Flashpoint #5 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (writer), Andy Kubert (penciller), Sandra Hope & Jesse Delperdang (inkers), Alex Sinclair (colorist)

The Story: The Flash realizes sometimes it’s better to just start from square one.

The Review: And so we come to the end.  But what exactly is ending?  A misdirected war between races?  The atrocious perversion of an entire universe?  The tenuous existence of those brought forth in that universe?  A whole era of comics history?  The answer, of course, is all of those at the same time.  For those reasons, this final issue should be a testament to the last few decades of DC storytelling, and those same reasons assure that this final issue is anything but.

The war between Atlantis and the Amazons, by itself, deserved much greater focus from this series than it got.  As the major motivation for Barry to make things right, and as the most pressing conflict for pretty much every character besides Barry, it should’ve had more time to expand to critical proportions, to convince us of how dire the situation truly is.  Johns betted the tie-ins would somehow supply this missing tension, and that wager gets defeated big time.

Many of us probably assumed, with the appearance of Zoom at the end of last issue, that we knew who brought this mess into being.  But as Zoom himself crows, the real person responsible is actually a little closer to home.  Most of these revelations get told through rambling dialogue in the middle of a heated battle (and you all know how fun those can be), and in the midst of all that chaos, it seems a weak attempt to add one more “twist” to the story.

Flashpoint: Reverse Flash – Review

By: Scott Kolins (writer), Joel Gomez (artist), Brian Buccellato (colorist)

The Story: No, no, Reverse Flash—don’t hold back.  Tell us how you really feel.

The Review: After the shudder-inducing debut issue that was Flashpoint: Citizen Cold #1, I had but one hope: to not have to read another Kolins-penned title for a good long time, at least until after he’d gotten to hone his writing chops some more.  So much for wishful thinking.  Before we’ve had enough time to recover comes yet another Flashpoint tie-in written by Kolins, right on the heels of the last.

Immediately red flags pop up from the opening pages.  Kolins has a very direct, almost simple-minded approach to character work and writing in general, and it shows in the very title for this story: “My Revenge”, which suggests Hitler’s Mein Kampf, but without the sociopathic ingenuity.  Reverse Flash is simply a disturbed sociopath, and Kolins makes no effort to portray him with any more depth than that.

Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Lisa does a science experiment proving her hamster learns faster than Bart?  There’s a scene where he tries to touch an electrically-noded cupcake and repeatedly, even determinedly, shocks himself.  Reverse Flash channels much the same attitude, trying again and again to exact pain on the Flash (often using the same tactic multiple times in a row) and consistently failing.  It’s the most perversely fascinating example of AA’s definition of insanity.

Even more problematic with the sheer repetitiveness of all this is the fact that it’s also all redundant.  Kolins essentially briefs you on the most significant Reverse Flash storylines ever written, but he does so with little to no craft.  With the Flashpoint stamp all over the issue, you’d think Kolins would spend some time giving light to what Reverse Flash’s role in the overall plot will be, but you get none of that.  A waste, to say the least.

Flashpoint #2 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (writer), Andy Kubert (penciller), Sandra Hope (inker), Alex Sinclair (colorist)

The Story: Barry, I need you to know, if you don’t make it through this…this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.

The Review: Unlike many comic book Events, Flashpoint intends to move fast (ba-dum­-tch!), as its story has been written to fit five issues instead of the traditional seven, and we’re already on the second.  Some see this truncation as a welcome relief from having to deal with Event-mania for a few extra months.  But it’s worth pointing out it also cuts down the time for proper world-building and pacing, which can be hazardous to such an important, large-scale story.

Here we do get some up-close, personal moments with the new, hardened Aquaman and Wonder Woman, being among the most integral obstacles/players in this story.  The encounter between Diana and the resisting Steve Trevor feels more profound and useful, since it reveals some developments to the Atlantean-Themysciran war, but Aquaman’s confrontation with pirate-Deathstroke is just an opportunity to show off his current inclination for violence.

Johns would’ve been better off had he cut down the amount of time we spend with the Flash and not-really-Batman; their scenes take up most the issue, and do little to advance the plot.  Basically, they spend half the time fighting (though you can’t really call it a fight, since it’s mostly the depowered Barry getting his butt handed to him) while dealing with all the “I don’t believe you, you’re crazy!” issues that come hand-in-hand with these altered-universe stories.

That’s all fine and necessary; the several pages Barry spends describing his past and the real world to Thomas Wayne are not.  It basically re-describes everything we already know, instead of moving on to some new points.  It also makes little sense how all this suddenly gets Thomas to place his faith in Barry; it’s hard to understand how someone that cynical can so quickly flip-flop from calling Barry a “delusional son-of-a-bitch” to believing that SOB can get his son back.

