Flashpoint: Kid Flash Lost #2 – Review

By: Sterling Gates (writer), Oliver Nome (penciller), Trevor Scott (inker), Brian Buccellato (colorist)

The Story: Oh, Bart, you can’t hide anything.  I can see right through you.

The Review: In watching a few episodes of Dexter I noticed that even though the titular lead is one of the most compelling figures in television, very little about the overarching storyline or supporting cast bears enough interest for me to keep watching.  It sort of proves that even if you have a fantastically developed character, if the rest of the material underwhelms, then the piece as a whole can never reach beyond serviceable.

That’s sort of the case with this series, as Gates writes a pretty excellent Kid Flash.  Bart started his existence as a hardcore gamer and television addict, and his portrayal as a geek culture otaku really works as a modern spin on that.  If you count yourself among that particular demographic, you’ll be delighted with his frequent references to definitively nerdy media, like the relatively obscure, “Put me down, Dr. Ball!” (see Robot Chicken cartoon, “Dr. Ball, M.D.”).

On the other hand, Bart is also a much more thoughtful, serious young man than the hyperactive boy he once was as Impulse, so a few gags and lines in this issue come off a little over-the-top.  Bart seizing the Cosmic Motorcycle may be fun as an idea, but in the context of the story and the current incarnation of his character, it seems wildly stupid and kind of pointless, as it steals one of Patty Spivot’s few opportunities to do something useful.

As the only supporting character to this tie-in, Patty really deserves more to do than act the cipher to Bart, but she functions merely as a means for Bart to escape from his predicament.  Why else would she take up Hot Pursuit’s costume and equipment?  Even Gates has a hard time rationalizing her previously adamant decision to involve herself in meta-crime again with her inexplicable, left-field declaration that “I’d found the tools that would let me pursue justice.”

Flashpoint: Kid Flash Lost #1 – Review

By: Sterling Gates (writer), Oliver Nome (penciller), Trevor Scott (inker), Brian Buccellato (colorist)

The Story: You ever get the feeling you just don’t belong to this world…and era…and reality?

The Review: Dealing with an altered reality and all the taken-for-granted conventions it entails (subtle or not) can get pretty mind-boggling to begin with.  And by now we all know anything to do with time-traveling comes packaged with paradoxes and quantum leaps and all sorts of other nonsense guaranteed to give you a considerable headache.  Now, mix the two together and you’ve got a whopper of a migraine just waiting to happen.

And so it is with Kid Flash, a character out of time to begin with, and now skipping along the time stream in a strange universe.  But you can shelve your aspirin for now; Gates sticks the issue to mostly one setting: the Flashpoint world of 3011, conquest of Brainiac.  His eternal quest for knowledge apparently involved watching The Matrix, as everywhere is covered with techno-organic structures bearing humans trapped in glassy cocoons (head attachments included).

Bart actually makes a veiled reference to the film when he finds himself trapped, Speed Force-less, in this dystopia, which thankfully saves the plot from looking like one giant cliché (not to mention unashamed plagiarism).  In fact, his casual use of pop culture for problem-solving is a kind of relic of his Impulse days, and tempered with the good sense and focus he’s gained as Kid Flash, Gates offers the most balanced portrayal of Bart we’ve gotten in a while (especially compared to emo Bart in the last few issues of Geoff Johns’ The Flash).

Plot-wise, we still have a lot of questions left up in the air: how Bart got dragged into the time stream in the first place, how Brainiac managed to “fish” him out, and what role he’ll have in the grand scheme of Flashpoint.  Gates gives some hints as to how all these issues will tie together when Brainiac claims he’ll “find a way to pull the chronal energy from your cells…”  It wouldn’t be surprising if this winds up playing an integral part of solving the whole Flashpoint mess, continuing DC’s tradition of giving young heroes central roles in these “crisis” stories.

The Flash #12 – Review

By: Geoff Johns & Scott Kolins (storytellers), Francis Manapul (artist), Michael Atieyh and Brian Buccellato (colorists)

The Story: What will Iris do when she walks in on the Flash—with another woman?

The Review: There was some risk that this “last” issue of The Flash would come off feeling rushed and inconclusive, what with Flashpoint coming right on its heels.  Johns spent a pretty good chunk of the last couple issues playing up the emotional dramatics among the Flash family, all of which would’ve been a waste if he resolved them too quickly just to get a move on with his sprawling, crossover storyline.

So it’s a relief to see Johns taking some care to tie up the series’ loose ends before putting his focus on bigger things.  Barry’s encounter with Zoom not only forces him to confront the grisly truth about his mother’s death, but since Bart comes along for the ride, the bad air between them gets cleared up as well.  With his internal conflict out in the open, that frees him up to have that much needed heart-to-heart with Iris, and all is well once more.

On the other hand, the ease with which all these tensions have been loosened up kind of show how needless all these melodramatics really were.  It feels Johns created that whole plot wrinkle just to sell this new, sudden revelation that Barry’s a closet ice-man, emotionally.  In fact, both Iris and Patty Spivot spend a good chunk of this issue harping on that point, even though Johns hasn’t shown it all that well.

