Tag Archives: Geoff Johns

Speed Reading: Blackest Night in 60 Seconds, Comics According to Geoff, Movie Thoughts & More

Some weekend linkblogging.

Art

Comics Alliance presents (in comic book form): Blackest Night in 60 Seconds….and on a more serious note, spotlights Comic Book Cartography — maps of various fictional worlds, buildings, and more. Edit: Here’s a direct link to the Comic Book Cartography blog.

Frank Ziegler draws a Cartoony Jay Garrick.

Commentary

Multiversity Comics looks at The DCU According to Geoff Johns, covering the entirety of the writer’s DC work to date.

Grumpy Old Fan considers The Gospel According to Geoff, looking at what made Blackest Night work as more than merely a “process story.”

It’s Just Movies’ Ben Fowler discusses, If I Was Making … ‘The Flash’.

Cool-Mo-De starts a Goofy villains series with the Rainbow Raider and Flash vol.2 Annual #10 (Pulp Heroes), with art by the late Dick Giordano.

Comics Daily asks, How do you solve a problem like Wally West?

Interview

A Comic Book Blog interviews Ethan Van Sciver.

Flash at the Eisners

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The 2010 Eisner Award nominees have been announced. One Flash story has been nominated, as have two of the Flash’s long-term writers.

Best Single Issue (or One-Shot)

Brave & the Bold #28: “Blackhawk and the Flash: Firing Line,” by J. Michael Straczynski and Jesus Saiz (DC) (reviewed here)

Best Writer

Geoff Johns — Adventure Comics, Blackest Night, The Flash: Rebirth, Superman: Secret Origin (DC)
Mark Waid — Irredeemable, The Incredibles (BOOM!)

Waid’s Irredeemable is also up for Best Continuing Series and Best New Series, and cover artist John Cassaday is up for Best Cover Artist.

Review: Flash Secret Files and Origins 2010

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More precisely, the book is Flash: Secret Files and Origins 2010 #1. (I’m always faintly amused at the tendency of comic book publishers to slap a big “#1” on the front of an obviously one-shot issue.) Like most of DC’s Secret Files books, this is made up of a lead story and a series of profile pages.

Lead Story

“Running to the Past” by Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins was a fairly standard Flash story. It doesn’t really stand out as particularly good or bad, but it serves as an introduction to Barry Allen, his primary motivation (the retconned-in death of his mother), and the sometimes lonely life of a speedster.

There are some nice moments, like the sequence of panels early on in which Barry hits a light switch, pours himself a glass of water, and then the light comes on (though if you think about it, that only makes sense if the water is sped up too).

Oddly, while the whole story is drawn by Scott Kolins, the epilogue featuring the Rogues looks vastly different. It really highlights something I’ve mentioned before, which is how well-suited his art is to the Rogues.

It is a Barry Allen story, first and foremost, though the rest of the “good guy” speedsters show up briefly. I didn’t really expect anything beyond that, but the solicitation text suggested that Wally West and Bart Allen might be more involved, and I’m sure there are people out there for whom that will be a factor in whether they pick up the book. Perhaps DC planned bigger roles or a second story, back when they still planned a series of backup stories featuring Wally and a Kid Flash book featuring Bart, but if so, it didn’t make it to the finished product.

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WonderCon Flash Bits: Jesse Quick, EVS & Carmine Infantino, Movie Non-News

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I’m back from San Francisco, catching up on work, email, and reading. I’ll post my WonderCon write-up when I get a chance (tonight, I hope, but definitely by the end of the week [Update: it’s up now]), but for now, here are a few more Flash items from the convention:

Jesse Quick will be joining the Justice League of America after the upcoming JLA/JSA crossover, as announced at the James Robinson Spotlight.

He included the character because he was always such a fan of the character’s father, Johnny Quick. The writer made sure to mention that he has no plans to upset the marriage between Jessie Quick and Hourman. He promised there would be no cheap plot device to break them up.

Robinson also made some thought-provoking remarks about the Flash in the Super-Hero Origins panel, which I’ll write up when I have more time and can look at my notes. Update: Here they are: JR on super-hero origins.

When asked about plans for DC movies beyond Green Lantern, Geoff Johns said, “We’ll talk in San Diego.” A lot of sites are taking this to mean that DC will announce Flash & other movie plans at Comic-Con International in July.

At the Ethan Van Sciver Spotlight, the artist was asked about Carmine Infantino’s classic art in connection with Flash: Rebirth.

The artist said that he loved Infantino’s work, and that besides Batman, the Flash has one of the best set of villains in the DCU, which Van Sciver credits to Infantino. “His characters were so unique and individual, so wonderfully different from each other,” he said, also mentioning that he would love to go back to “revisit the wonderful, angular, ugly faces of Carmine Infantino’s rogues, and restore them.” Van Sciver even said he would talk with new “Flash” artist Francis Manapul about Infantino’s rogues.

And once again, my photos from the con are up on Flickr.

More Flash at WonderCon: Brightest Day

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I didn’t make it into the Brightest Day panel today, but Newsarama’s live blog has some Flash tidbits.

Be aware that this has SPOILERS FOR BLACKEST NIGHT #8. At the DC Editorial panel, the panelists were asking that people not spoil the issue with their questions, and suggested going out afterward, buying a copy of the book on the con floor, then coming back to the Brightest Day panel.