Tag Archives: Twitter

State of the Blog 2010

It’s been about a year since I last posted one of these things. Speed Force has grown a lot in that time. I’ve tried to have something new on a daily basis, and over a year and a half the site has grown to a total of 824 posts. It’s also expanded past the blog itself, with nearly 3,000 tweets on Twitter @SpeedForceOrg and with a fan page on Facebook.

Speed Force’s audience has grown a lot too, with an average of 989 views per day (up from 469 a year earlier), 220 fans on Facebook, over 400 followers on Twitter…and almost 3,000 comments! Thank you, everyone!

On the downside: I’m kind of stressed out. The Flash is still in limbo after all this time, and while we have an unofficial launch date, DC has continued to change their plans for the character. I’ve also been finding DC’s output more frustrating and less interesting over the past few years, and I don’t want this to turn into a 24/7 rant station.

So here’s what I’m doing to avoid burning out. Continue reading →

Creator Catch-Up: Video, Appearances, and a Twitter War

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Some linkblogging related to Flash writers and artists:

Long Beach Comic-Con announces the full guest list for their first convention, and Geoff Johns is on it.

Comic Book Resources has some video from the Earth-2 Comics grand opening a few weeks ago with Geoff Johns, Mark Waid, and others.

Ethan Van Sciver will be signing at Comic Book Etc. in Woodstock, Georgia on July 18.

Newsarama interviews Mark Waid on Irredeemable.

Speaking of Mark Waid, he and Gail Simone got into a “Twitter War” yesterday, slinging silly accusations at each other and insisting that others choose sides. It’s a funny read, and you can catch up at @GailSimone and @MarkWaid.

Update: And one more Mark Waid story that I somehow missed: in Wednesday’s Cup o’ Joe column, he tells the story of a time when he was invited out to a signing at a comic store in a Vermont town, only to arrive and discover that there was no store…just “two comics fans who had pooled their lawnmowing money to pay for a LaGuardia-to-Vermont plane ticket for their very-soon-not-to-be-favorite writer so they could meet him and own him for a day.” It’s a really surreal story, and worth the read.

Six-Word Stories

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Last month, Secret Six and Wonder Woman writer Gail Simone posted a few fiction challenges on Twitter. I responded with some Flash-related micro-stories:

Condense the plot of a comic, six words or less. #.

Barry’s back! Wait, it’s not him. (This being the plot to The Flash: The Return of Barry Allen)

Seven word story, describing the the last minute of a comic character’s life #

Slipped on banana peel at Mach 23.

How are comics characters spending the holidays? #

Christmas. Wish I could slow down.

State of the Blog (Dec 2008)

A couple of notes on recent changes here at Speed Force:

1. You may have noticed a welcome banner appearing from time to time on the site. That’s something I’ve been trying out here and at K-Squared Ramblings, and presents an appropriate message to viewers coming from various search sites and social networks. In theory you should only see it once, or at most once a week, if you allow cookies. It’s powered by the Wp Greet Box plugin.

2. I’ve been trying to balance software speed with download speed, especially for visitors on mobile handsets. I used to run WordPress Mobile Edition, which tries to detect most phones and other small-screen, low-bandwidth devices, but it doesn’t work well with server caching. Since I upgraded to a G1 phone, I’ve been trying out WPTouch, which presents a clean interface on the iPhone and on phones that run the Android browser. If you read this site with a mobile device, please let me know how well it works. I’ll probably be tweaking this some more.

3. I’ve updated to a new version of WordPress. Actually, I’ve jumped the gun a bit by installing the WP 2.7 release candidate. (I’ve also dropped the WP_Identicons plugin in favor of the built-in Identicon support, but it generates different avatars than the plugin did. Sorry if you liked your old one better!)

The new version supports threaded comments, but the theme I’m using isn’t compatible with them. I’ll take a stab at updating it manually this weekend.

Anyway, there may be some wonkiness with the upgrade. If you stumble on something odd, please let me know.

4. Holding steady at #8 on Comic Blog Elite. Or at least I was until today.

5. Can’t believe I missed the six-month mark. Half a year! The downside is that I’ve been somewhat neglecting updates at Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning in order to keep this going.

6. More social networking coming up. I’ve added the Twitter account SpeedForceOrg, and I’m working on something to tie this into Facebook. (And yeah, I’ve got a backlog of friend requests. Sorry about that.)