Ok, so with the Sinestro Corps one-shot this week, its officially on. This is shaping up to be a really great cosmic event by DC (their answer to Annihilation?).

Over in the ComicBloc though, people have been busy. Remember the Civil War Banners? Well Geoff Johns has posted up a bunch of Corps War Banners. My favourites are pretty much the Guy ones:

Check them all out on this thread:

http://www.comicbloc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51476

This gave me a good laugh today:

The movie just can’t come soon enough

Typical, just as I’m about to cancel my City of Heroes subscription, they go and announce this:

Issue 10: Invasion

It looks brilliant, and a big server-wide story event like this should be really good fun.

Don’t get me wrong when I say I was going to cancel my subscription though, its not that I dislike the game. I’ve played since issue 1 hit the US servers, and its just that after 2 and a half years, I’d burned out on it, and was facing up to the fact that its been months since I played it. Plus with me getting into Lord of the Rings Online, paying for 2 MMOs seemed wasteful.

So, it looks like I’ll keep paying for both for just now.

Not that I’ve had much chance to play Lord of the Rings recently. I’ve been busy and stressed out of my head with work. But the other night I managed to get in some game time, and finally hit level 15. I’d hit a lot of Fellowship-only quests in the Elven territories so, since I was feeling anti-social, I figured I’d head over to the Shire and do some sight-seeing and get some more solo quests. Here’s a shot of me outside the famous Bag End

Just a final weigh in on this, as I picked up Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13 last night.

Great issue. Bart’s death was well written, and surprisingly brutal. Its always sad to see a favourite character die, but I’m glad it was well done. A big “Thank You” to the creative team. Top notch art, and excellent writing. Other books should be so lucky.

Okay, re-reading my previous blog post about the Kyle Rayner/Parallax stuff, I realised it came off a bit too much “ranting fanboy”.

I guess my main point, is that I’m not a fan of the idea if what happens to Kyle is the same as what happened to Hal. I’m saying that without reading the issues. If it comes to pass that Kyle becomes the new Parallax, then it’ll come down to the execution. If I were to leave the book feeling that Kyle had been screwed over, then yes, I probably would drop the GL titles. At least for the short term until it all died down. I like the character, and if I was left feeling he was being mistreated for the sake of a shock event, then I’d simply stop reading, and stick to JSA or something else in the meantime.

However, I’ve always got the impression that Geoff Johns has a lot of time for all the GL characters. In Rebirth, it would’ve been so easy to kill off, or otherwise shuffle off to the side, Kyle to allow Hal to return. But instead we were given a story where Kyle (along with Hal) was ultimately the hero. The one who initially shook off Parallax and risked his life in retrieving Jordan’s body. So based on that, I can’t see Kyle becoming Parallax being equivalent to when the same happened to Hal.

So if its an equivalent story, then yes, I’d probably just read something else. But I still don’t see it happening. I can see it being a temporary thing, or just a complete fake out.

After the events of Utopia, Saturday’s Doctor Who just can’t come fast enough. Roll on The Sound of Drums

Ok, so the Flash #13 spoilers are all over the web.

My feelings are all still a bit mixed on this, but from what it looks like, after Wally got his last-second (Nightwing-style) reprive in Infinite Crisis, the plan was put in place for Bart to have a 13 issue run, ending with him dying (apparently - I’ve not read it yet myself - but I understand that JLA may have provided an “out”). Meanwhile, over in JLA Wally is brought back.

With the dust already settling, I’m reminded of comments made around the start of Bart’s run. Along the lines of “Don’t get too attached to the first Flash you see”. At the time, this was pretty much taken as meaning Jay, with Bart taking over the role after a few issues. Now it seems it was a hint to the wider plan.

I’m glad to see Wally back. He’s a major player in the DCU, and, as I mentioned previously, his “exit” was dissapointingly handled. However, I’m still a bit sad for how Bart’s been treated during this. I loved the character as Impulse. But ever since he was pushed out of that role into Kid Flash, it felt like a different character to me. The question of DC’s attitude towards “fun” heroes is perhaps part of a larger debate, but still, I was sad to lose Impulse.

When Bart then got promoted to Flash I was really dissappointed, as this just seemed to be further removing him from what had made him popular. However, both sets of writers seemed to appreciate this, and made attempts to hark back to his more impulsive nature, even going so far to include his old clone nemesis, Inertia in the book.