The problem is selling these moments with more credibility requires more time, which Johns can’t afford.  He even sets up a ticking clock of sorts as Barry’s memories start to adapt to the new reality, just to motivate the characters to act as hastily as possible.  And yet for all this haste, you don’t feel like you’ve moved very far forward on this story.  It seems like Johns wants you to assume there’s some high-stakes tension here, rather than showing it to you.

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 #8 – Review

by Geoff Johns (writer), Scott Kolins (art), Brian Buccellato (colors), and Sal Cipriano (letters)

The Story: The origin of the Reverse Flash…or at least the origin that he creates for himself.

What’s Good: In many ways, this issue can be read as one centered around a comic writer gone mad.  Rather, it’s about a character gone retcon crazy, who is hell-bent on retconning his own history as many times as necessary until he gets the optimal result.  It’s a very dark, but also slightly humorous bit of self-aware superhero comic goodness and it shows just how clever a writer Geoff Johns can be when he really tries.

The best part of it is how closely Johns plays it; Eobard Thawne and the Reverse Flash are separate characters.  Thawne is the story’s lead, no doubt, and the Reverse Flash is rather a demonic, mostly wordless presence, lurking around the corner, always ready to jump in and give Eobard a redo whenever things don’t go his way.  What results is a ridiculously fun romp through time that’s an absolute pisstake on the very idea of retroactive continuity.  The Reverse Flash “redos” become increasingly frequent as the issue wears on, which only makes it more amusing.  By issue’s end, you get the sense that if Eobard got a B on a paper, his future self would step in to kill the professor before ever having to write the paper.

That’s not to say that the things the Reverse Flash perpetrates are minor.  We learn that in his becoming antisocial and isolated was a slow, gradual process, one that he was one the one hand doomed to, but one that is also ironically exacerbated by his later attempts to retcon his own history.  Along the way, he does some truly evil things as only the Reverse Flash can.  As ever, the Reverse Flash is a bad, bad man and the acts he’s guilty of are fairly shocking.  Of course, Eobard and the Reverse Flash are two different kinds of evil, and one sees the descent between the two.  At least Eobard, while a wretch, is still human; the Reverse Flash comes across as something not so much

The Flash #7 – Review

by Geoff Johns (writer), Scott Kolins (art), Brian Buccellato (colors), and Sal Cipriano (letters)

The Story: As Captain Boomerang has a meeting with the Reverse Flash, his back-story is explored.

What’s Good: At the very least, Geoff Johns gets an A for effort on this one, as he works his butt off to put as much emotion, heartbreak, and hatred into this retelling of Captain Boomerang’s origins.  There’s a sense of trauma and a building up of seething anger that works quite well.  This issue does wonders in making the reader actually care about Digger, which is crucial given his position in Brightest Day.  It brings the reader close to Digger, and that’s certainly a good thing.

Johns does a decent job of making Digger’s life follow the track of a boomerang; that being that everything comes back or comes full circle, often violently.  It’s a nice way to structure the issue and plot Digger’s emotional trajectory.  That said, Johns plays it fast and loose with this structure, which means that it’s only ever a subtext and never becomes overbearing.

The end result is a character that is still most certainly a bad guy, no questions asked.  That said, he’s the sort of bad guy that’s comprehensible and human, even if there aren’t many shades of grey.

Moreover, Johns, through focusing on Digger, manages to write a Brightest Day tie-in where the Brightest Day stuff doesn’t feel out of place and doesn’t detract from the comic or distract from its actual story.  Instead, Brightest Day fits well here, forcing an otherwise small-fry villain in Captain Boomerang to look at the bigger picture.

Johns also does a fantastic job of writing the Reverse Flash, who is nothing short of pure evil.  It’s nothing particularly overt or detailed in his dialogue, only its tone.  While Thawne may be a bad guy like Digger, he’s far less human and clearly functions on a different level.  Praise is also due to Scott Kolins, who does an absolutely fantastic job illustrating the Reverse Flash, making him seem downright demonic, which really went well with Johns’ dialogue.

Brightest Day #2 – Review

By: Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi (writers), Ivan Reis, Patrick Gleason, Ardian Syaf, Scott Clark and Joe Prado (artists), Vicente Cifuentes, Tom Nguyen, Rebecca Buchman, David Beaty and Patrick Gleason (inkers)

The Story: The twelve resurrected are still trying to figure out why they’ve been brought back and what’s going on. Hawkman and Hawkgirl discover something more menacing about Hath-Set. Boston Brand (the former Deadman) sees some really weird stuff happening around Aquaman. And something is definitely wrong with Firestorm.

What’s Good: Each of the episodes (Martian Manhunter, the Hawk-couple, Firestorm, Deadman/Aquaman) has momentum and as the mystery deepens, each becomes more intriguing. Johns and Tomasi continue to deliver pretty crisp, realistic dialogue (except for some of Brand’s whining). They have obviously mastered the creation of tension. They also knew how to drive things up a notch with the final double splash page that has to be seen!

