1 showed the face-forward variant that was used for the second printing, but this round it shows the standard side-view cover.
Limited series: 3 of the 4 winners were written by Geoff Johns. Blackest Night goes up against Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, and Flash: Rebirth goes up against Wednesday Comics. (Personally, I’m kind of disappointed that Scott Pilgrim disappeared so quickly, but I think that’s largely because Newsarama combined original graphic novels and limited series into one category.)
Flash wasn’t in the running for ongoing series this year, of course, but Rebirth writer Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern run. Actually, both brackets this round are GL vs. Batman, with Green Lantern up against Detective Comics and Green Lantern Corps up against Batman and Robin.
And yes, every single winner of Round 1 in these categories was a DC book.
Also still open:
Some Flash news broke over the weekend. In case you missed the original posts…
First, Ethan Van Sciver reports that Flash: Rebirth #6 should be out sooner than March after all — he’s almost done with the art, and expects to finish this week!
Second, the Flash Secret Files 2010 solicitation is up. It’s due March 24.
I’ll be back this evening with a run-down of likely Flash appearances in the full March solicitations.
Gee, you go away for one Christmas party, and news starts breaking fast and furious!
So, a couple of days ago, DC rescheduled Flash: Rebirth #6 from January 27 to March 24. On Saturday, Ethan Van Sciver stopped by Comic Bloc to let fans know what was going on:
This March date is strange. The book will be finished this week. I think you’ll see it get bumped back to January in a few days. [Emphasis added.]
The artist has previously stated that he sends the pages to the colorist in batches (of three, IIRC) as he finishes them, so they’ve already started coloring the book.
Meanwhile, Flash Secret Files has been solicited…with that same March 24 release date. Could someone at DC have mistakenly updated the website with the date for the Secret Files book?
Van Sciver also remarked on the delays, saying that it’s been taking him two months to draw each book, plus he had some health problems around the time that issue #3 came out.
(Thanks to Wayne Lippa and @MrEPCOT for letting me know about EVS’ posts!)
A couple of weeks ago I posted that Flash: Rebirth #5 took the #9 spot in November’s sales rankings. Since then, ICv2 has posted full sales estimates for the month.
| Issue | Rank | Units Sold | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flash: Rebirth #1 (of 6) | 2 | 102,429 | +286.6% |
| Flash: Rebirth #2 (of 6) | 4 | 86,183 | -15.9% |
| Flash: Rebirth #3 (of 6) | 10 | 83,086 | -3.6% |
| Flash: Rebirth #4 (of 6) | 14 | 78,107 | -6.0% |
| Flash: Rebirth #5 (of 6) | 9 | 73,875 | -5.4% |
It looks like the drops may be leveling off. The drop from #3 (the last issue to ship on time) to #4 (the first issue to be several months late) was sharper than expected, but this drop was smaller — and in fact the sales ranking went up!
The book continues to outsell the 2007-2008 relaunch by a factor of two, and is holding above Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge, which sold in the 54-62K range. On the other hand, it seems to be dropping at a comparable rate to Flash: The Fastest Man Alive. Maybe it’s more typical (and less cause for concern) in a miniseries than in a regular series. Update: The Beat has more analysis of DC’s November sales.
Whatever the case, I’m really curious about the numbers for Blackest Night: The Flash.