Tag Archives: TV

Speed Reading: Who’s Next? Best of TV, Showcase and More

Crimson Lightning has posted the best of live-action Flash, featuring his favorite 3 episodes (and an honorable mention) from the 1990 Flash TV series.

The Heritage Auctions blog talks about Showcase #4 (Barry Allen’s first appearance) and its significance as the start of the Silver Age. The highest-grade copy known to exist (CGC 9.6) is going on auction in May.

The comic strip Epic Tales of the Mundane tackles a trade-waiter’s dilemma when faced with Flash: Rebirth.

Silver Age Comics has a run-down of DC Annuals in the Silver Age.

Speed Reading: Flashbacks, Movies and March Madness

Comics Should Be Good is running a set of March Madness character polls. In the first round, Wally West outraced Death, but despite a last stand, the Thing clobbered Barry Allen. Voting will pick up again on Monday, with the Flash (Wally) up against Rorschach.

Kaiser the Great talks about his first two comics, including Flash v.1 #257.

madripoor_rose writes about the 1990 Flash TV series.

Geek Six includes the Flash — any Flash — in their list of Top 5 DC Characters Deserving a Movie, saying that while super-speed might be hard to portray, “the real stars will be Flash’s rogues’ gallery.”

Flash on Batman: The Brave and the Bold

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Anthony135 writes in with the news that the Flash — specifically Jay Garrick — will appear in the teaser segment of Friday’s episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold (March 20).

I haven’t been watching this series (actually, I’ve been rewatching Batman: The Animated Series from the early 1990s), but I’ll have to keep an eye out for this one.

Update: Comics Continuum has pictures from the episode.

Flash Jay Garrick and Batman on The Brave and the Bold

Speed Reading: Silver-Age Guest Stars, Action Figures, Van Sciver and More

Victoria Wayne comments on Captain Boomerang’s first appearance

Crimson Lightning has finished reviewing the entire 1990-1991 Flash TV series, and now presents a round-up of Live Action: The Worst.

Silver Age Comics looks at Barry Allen’s childhood sweetheart, future actress Daphne Dean, as The Other Woman. (She returned a few times in the Bronze Age, including the 4-part story that introduced the Golden Glider.)

Newsarama has a video interview with Todd Dezago, former Impulse writer, in which he talks about Perhapanauts.

DCU Classics Flash Action FigurePOE Ghostal reviews the new DCU Classics Barry Allen action figure.

Geek Stuff Daily looks at the history of the Flash.

Ethan Van Sciver’s weekly column is up to #11, and at least this week he’s renamed it from “Your Time Is Now Mine” to “Hope, Understanding and Compassion.” He links to a discussion thread his wife Sharis started about her experience with a dog rescue gone wrong earlier this week:

This was the worst day of my life. I don’t blame the dog, and I’m especially grateful for Officer Guardian Angel this morning, and the fact that it was ME that was bitten, not a small child, which is easily could have been. But I dedicate my entire life to rescue, and to see the dog shot, to hear it scream in pain and watch it die…this was entirely too much to cope with today.

Please keep supporting rescue efforts and animal cruelty legislation, folks, not the hysteria that causes people to deem all “vicious” dogs “bad dogs.”

There are no bad dogs, just bad owners.

Sharis also posted a link in the thread to her own blog entry about the incident.

Speed Reading: Retro Reviews, Doug Hazlewood, TV Shows and More

The Victoria Advocate profiles Doug Hazlewood.

Comics In Crisis presents Flash v.2 #182 (2002), the Captain Cold Rogue Profile story, among the 10 Essential Bronze Age Comic Stories You Should Read. I’d disagree with the Bronze-Age classification (traditionally, the Bronze Age of Comics ran from the 1970s through mid 1980s, with Crisis on Infinite Earths being a good reference point for DC books), but it’s absolutely a must-read.

X-Man reviews Flash vol.2 #1 (1987), noting how different Wally West was at the age of 20 than he is today. That’s actually one of the things Wallys’ long-term fans like most about the character: that we’ve seen him grow and change naturally, rather than simply be given a personality transplant whenever a new writer shows up.

The Quantum Blog talks about TV shows canceled before their time, including the 1990-1991 Flash TV Series. (Hard to believe it’s been almost 20 years. Seriously, Quantum Leap is having a 20th Anniversary convention this month. I feel old…)

The Worlogog celebrates Weird Silver Age Tales of the Flash.

I haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but Raging Bullets Podcast #152 features Flash’s Rogues with listener guest Mike Simms.

Heritage Auctions will be selling a CGC 9.6 copy of Showcase #4, the comic that rebooted the Flash as Barry Allen, launching the Silver Age (via It’s all Just Comics)

A Journal of Zarjaz Things looks at Flash: Emergency Stop, griping that Grant Morrison’s 9-issue run is split across two trades with the second “padded” out with a 3-parter by Mark Millar. IMO, though, Morrison didn’t write a 9-issue Morrison run — he co-wrote 9 issues of a 12-issue Morrison/Millar run. It would have been less responsible for DC to print only the Morrison issues and leave out “The Black Flash,” which has arguably had more lasting impact on the Flash mythos than the other stories in these trades, good as they are. (It is silly that they left out the first two parts of “Three of a Kind,” though.)

Review: Flashforward

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This has nothing to do with The Flash except the title, but I’ve been a fan of Robert J. Sawyer’s novels for several years and figured this site’s audience might still appreciate the review.

Flashforward has been in the entertainment news quite a bit the last few weeks with casting for the TV series pilot (more about that later). Strangely enough for a story that’s all about time and the role of the observer, I started reading the novel the day before the first casting news hit.

The novel looks at what happens when, at the moment a scientific experiment begins, everyone on the planet blacks out for two minutes. For those two minutes, everyone sees through the eyes of their future selves, two decades down the line. The world is transformed: first by the millions of accidents caused as drivers, pilots and surgeons lost control of their vehicles and instruments, and second by the survivors’ knowledge of the future.

What follows is an exploration of the nature of time, destiny and free will. Is this a glimpse of the future as it will be, or as it may be? Did the experiment cause the event, or was it a coincidence? Is foreknowledge a blessing or a curse?

Dilemmas

Flashforward is at its best when it focuses on characters’ dilemmas. While it sounds like the TV series will feature a wider cast, the original novel centers on the personal lives of researchers at CERN, particularly the two scientists who designed the experiment: Lloyd Simcoe, a 45-year-old Canadian who is shocked to learn that his impending marriage is doomed to collapse, and Theo Procopides, a 27-year-old Greek who learns that he will be dead by the time the visions come to pass. Lloyd wrestles with his responsibility for the event and whether it’s worth going through with a marriage he knows won’t last. Theo is consumed with preemptively solving his own murder.

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