Tag Archives: Flashpoint

Flashpoint: An Epic of Epic Epicness?

For today’s Flashpoint Friday, DC Comics said a few words about the scope of the event, which is “so big and ambitious that there will be fifteen mini series expanding on the events, along with several important one shots.”

Yeah, you read that right.

  • One central 5-issue miniseries by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert.
  • 15 tie-in miniseries.
  • “Several” “important” one-shots.

DC will be announcing 14 of the 15 miniseries’ titles this afternoon.

They also add, for those readers who haven’t quite tumbled to the fact, that “This isn’t a parallel Earth. This isn’t a mirror world. This is home.

There may be something to last week’s Bleeding Cool rumor that DC will alter their publishing line during the event. With 15 miniseries, I can imagine DC putting 15 titles on hiatus for a few months and publishing the minis instead. Not necessarily the best timing with the Green Lantern movie coming out, but there’s undoubtedly more to the plans.

Also of note: The creative team was described as “Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert and Sandra Hope.” I don’t remember Sandra Hope being mentioned in connection with the title before. It may be that she’s been doing the inks all along and they were only publicizing Andy Kubert’s more-famous name, or it may be that she’s been brought to ink the later issues so that Kubert has more time to finish the pencils.

(Apologies to Scott Pilgrim for the headline.)

Green Lantern/Flashpoint for Free Comic Book Day

Well, that was fast. Just yesterday I pondered the likelihood of DC releasing a Flashpoint prelude for Free Comic Book Day, and today they announced a Green Lantern/Flashpoint special for the event.

This is the perfect jumping-on point for new readers who can’t wait to see the “Green Lantern” major motion picture from Warner Bros.! Discover how and why Hal received the power ring that changed his life forever with this reprinting of GREEN LANTERN #30, a pivotal chapter of the Green Lantern: Secret Origin graphic novel. No comic fan can afford to miss this exclusive first sneak peek of FLASHPOINT, DC’s blockbuster event of 2011, by the all-star team of Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert.

So instead of a lead-in, we’re getting a preview, and it’s playing backup to a Green Lantern movie tie-in.

Free Comic Book Day is held the first Saturday of May.

Flash #12 Solicited

DC’s April 2011 solicitations are up at CBR, Newsarama and elsewhere, including the next issue of Flash. Next month we should be seeing the first solicitations for Flashpoint, which launches in May. (Hmm, who wants to bet that there will be a Flashpoint #0 for Free Comic Book Day?)

The Flash #12

Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art and cover by FRANCIS MANAPUL
1:10 Variant cover by GEORGE PEREZ

“The Road to Flashpoint” concludes as everything Barry Allen knows and cares about is lost. What is the Flashpoint? Find out in the upcoming FLASHPOINT #1!

On sale APRIL 27 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US, RATED T

Wow, that’s…vague.

But, hey, George Perez variant cover! I’m looking forward to seeing that one!

Also of likely interest to Flash fans:

  • Justice League International TPB Vol. 6, collecting several issues of Justice League America and Justice League Europe (featuring Wally West), including the first crossover between the two teams, “The Teasdale Imperative.”
  • Young Justice #3 with Kid Flash front and center on the cover.
  • The conclusion of Brightest Day, featuring Captain Boomerang (and probably Professor Zoom)
  • The usual team books: Justice Society of America, Teen Titans, Tiny Titans

Rumor: Will Flashpoint Retitle Everything?

This is pure speculation, but it’s an interesting one. Bleeding Cool reports that DC Comics’ upcoming Flashpoint event will rename and renumber DCU titles all across the line, much as Marvel’s Age of Apocalypse retitled all of their X-Men titles for the duration of that alternate reality story.

Basically, that DC will change their publishing lineup to reflect the changes that (presumably) the Reverse-Flash makes in DCU history.

If they do it right, I think this could be fun. It reminds me of DC One Million, in which every DCU title jumped forward to issue #1,000,000 and either told a story about a future version of the lead character/team, or told a story about the character in the future (to varying degrees of success). The Armageddon 2001 and Legends of the Dead Earth annuals were similar (though A2001, IMO, was a more successful event), or perhaps the two https://hyperborea.org/flash/tangent.html”>Tangent Comics events in which DC released nine books as if they were first issues of new series detailing an alternate universe.

I guess the best comparison for a DC reader would be the Amalgam comics that took over a month on the DC & Marvel publishing schedules during the Marvel vs. DC event and its sequels: comics like Speed Demon, or the Uncanny X-Patrol, or Doctor Strangefate. Each was treated as a first issue of an ongoing, often with references to previous series featuring the characters.

Keep in mind that this is still a rumor: DC might not be planning this at all, or they might be planning a few miniseries to run alongside the regular monthly books like they did with Blackest Night, or they might be planning a single month like the resurrected titles last year.

Fake Flashpoint Teasers

Inspired by last week’s one-line Flashpoint teasers, @Speedstersite started posting jokes marked #FakeFLASHPOINTTeaser on Twitter. Others joined in.

Here are some of my favorites:

  • SpeedsterSite: Turns out, hard water is just ice, nothing more.
  • SpeedsterSite: He absolutely refused to see Zorro that night
  • collecteditions: No one escaped the Manhunters.
  • collecteditions: He never much liked fish; she never much liked Curry.
  • collecteditions: The Graysons never worked without a net.
  • ryanoneil: Jor-El wasn’t actually a rocket scientist.
  • DougG_ATL: Hippolyta is a terrible sculptor
  • DougG_ATL: Superboy Prime, try this Xanax.
  • TheLastIslander: Bart Allen is secretly the time trapper. (More of a fake spoiler than a fake teaser, but at this point, who hasn’t been the Time Trapper?)
  • BlueTyson This story is actually good! (Ouch!)
  • JCorduroy Greedo shot first. (So that explains it!)

My own humble contributions:

  • He never lost his eye.
  • He would’ve gotten away with it, if it weren’t for those darn kids.
  • They caught the radioactive spider before it could bite anyone.
  • Nephew? What nephew?

You can find the rest on Twitter at the #FakeFLASHPOINTTeaser tag.

But Twitter isn’t the only place people were doing this. Over at the CBR forums, posters were making their own banners in the same spirit.

Interview: Norm Breyfogle on the first Flashpoint

Today’s guest post is the third in a series of interviews by Greg Elias on The Art of Speed. 

With a new Flashpoint on the horizon in 2011, longtime Flash fans are likely reminded of the 2000 miniseries with the same name.  Written by Pat McGreal with art by Norm Breyfogle, the first Flashpoint was released under DC’s Elseworlds stamp in 2000.

In a world where the Flash is the only superhero, Barry Allen is paralyzed from the neck down while thwarting the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  Confined to a wheelchair, Barry becomes the leading figure in the world of space science. He also dreams of a heaven revealed to be the Speed Force, has visions of an alternate-Earth Flash career with the Justice League, and is friendly with his world’s incarnation of Vandal Savage.

Through a series of “accidents” tied to Savage’s machinations, Barry, Wally West, Ralph Dibny and the Martian Manhunter are embroiled in an attempt to keep the destructive power of the flashpoint from being unleashed on the world.

Best known for his long tenure and defining work on the Batman family of titles throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Breyfogle’s Flash resume is short but memorable. In addition to Flashpoint, he illustrated a Kid Flash/Jay Garrick story in Flash 80 Page Giant #2.

We spoke with him via email about some of the techniques used on Flashpoint.

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