The Flash #10 – Review

By: Francis Manapul & Brian Buccellato (story), Marcus To (pencils), Ray McCarthy (inks), Ian Herring (colors)

The Story: In which Weather Wizard pulls out a wand and does his best Harry Potter impression.

The Review: It took me a long time to learn this lesson myself, but excess may be the one of the least productive tactics you can take for any kind of writing.  When I used to grade my students’ papers, I sometimes got the impression they believed they’d be graded by length or weight, which misses the point entirely.  Writing too much does nothing for your work except obscure your ideas and make it harder for people to read.

It’s especially surprising to find Manapul-Buccellato guilty of this same crime.  You’d think with such talent for artistic storytelling, they’d know better, to show the story rather than tell it.  Yet from the opening pages of this issue, straight through to Barry’s monologue at the end, that’s exactly what Mananpul-Buccellato do.  They leave almost nothing to the imagination; everything gets explained to us through some awkward chunk of expository dialogue or other.

The Flash #10 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (writer), Francis Manapul (artist), Brian Buccellato (colorist)

The Story: Nothing like staring yourself in the face and realizing he has a way cooler outfit and ride than you.

The Review: Big events can make for fun comics, but they definitely have their downsides too.  One that comes to mind is all the prep-work that has to be lain down before the event can take place.  It’d be one thing if you didn’t know what’d coming down the line, but with all the promo pushes that inevitably accompany big events nowadays, you actually have the luxury of knowing what’s happening to the characters before they do.

As soon as Hot Pursuit (iffy name, by the way) reveals his true identity to the Flash, you already know he’s just the first in what’s likely to be a long stream of Flashpoint visitors.  He basically shows up to tell Barry about an impending, reality-bending disaster to his world, but to not get involved.  The warning is just a “courtesy,” he says, but we all know the scene takes place for our benefit; just a friendly reminder that Flashpoint is indeed coming soon.

Still, it’s a fun taste of the alternate universe nonsense that’s about to infect the entire DCU, which I have to admit is the kind of thing I love.  It’s completely corny, but it’s fun to sit back and enjoy whatever zany ideas Johns’ imagination can come up with, like Hot Pursuit with his Speed Force-channeling Cosmic Motorcycle and his hologram-projector/scanner nightstick.  Sure, it won’t win awards for thought-provoking sci-fi, but good golly, it entertains.

Besides the threat of an oncoming “timestorm,” Barry already has a lot of drama going on in his life.  Kid Flash’s appearance on the scene comes a bit randomly, but Johns writes his exuberant personality so well (“I came back to this era because the future is lame.”), you have to hope he’ll pop up often.  And it seems he will, as Bart needles Barry about why he’s been avoiding him, a new wrinkle in the Flash’s personal life that hopefully pans out without too much angst.

Weekly Comic Book Review’s Top Picks

Dean’s Top Picks

Best From The Past Week: Avengers the Children’s Crusade #5 – This kinda came out of left field.  In a week that had several highly anticipated #1 issues from Image and the launch of Marvel’s newest event, who would have thought that an issue 5 out of 9 would be the best of the week?  How did Heinberg do it?  Well….for starters, he is eschewing typical Act II slowness.  This issue was action packed as the Young Avengers first fight with Doom and then bounce around the timestream with Iron Lad and then it ends with a kinda big character making her big return to the Marvel U.  It also doesn’t hurt to have Jim Cheung doing some just beastly art.  Every page is outstanding from an art standpoint and it shows what happens when you give an A-list artist 2 months to work on something.  This will be a real masterpiece when it is done.

Most Anticipated: Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker #2 – For all hullaballoo about a couple of Image #1s this past week (and a couple of them were quite good), Butcher Baker #1 beat the pants off of them, so I can’t wait to see what Joe Casey and Co. do for an encore in issue #2.  Sure, it probably won’t match the shock value of seeing Dick Cheney and Jay Leno as part of the right-wing establishment trying to talk retired superhero Butcher Baker (a Comedian clone) out of his Charlie Sheen-esque retirement, but I’ll still bet there are some goodies in this issue.  You know one thing: There won’t be any punches pulled!

Other Picks: Unwritten #24, Infinite Vacation #2, Amazing Spider-Man #658, Lil Depressed Boy #3, Black Panther #517

Alex’s Top Picks

Best From The Past Week: Secret Six #32 – While all the buzz was understandably about Fear Itself #1, and it was pretty good, I can’t deny the awesomeness that was this week’s issue of Secret Six.  It was the perfect blend of dark drama, darker comedy, and intricate team dynamic.  In other words, it’s everything that makes Gail Simone’s series so special.

Most Anticipated: Journey into Mystery #622 – I’m a Thor fan.  I’m a Kieron Gillen fan.  I love books centered on the bad guy.  Journey into Mystery offers all of these things, plus the awesome artwork of Doug Braithwaite.  That’s enough to leave me very excited.  I fully expect this to exceed Gillen’s Thor run, which was already pretty solid.

Other Picks: Infinity, Iron Man 2.0 #3, Uncanny X-Men #535, Uncanny X-Force #7, PunisherMAX #12, THUNDER Agents #6, Birds of Prey #11, Batman and Robin #22, The Flash #10, Amazing Spider-Man #658, New Avengers #11, Secret Warriors #26