I remember staring at the Greg LaRocque cover for Flash #48 for the better part of an afternoon, terror frozen in time while a flare of hands stopped a hail of bullets.

Weekly trips to the general store turned into transparent check-ins for the latest issue of Flash.  Galvanized by the TV show, fandom took over.  After receiving and wearing-out a copy of The Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told, I saw the avenues and inroads throughout Flash’s fictional history.

I had fallen in love with the concept of moving faster than humanly possible, and the implications and consequences therein.  Challenging the limits of time and reality, while remaining grounded in a world of human limitations…what more could comics offer?

As I grew up, I was especially thrilled by something I had managed to overlook: the prose piece in the Greatest Flash Stories, “The Final Flash Storyline”.  I sought out each original installment at once.

Those waning days of almost unending tribulation and tragedy, spent in the constant specter of death, were unlike any other hero story I had read.  Written by longtime Flash scribe Cary Bates, the issue-by-issue cascade of the Final Flash Storyline broke my heart.  It also provided context, and weight.

The new world of The Flash’s protégé, carrying on in his name and dealing with a different set of challenges, made it simple for me to stay dyed crimson in the comic book wool.  What an amazing hook.

Along the way, I immersed myself in Kelson’s unparalleled Those Who Ride the Lightning site, a major source of information and reading material when I was putting together the bulk of my Flash collection.  I was of course very excited, as a fan, when the Speed Force blog launched.  Concentrated Flash news!

I hope I’m able to do justice to the standard set by Kelson, and Devin.
With a few interviews on the board, I’m looking forward to working and collaborating on some projects for this space, including:

• Annotations for the contents of the upcoming Trial of the Flash reprint, and related reading
• Reviews and analysis of the Flashpoint event and tie-ins
• More interviews with creators, and others linked to the generation of Flash stories, artwork and other media

You can follow me on Twitter, www.twitter.com/gregislands.
Many thanks to Kelson!

Greetings

My name is Karl and I will be helping Kelson around here. I have been collecting comics since 1984 and have been a fan of the flash for the last 19 years. I fell in love with the book with issue #72 and have a complete run of the Wally series (one of my most prized collections).

I suppose my passion for the flash comes from my love of the character and the fact that Mark Waid took a group of supporting characters and created a family around Wally and in Wally created a character that matured and became in my opinion one of the greatest super heroes in the last twenty years.

I have been a fan of what Geoff Johns has done with the character and am waiting to see where Barry, Wally and Bart go from here.

I am really quite honoured to be contributing on a site and being part of a community that Kelson has worked hard to create, I will be contributing in various ways and hope to get to know all of you and look forward to being a part of this site.

Karl

PS my favourite flash villain is Dr Alchemy. Give you two guesses why.

This blog is going to be a companion piece to the website, Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning.

The Scarlet Speedster hasn’t really had a blog out there since Crimson Lightning shut down, and since I’ve been adding news items to the front page of my own site, I figured I’d step in and fill the gap.

I’ll be posting Flash-related news here, including a weekly round-up of Flash comics, as well as articles that might not fit into the existing site structure, and (eventually) reviews as well. I’ll be refining the look and features over the next couple of weeks, and cross-linking it more into Ride the Lightning. I might keep the current theme with a few tweaks, or I might try to match Ride the Lightning, or I might build something else entirely.  Feedback on any aspect of the site is welcome!

For now… welcome aboard!

Update:

I’ve enabled Gravatars on this site, so if you have one (and if you don’t, it’s free and easy to set one up) and you leave your email address when commenting, your icon will appear next to your comments.  If you don’t have one, the site will generate a geometric pattern using WP_Identicon.

Also, I’m still working on the layout.  To start with I just grabbed a theme that looked like it would fit.  I may keep this one with a few adjustments, or I may switch to something else entirely.  If you have problems viewing the site, please let me know in a comment here!  Please include the name and version of your web browser (ex: Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, etc.) and the name and version of your operating system (Windows Vista, Mac OS X Tiger and so on).

Finally, if you have any suggestions for feature you would like to see, this is the place to mention them.