Flash Friday: Sticker Scandal

Happy Flash Friday everyone!  I’ve been pretty behind on updates lately and I want to apologize for that.  Life has a way of throwing personal and work issues at you sometimes and I’m just trying to keep my head above water.  Today is possibly the strangest topic we’ve ever had for Flash Friday and quite frankly I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. 

To start with we have to go back to a Flash Friday I made back in March of 2011.  As I was reading the current Flash book at the time I had noticed how often coffee was brought up in the story.  Iris’ text boxes were even notated with a tiny coffee cup.  Because I thought it would be funny, I jumped into Gimp (the art program not the sex slave) and modified a Starbucks logo so it read Flash Coffee.  I joked that it was a million dollar idea and that DC should run with it.

Yesterday morning I pull up speedforce.org because it is an amazing Flash site.  In Kelson’s Instagram feed I see the Flash Coffee logo.  I wonder to myself why he linked to that after all this time and click on the link.  The picture’s caption read, “Flash coffee sticker #WonderCon #theflash #coffee”. I quickly jumped back to my site to make sure I hadn’t gone insane.  I had been ripped off.

Except I don’t own the Flash logo.  And it wasn’t done by some huge company; it was a guy at a convention that sold vinyl stickers.  It’s also possible that someone else had the exact same idea that I did.  The use of the all black Flash symbol makes me think my image was used for the sticker but I’d never be able to prove it.  I’m oddly conflicted about the whole thing.  I did something cool enough that someone wanted to steal it, but someone did steal my work.  It’s not like anyone is going to make a lot of money off Flash Coffee stickers either.  The vendor is probably lucky to break even on them.  I do wish they would have sent me a handful of them though, I was pretty happy with the design.

Hangover Thursday: Like Coffee?

It’s Hangover Thursday, how’s your head? I was up all night partying, so I am tore up today. No, that’s not true at all. My boy woke up at like 3 this morning and wanted to party. That’s why I’m really tore up. So today on Hangover Thursday we’re going to talk about coffee. I can’t say I’ve ever been hungover and not drank coffee, so I think we’re still fitting in the theme.

Married to the Sea is a pretty fantastic web comic that does things a little differently than most do. I enjoy letting a few weeks build up and then going through it that way. It was because of Married to the Sea that I went to the store they share with toothpaste for dinner and Nataliedee. It was on this wonderful Sharing Machine website that I found the shirt you see pictured above. I have the reputation at work as the guy who can’t do anything without his coffee; I really think I need to own this shirt.

So being in Orlando, I’m not really up to date on Chicago politics. I know it’s a shortcoming of mine, I hope no one holds it against me. Anyway, when rumors that Rahm Emanuel was going to enter the mayor’s race someone created a fake Twitter account that claimed to be Emanuel. It is because of that fake Twitter account that the shirt pictured above exists. I think it sums everything up pretty nicely.

Flash Friday: Flash Coffee

Central City and Keystone City are known as the twin cities in the DC universe. Where they are physically in the US, how they got there, and their history is enough to be saved for an article on another day. Many people prefer Marvel’s approach of using real cities in their books, but I like the DC method; especially when those cities are fleshed out. When Geoff Johns took over the Flash the first time he gave Keystone an identity that moved it from a generic superhero city to something that seemed real.  Keystone became a blue collar town full of factories and people who loved their hockey team. I love Keystone, it made me feel like I was back in Detroit.

In the most current Flash relaunch Central City gets the make over. Quoting the first page, “New York may be the city that never sleeps, but Central City is the city always on the run.” It has become a city of people glued to their phones and their coffee cups. Coffee is suddenly like the blood of the city, the references are everywhere. Central City has become the Seattle of the mid-west. It’s a little jarring at first but I can accept it easily enough. Also in my mind the people of this new Central City probably look down a little on the people across the bridge in Keystone. I don’t think I’ve read that in the comics, but in my gut I know it’s true.

Now I love some coffee. Dumping a shot or two of espresso into a cup of black is about as fancy as I get though (unless we’re adding booze, that’s a different story). I don’t want cream, steamed milk, chocolate swirls, etc… No crazy flavors either please; I like coffee flavored coffee. I seriously have a coffee maker on my desk at work because what they have in our break room is not coffee. So from a coffee lover to a coffee themed book I give you…Flash Coffee. Make it happen DC. Seriously, as a product tie in it makes much more sense then Justice League gliders or a pool sinkers game. Throw the logo on some coffee cups and sell it as a set for all I care, this is liquid gold. I’m giving you the idea DC, all I ask is for a free pound or two…