Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Why No One Should Read Previews If They Want Surprises In Their Stories...

Another month, another set of spoilers that DC inadvertently lays on their readers...


THE FLASH: REBIRTH #1
Written by Geoff Johns
Art and covers by Ethan Van Sciver

Through the decades, many heroes have taken the mantle of The Flash, but they all ride the lightning that crackles in the wake of the greatest hero the DC Universe has ever known, the man who sacrificed himself to save the Multiverse: Barry Allen!

Following the events of FINAL CRISIS, Barry has beaten death and returned to a fast-paced world that a man out of time wouldn’t recognize. Or is it a world that is only just now catching up? All the running he’s done before was just a warmup for the high-speed race that he and every other Flash must now run, because even though one speedster might have beaten death, another has just turned up dead! From Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver, the visionaries responsible for the blockbuster GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH and THE SINESTRO CORPS WAR, comes the start of an explosive and jaw-dropping epic that will reintroduce to the modern age the hero who single-handedly birthed the Silver Age of comics! DC history will be made, and the Flash legacy will be redefined!
Funny, the are advance soliciting a trade paperback focusing on a speedster character. Not a particular property that seemed to be hot previously. Not one that there is a lot of clamoring for that I'm aware of. Click this link if you want to see who I think it is.


Blackest Night:

DC Direct is proud to produce action figures for the event of the summer – the beginning of the highly anticipated “Blackest Night” storyline!

Included in this series are Earth-2 Superman, the first member of the lifeless, emotionless, Black Lanterns to be revealed; Boodikka, the veteran corpsman who was among the first to become a member of the Green Lantern Corps’ own policing unit, the Alpha Lanterns; Saint Walker, the first member of the Blue Lantern Corps, which champions hope in the universe; and Atrocitus, Abin Sur’s killer and the first to utilize the power of blood and rage to become a member of the Red Lantern Corps, which is out to destroy both the Sinestro and Green Lantern Corps!
Is it just me or do they seem to spoil Geoff's developments a lot lately?

Note: since the comments aren't viewable in the RSS feed or on the front page, I feel that it is fair for anyone leaving a comment to respond directly without further spoiler warning. If you click to the comments section because you were willing to spoil yourself on one, but not the other, you do so at your own risk.

13 comments:

  1. Yeah, I gotta say, DC does a pretty piss-poor job of shielding their upcoming stories from spoilers. They've sucked the wind right out of Johns' sails w/ the E2 Supes reveal - I mean c'mon, that was going to be a reveal of EPIC proportions, along the lines of the final page of the Sinestro Corps special. The speedster one isn't as big a shock, but still.

    I know Marvel gets a lot of flack for keeping solicits classified, but at least they aren't giving away secrets on their big upcoming projects.

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  2. DC's the distant #2 right now. Maybe they feel dropping some heavy spoilers will help sell books? Of course, Geoff Johns' books are probably the last DC comics that would need that kind of strategy, but there you go I guess.

    -Tim

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  3. I don't know how giving their stories away will improve sales - Blackest Night was going to kill anyways, I don't see how spoiling it will increase sales.

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  4. Well, it's a bigtime spoiler, but it's not the whole shebang. Maybe you could consider it more of a teaser than a spoiler. I dunno, I'm just making excuses for them anyways.

    -Tim

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  5. No, that's a spoiler. A teaser would have been something along the lines of "a Kryptonian killed in a Crisis past," which still leaves it open (Conner, Kara, or Kal-L.)

    What DC did is effectively the equivalent of George Lucas standing outside theatres back in 1981 & shouting "Vader is Luke's father!" to incoming patrons. It's just stupid.

    Not to spoil another book, but imagine if Marvel had solicited an Iron Patriot figure & said "Hey, check out *** *** new uniform!" That's just bad business. If I were Johns, I'd be pretty pissed.

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  6. if you think that's a spoiler, don't look in the previews catalog. It reveals what earth 2 superman looks like as a black lantern, and reveals ANOTHER member of the black lanterns. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v621/IantistarI/1iivjc.jpg

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  7. If THAT is the reason they killed off the other Black Lantern, and solely that, I will be so pissed. One of my favorite characters ever, and they go and do this to him. One of the few times I was hoping for a "comic book death", but this pretty much cements him as DEAD dead, right?

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  8. Why kill Max? That's just stupid.

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  9. In a world Bucky is Captain America & Jason Todd is battling for the cowl, is there even such a thing as "dead DEAD" in comics anymore? That MM will be a member of the Dead Lanterns is no surprise; Kal-L was though, considering the send-off they gave him. Looking at what they're turning into, it seems a bit...wrong...to do that to the world's first superhero.

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  10. The second confirmed Black Lantern. Huxford is gonna LOVE this one.http://i40.tinypic.com/116o1o5.jpg

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  11. Ha! Someone else already linked to it. I pretty much called it when the death happened. Most likely just another step along the way of coming back.

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  12. I'm sorry, when did a Geoff Johns storyline opening with a character being killed off count as a spoiler? The necrophiliac DOES IT EVERY SINGLE TIME!

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  13. Dan, it isn't the death, it is who they are killing. The solicitation to the first issue tries to leave the identity of the imperiled speedster a mystery. The trade paperback solicitation seems to give that away, IMO.

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