The fastest man alive returns in his own series again and already he’s being hauled in for a trial. In the future.
The Review:
After reading the Flash Rebirth series late last year, a fair bit behind but without the hype attached to the return of Barry Allen, I was curious how a new series would work out. It’s definitely a difficult area for DC Comics to deal with since they aren’t keen it seems on having two Flash books running at the same time. While I grew up reading a number of stories about Barry Allen, my real love affair with DC Comics came after Crisis On Infinite Earths, so I was much more used to a world where there was no Barry Allen and we had a young Wally West learning the ropes as he took over the name. Wally’s life has been a rollercoaster ever since and I really didn’t care for the last series he was involved in or the one that Bart took over at one point as well, though I adore both characters. They simply never felt like they had been grounded enough in things in their own series to be able to carry them since there was so much baggage. Which makes it strange to feel like this incarnation has less baggage even though Barry has a far longer career.
This series puts us squarely back in Central City where Barry is returning to his job as a forensic scientists, the golden boy of the lab no less according to his boss, after the little trick of explaining that he’s been in witness protection for the last couple of years. Barry’s intent on being the kind of guy who brings justice to the victims he has to deal with, but the department policy favors quantity over quality because of city hall, and there is some justification for that. In the years that Barry has been gone, the city population has tripled (it’s easy to imagine people moving around a lot in this particular world) and the crime rate has quadrupled. Barry wants to focus on the quality and dealing with cold cases, but he’s only going to be able to do that on his own time because they want him focusing on the numbers in the present. There’s an amusing nod about this as he notes that there used to be nothing in the cold case file when he was there, but now it’s pretty much filled because so much happens in Central City.
Central City is definitely on the upwsing with its population, but it also feels a lot like the Flash in that life moves fast there. Manapul brings this easily into his art. There’s a solid sense of motion throughout it in that this is a fast-paced living city where everyone is on the move. The slower moments with Barry at the department helps to contrast it, along with the way he does seem to move a bit slower than everyone else, and that helps the overall atmosphere. Central city really feels like a city on the edge of tomorrow with its portrayal here.
Thankfully, the opening issue is here very self contained in terms of the larger DC Universe. None of the big players drop by to say hello and the extended Flash family is absent as well outside of Iris. There are some nice moments between the two as their “work” relationship is established in both flashback and present and Iris adds a nice bit of non-powered commentary to the book. Where the book has its fun is in talking about the Rogues. Flash’s Rogues have been a staple for decades now and firmly established, even as new incarnation’s take over, so opening with a little dash against the Trickster is nice, but it’s when Mirror Master appears that things take shape as he’s dead on arrival, though it’s not the Mirror Master that Barry knows. His investigation doesn’t get far before the full breadth of the Rogues Gallery show up, but from the 25th century, and they’re here to arrest him for the murder that he’ll commit in some future.
Suffice to say, Geoff Johns knows how to get me back for another issue.
Digital Notes:
This edition from comiXology retains the original cover as well as providing the two variant covers. The practice of including all the covers in the digital edition continues to be a strong point for me and a welcome one since there’s no real world physical value to the books and digital fans just want to see the artwork and story.
In Summary:
I had a lot of issues with the Flash Rebirth series when I finally go around to reading it as it didn’t make Barry all that interesting of a character and he felt, appropriately enough, left behind by how the world changed. With this series, he’s still not any more relatable, but he’s not quite as stern and serious either, which helps immensely. Putting him back into a work setting was a big positive and letting the story evolve slowly over the course of the issue was a definite plus as it works with his Rogues gallery and avoids all other connections to the DC Universe. Geoff Johns has crafted a basic but good story here that hints at where it can go, brings in classic characters in different forms and adds the fun of time travel, which can be a crutch at times. Tying it with Manapul’s solid artwork and we have an opening issue that is leaps beyond the Rebirth miniseries and has me actually interested to see where it will all go.
Grade: B+