As I mentioned before, I’m sad in a way that Bart didn’t get more of a shot. He seems to have been put in the position of being setup just to keep the title ticking over until Wally came back, which is a shame given the hard work the creative teams put in making Bart as the new Flash work as a concept. Danny Bilson and Paul Demeo have gone on to write the incredibly good Red Menace series, and after this, I’ll definitely be keeping one eye open for anything Mark Guggenheim is writing.

Going forward. I’ve still got the issues themselves to read. The rantings in this blog are pretty much based on the spoilers at this point. I’m looking forward to reading how this run of the Flash is wound up though. We’ve then got the relaunch of the main Flash series, presumably starring Wally and written by Mark Waid. That’ll definitely be worth checking out.

As for Bart? This is comics. Dead rarely means dead in them. Even if there isn’t a specific “out” provided in JLA, I doubt he’ll be gone forever.

And the other big announcement. The September DC solicitations lead us to believe that in the upcoming Sinestro Corps one-shot, Kyle will be going evil and becoming the new host for Parallax.

All I can say, is that I hope this is another example of DC using false solicits, like with the Flash. I fail to see how repeating the mistakes of 10 years ago and alienating part of the fanbase would be a good idea. I know that if this goes ahead, as its presented, then despite being a big fan of the franchise, and enjoying Hal’s monthly GL title, and Guy in the GLC title, I’d probably drop them.

Of course, DC has a proud history of winding up its fans. Between the Flash solicits for #14 and #15, and events in 52 such as Booster Gold and Animal Man’s deaths, I’m willing to wait and see how this plays out. For my money, as it stands, Superboy Prime is surely the more obvious candidate for the new Parallax host. His fear of being corrupted by the DCU would give Parallax something to latch onto, and being a silver-age Kryptonian, he’s one of the most powerful beings in the DCU.

So I’m hoping this Kyle stuff is just misdirection. I’ll wait until the one-shot comes out this week and see what happens.

Ok, so there’s been some big announcements in the DC Universe this week. First, the Flash:

So, the Flash solicitations for #14 and #15 were fake, and the book is being relaunched, with the current run ending at #13. The cover seems to indicate that its curtains for Bart.

Now whether Bart actually dies remains to be seen (I hope not), but I do hope they’re not replacing him as Flash.

Don’t get me wrong. I thought the decision to replace Wally with Bart was awful. The reasoning was ludicrous: “because its a Crisis, and Flashes die in them”. It happened once. And at least Barry was given a decent write-out. Wally’s exit was poor in the extreme, and all it did was remove a character who was enjoying some serious post-Geoff Johns popularity.

Saying that, the decision was made, and the action taken. Wally vanished into the ether, and Bart was the new Flash. And for myself, I’d rather see them see the decision through, and make it work. Move forwards, not backwards, and that kind of stuff. The book may have stuttered out the starting block, but Mark Guggenheim has done really good stuff with the book lately, and its a shame to ignore the progress he’d made.

Of course, Bart may not be losing the title. I hope not. There’s been a lot of rumblings about Barry Allen lately, and I seriously hope he’s not coming back. We’ve already got Hal Jordan back as GL and the multiverse back, and Kara Zor-El back, and a more silver-agey Fortress of Solitude. And most of these things I’ve really enjoyed (let’s not mention Supergirl). But bringing back Barry Allen would be undoing another iconic death. Something that’s happened way too often in comics.

Saying all that, if anyone can sort all this out, its Mark Waid. The guy who got me reading the Flash title in the first place. So we’ll see. But I’m hoping its not curtains for Bart, and if Barry does indeed come back, then Bart remains as the Flash, with Barry acting as an advisor, which would allow Mark Waid to play up the family/legacy elements of the title he used so well in his run.

Is Jobs planning a hostile takeover of the Windows desktop? | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com

I mentioned this in the comments for the article on Safari for Windows. I found this editorial pretty interesting. Certainly, with the success of boot camp, the prospect of Apple marketing dual-boot machines makes a lot of sense.

However, for myself, I’m not sure I’d see the point in rebooting into a version of Windows where all the Mac applications I was just using are the defaults. But as long as the Windows equivalents were still there and could be used, fair enough.

I think I’ll stick to XP and Ubuntu for now though. I don’t have anything particularly against Apple software. I just can’t afford it