Artwise, once I got over the changing styles (5 artists and 4 other inkers), I found a lot of quality work that held my eye as I read. Since I don’t know who drew what, I can’t give credit, but the team drew some evocative effects, especially the Jason-Firestorm connection, the Firestorm Matrix, the Hawkman/Hawkgirl splash page, and the final, surprise splash page.

The Flash: Secret Files & Origins 2010 #1 – Review

by Geoff Johns (writer), Scott Kolins & Francis Manapul (art), Michael Atiyeh & Brian Buccellato (colors), and Rob Clark Jr. (letters)

The Story: A primer serving as an introduction to the Flashes’ universe, preceded by a short story where Barry grapples with his past.

What’s Good: If you’re a reader unfamiliar or only slightly familiar with Flash lore and are looking forward to get into April’s relaunched Flash monthly, it doesn’t get any better than this.  In a little less than 40 pages, this book gives you everything you need to know about the major heroes, villains, and locations in the Flash’s corner of the DCU.  As a reference work, this book is a lot of fun for new readers.  The encyclopedic entries are written in about as lively a style as is possible and are matched with absolutely beautiful full-page illustrations.  If you know nothing about the Flash’s world, you will leave feeling 100% comfortable heading into the ongoing and with your Flash knowledge in general.

The short story that precedes this primer is also some pretty outstanding stuff, touching on many of themes Johns clearly views as important in a Flash comic, while also ominously setting up for things to come, directly leading into Johns’ first arc.  All told, the story touches upon family, the camaraderie of DC’s speedsters, Barry’s battles with his past, and what the Rogues are up to, while also making really great use of time as only a Flash comic can.  As a first taste of Johns’ upcoming run, this is really solid stuff and an enjoyable, at times surprisingly emotional, read.  It gives a good sense of the tone Johns will be writing in.

I also have to reiterate just how awesome the art is throughout this double-sized book.  There really isn’t a single page here that isn’t a total blast.  Both Manapul and Kolins, though very different from each other, are perfect for the Flash, both artists emanating the sort warmth and energy that perfectly suits the books tone and atmosphere.  If the art on the ongoing can live up to this standard, we are in for something special.

Blackest Night: The Flash #1 – Review

By Geoff Johns (writer), Scott Kolins (artist), Michael Atiyeh (colors)

The Story: This story begins between Blackest Night #3 and #4, when Barry Allen, the Flash, starts assembling the force of superheroes that will converge on Coast City to fight the Black Lanterns collected around their battery. It covers history of the Flash, as well as the history of the Reverse-Flash, who is resurrected by the Blackest Night. In the meantime, the living rogue’s gallery (the collection of villains who fight the Flash) are arming themselves for the expected attack from the black lantern rogues. Barry also seeks help from the Gorilla City.

What’s Good: I am not a Flash virgin, but I haven’t really followed Barry since his death in Crisis on Infinite Earths. This issue is perfect for me to get back on board. Johns’ writing is clear and the exposition is very natural. He’s chosen to go text-box heavy, which may slow down some experienced Flash fans, but given that the texts are all in either Flash’s or Reverse-Flash’s voice, they’re a fun read on their own. I also like Johns’ pacing. In a first issue like this, he has to make it accessible, but he’s found a way to keep the tension up, while setting up all the pieces that have to go boom in the next two issues.

I also really like Barry’s torments. I know it isn’t new to this issue, but the whole angst that Barry suffers, first not feeling, then feeling, then facing a black lantern apocalypse that feeds on emotion, makes for a difficult run for Barry. This gives him some great lines like “Keep your heart standing still, and run as fast as you can,” and “Stop. Don’t hope. He’s dead….You mourn later.” There’s a lot of character in Johns’ writing.

Other interesting touches that have me guessing now (and hopefully for the next two issues, possibly for Johns’ run on the Flash in 2010) are: (a) the diagram of the speed force that Barry finds in Gorilla city, (b) the entangled origins of Flash and Reverse-Flash and (c) the weird time paradoxes that Johns is sure to exploit.

What’s Not So Good: The motivation for the villains in this situation wasn’t clear to me, nor did I understand why the black lantern rogues would be out to get the living ones. It could be a meta-human thing in general, but that isn’t something that the main Blackest Night title has made clear yet.

More importantly, I find Kolins’ art rough and unattractive, without having any stylistic benefits to justify the lack of draftsmanship. In other reviews, I’ve pointed out my preference for more realistic art, but I still respond to grittier, scratchier styles, like those used effectively in Detective Comics by Williams or in Amazing Spider-Man by Azaceta. The faces produced by Kolins communicate, but they just seem grossly proportioned and dominated by thick, unappealing lines. Reverse-Flash’s teeth look a lot more like Solomon Grundy’s (from the recent mini that Kolins penciled) than the teeth of any regular human or any other black lantern drawn by any other artist. Kolins’ work on background and the villain Tar Pit were clearer and more attractive.

Conclusion: The story makes this issue worth picking up, especially at $2.99. The art held the book back, though.

Grade: B

-DS Arsenault