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[Flash Logo]In 1991, DC released The Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told, part of a series of hardcovers collecting classic stories about their signature characters. It was reprinted in softcover a few years later, but both editions have been long out of print. When DC started releasing new “Greatest Stories…” books last year, I figured it was only a matter of time before they released a new edition. Yesterday, DC announced that Flash: The Greatest Stories Ever Told will appear in July of this year:

THE FLASH: THE GREATEST STORIES EVER TOLD TP
Writers: Robert Kanigher, Gardner Fox, John Broome, Cary Bates and Mark Waid.
Artists: Lee Elias, Carmine Infantino, Ross Andru, Irv Novick, José Luís Garcia-López, Kurt Schaffenberger, Alex Saviuk, Mike Wieringo, Joe Giella, Wallace Wood, Joe Kubert, Frank Giacoia, Mike Esposito, Murphy Anderson and José Marzan Jr.

Collects stories from FLASH COMICS #86 and 104, THE FLASH #123, 155, 165 and 179, DC SPECIAL SERIES #11 and THE FLASH (Second Series) #91.
$19.99 US, 208 pages

I pulled out my copy of the 1991 edition, and it’s fair to say this is an entirely different book. There are only two stories in common: “Stone Age Menace,” and “The Flash—Fact or Fiction?” The new book is also about eighty pages shorter than the old one.

Here’s the character breakdown:

Flash  1991 book  2007 book 
Jay Garrick 4 2 / 4
Barry Allen 12 5
Wally West 1 1 / 2

Both books are very heavily focused on Barry Allen, and each includes just one story with Wally West as the Flash. Flash: The Greatest Stories Ever Told includes two crossover stories: “Flash of Two Words” features both Barry and Jay, and “Beyond the Super-Speed Barrier” features all three during Wally’s days as Kid Flash.

So, assuming the contents are final, do they hold up to the title’s promise? Continue reading →

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The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Dreamworks and Aardman are going their separate ways after the disappointing performance of Flushed Away and Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Wait… Wallace and Gromit? Wasn’t it #1 on opening weekend? Didn’t it stay in the top 5 for at least a month?

Aardman’s dry British wit went over well with critics on such films as “Chicken Run” in 2000 and 2005’s “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” which won an Oscar for best animated feature.

But both “Wallace & Gromit” and “Flushed Away” were costly misfires, failing to resonate with American audiences. DreamWorks reported a $25-million loss on “Wallace & Gromit.”

Hmm, according to IMDB, W&G had an estimated budget of $30 million. It grossed $16 million its opening weekend and went on to gross $56 million by January, 2006. Domestically. That’s not even counting foreign distribution or DVD sales.

If they spent $30 million and made more than $56 million, how exactly did they “lose” $25 million? Where did that missing $50 million go?

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Here’s a surprise: web standardista extraordinaire Molly Holzschlag is now working with Microsoft to promote web standards within the organization.

Improving interoperability, especially at high-profile services like many of Microsoft’s, is critical to the future of the web. I can only hope that the emphasis on standards will feed into the design goals for Internet Explorer 8—and that IE8 will be released before Windows XP drops from mainstream to extended support in 2009.

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After last week’s Smallville episode, “Justice,” featured Cyborg, Aquaman, Green Arrow and the Flash Impulse, there was another spike in traffic to my Flash site and the profile of Bart Allen, Smallville Edition.

Daily traffic to Flash section for January 2007, showing a 1.5× jump on Jan. 18

It jumped up to 1½ times the usual number of visits on the day “Justice” aired, then quickly started trailing off to normal levels. It’s nowhere near as big a jump as last time the Flash appeared on the show, when I saw a threefold spike in traffic for the first two days.

Why the difference? I’ve got several theories:

  • Interest in Smallville has waned over time, so fewer people dropped in. Pure speculation.
  • Viewers remembered Bart from “Run” (which was rerun a few weeks ago) and many didn’t feel the need to look him up again. Again, speculation.
  • Bart was sharing the limelight with other guest stars this time. But I’d expect people to look for all of them, which is borne out by the number of people who have searched the site for Green Arrow in the past week.
  • Overall site traffic is higher, causing the jump to be less noticeable. Wishful thinking, but the last spike hit ~7,600 hits/day, while this one hit ~8,200, so the numbers hold up. (Hits & bandwidth are down for the Flash section, but I’ve done several rounds of optimization in the last few years.)
  • Fewer sources linked to the site. Last time, there were lots of links from forums and blogs. I even got linked from Television Without Pity. (They decided to go with Wikipedia instead.) This time around, it was mostly search engine hits.

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I suppose it was only a matter of time before these two genres of spam collided. Today I received a spam advertising body-part enlargement products, with a link to a site called bmsMUNGEDcommercialmortgage.info (without the MUNGED).

Apparently, getting a new mortgage is supposed to increase my ability to handle huge tracts of land.