Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery
Panels and Pages… Art and Artists… Creators and Conventions… Musings and Memories…
Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #12, July 2007
“Just like that… It’s just gone.”
We complete the hat trick of Flash time travel stories with this knockout double page spread by Tony Daniel from writer Marc Guggenheim’s Flash run in 2007.
What happens when you lose the speed force? Nothing good, apparently. Although we did a great looking piece of art out of the deal.
The Flash #224, December 2008
“The Reverse Flash tries to reverse time.”
I’m beginning to sense a theme here.
Regardless, Howard Porter and John Livesay deliver a stellar page featuring The Flash and Reverse Flash.
What’s not to like?
Flash #40, May 2015
“I only made everything worse.”
Barry Allen arrives from the future to present day and makes a mess of things.
Like Stephen King wrote in 11.22.63, you try to change the past, the past fights back.
I can’t wait to see the Flash film with its similar theme, but truth be told, that’s primarily because Michael Keaton is reprising his role as Batman.
Oh, and it goes without saying, this is a great splash penciled by the terrific Brett Booth and inked with gusto by the equally terrific Norm Rapmund.
Salvation Run #1, January 2008
“Stop gabbing and fight!”
After quite a few fits and starts, The Flash feature film is making its way into theaters this week, so naturally here’s a great Flash page… minus the Flash.
But all the classic Flash rogues are here in a story which focusses specifically on them. If you’re a fan of the classic Silver Age Flash (guilty) this splash by my pal Sean Chen is definitely the pen and ink version of comfort food.
As far as I can tell from the trailer, The Flash movie will be light on the rogues, so this is good way to get our fix.
Rogues, nothing but rogues. Comic book professional and historian Peter Sanderson — as a fan — wrote an amazing summary with pros and cons of each character, which Julius Schwartz published in Flash #174
Flash #112, May 1960
The Flash returns to THE CW shortly for its sixth TV season, so the Scarlett Speedster receives his own multi-part blog series this week.
Some of the most talented superhero storytellers in comics couldn’t figure out what to do with the narrative and exposition elements that move the story along when no one is wearing spandex or a cape.
Many comics were once filled with pages and pages of standard medium-angle shots of talking heads. Six panels per page. Rinse. Repeat.
Not Carmine Infantino’s pages. His innovative sense of panel composition and design, and use of varying and dynamic camera angles, made the “yada yada” part of the story much more engaging than most of his peers.
In this very early Flash story from issue #112 (inks by Joe Giella) he even manages to innovate a phone call. We take narrow “widescreen” (horizontal) panel layouts for granted now, but in 1960? Not so much. A page design like this is revolutionary 60 years ago.
Of course, superhero comics are ultimately about conflict and action, and re-reading these early Flash stories, his innovative style really jumps out. Those crazy speed lines that help give the illusion of 3D motion in a 2D medium. That sleek space age costume… designed before the space age really began.
And those amazing covers? Carmine gave up pencilling The Flash when he was promoted to DC’s art director. His cover on the final full issue of his 11-year run as Flash artist blew my mind as a kid in 1967 — and still does today.
What else would you expect from the designer of the Silver Age of Comics?