You have to take into context that Barry was trying to deal with the knowledge that his mother died at the hands of—spoiler alert—Zoom, a man who became a villain “because” of him.  It seems very natural he’d need some private time to process this, a fact he tried to communicate to his family multiple times (see Flash #9 and #10).  But his family still overreacted to what they perceived as distancing himself from them, which was topped by last issue’s ridiculous intervention.

The Flash #11 – Review

By: Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins (storytellers), Michael Atiyeh (colorist)

The Story: Barry, can’t you see we’re trying to stop you because you can’t stop yourself?!

The Review: Juggling two A-stories in a comic can be tricky, especially when one is the ongoing tale and the other is an invasive crossover plot.  But really, Johns should actually have an easier time of it, considering he’s the mastermind of the crossover in question.  And indeed, Flashpoint seems to be integrating pretty well into Barry’s investigation of an age-changing murderer, what with all the time-space wonkiness going on in both stories.

In contrast to Action Comics #900, where Reign of Doomsday clearly distracts from the main events of that title, it’s clear Johns is turning this series into a vehicle for introducing Flashpoint.  This has the strange effect of making the non-crossover related material out of place in its own title, although the still fairly recent drop in page count affected the long-term execution of plotlines that probably would’ve had more opportunity to float with some extra space.

The Flash’s “intervention” definitely feels like it needed more time to build itself to this drastic scene, because it comes across incredibly staged—and futile, since none of Barry’s loved ones make it clear exactly what the problem is.  Jay Garrick and Wally West spend the majority of the time waxing poetic on how much Barry means to them—more of an exercise in nostalgia than doing anything useful to address whatever Barry’s issues are.

The whole thing looks like it gets set up just because “Bart said you didn’t come to the picnic because of him.”  Besides being an utterly laughable overreaction to what should be normal for Barry, given his history of flakiness, it also makes Bart seem angsty, temperamental and high-strung.  This would work if Johns was writing just another fictional teenager, but none of those qualities fit in Bart’s current personality—which Johns kind of established.

So maybe it’s a good thing Bart’s getting the timeout from Barry’s life for a while, although it happens in an underwhelming way.  Hot Pursuit doesn’t exactly do himself a lot of credit by glomming onto Kid Flash as the crux of the timeline problem, without even considering other possible suspects.  As a cop with access to information across parallel universes, you’d think he’d be more thorough in his investigation.

The Flash #9 – Review

by Geoff Johns (writer), Francis Manapul (art), Brian Buccellatto (colors), and Sal Cipriano (letters)

The Story: Barry Allen finds himself assigned to a very unusual homicide case as Hot Pursuit runs amok in Central City.

What’s Good: For the second month in a row, Geoff Johns hits it out of the park on the Flash.  However, what makes it more important this time around is that while last month was a one-shot of sorts, this is a prelude to the coming months of Flash and Flashpoint.  In other words, this issue being as good as it is a very good sign for the future.

That said, I’ll admit that I’m biased.  I’m a huge, huge fan of Brian Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming’s Powers series.  The idea of homicide detectives investigating superhero murders will never stop being awesome.  This month sees Johns send Barry into just such a task.  There’s a mysteriously dead “cape,” pre-naturally aged, found dead under mysterious circumstances.  It felt like Johns had basically taken Barry Allen and thrown him into a Powers comic, and the resulting mash-up of superhero noir and classic DC comic was an absolute pleasure to read.  It’s a plot I’m really looking forward to seeing more of, as Johns sets this up perfectly as a superhero-related detective/police drama.  It’s very, very cool.

Johns also does a very good job this month of highlighting Barry’s faults as a human being.  Barry’s presented as a man tied to his job, but not in the traditional, clichéd sense.  He’s tied to his job because he’s utterly bound to doing what’s right and doing as much public good as possible.  The tension and loss that this creates in his private sphere is obvious, however.  It’s a familiar, but really effective clash that Johns puts forth, that between doing the public good and the private, with Barry seemingly unaware of the latter.  This also leads to yet more fantastic writing when it comes to the Barry/Iris dynamic, which Johns has been doing so well with.  Iris is understanding and forgiving beyond belief, but she’s also clearly aware of Barry’s failings and isn’t immune to disappointment, however patient she may be.

Art-wise, this the best looking Flash comic in months.  The reason for this has been colorist Brian Buccellatto’s major adjustments.  While Manapul’s artwork is always really awesome and likable, I’d found that Buccellatto’s colors were getting increasingly brown and muddy to the point where they were starting to mute and detract from Manapul’s great work.  This month, Buccellato completely reverses on that.  Things are lighter and crisper, augmenting Manapul and allowing him to shine.  What results is crisper, cleaner, and much more impressive.  I also have to mention that both men did really well depicting Hot Pursuit’s motorcycle in action, which was a treat to watch.