A light and dark story.
Creative Staff:
Story: Dave Wielgosz
Art: Darko Lafuente, Dan Mora
Colors: Tamra Bonvillain, Luis Guerrero
Letterer: Rob Leigh
What They Say:
Story 1 – It’s the Flash Parade and everyone’s so excited…except for Barry Allen. This is his least favorite day of the year. Can a superhero showdown with the villainous Tar Pit show Barry the best side of the parade or will the day be ruined? Story 2 – Justice is finally served as Captain Cold’s thrown behind bars for the murder of a group of drug dealers, only problem is the evidence isn’t adding up. Will The Flash stand by as an innocent man is arrested or will he look the other way to keep this known criminal off the street?!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Flash installments go for another pair of short stories this time around but both come from the same author, Dave Wilegosz. I don’t believe I’ve read any of his work before but we get a pair of solid stories here that lean into the style of the artists well. Darko Lafuente has a really great style here that reminds me of Mike Wieringo a lot with its design and energy that’s captured well in the coloring. Dan Mora’s story is darker with more ominous tones to it and it has a more mature looking Barry, one that’s not quite so cartoony in a way and fits well for the story.
The opening tale is one that plays well in how Barry has long dealt with the idolization that cropped up over the years – and made impacts on Wally and others over the decades as well in older stories. Here, with the youngish looking artwork we get from Lafuente, Barry and Iris are on a date of sorts with the parade celebrating the Flash only for Tarpit to appear and cause chaos. We get Barry talking the whole thing down at first before Tarpit but we see how Flash has influenced its citizens as they push back against Tarpit, calling him out for the terrible things hie family did and so forth. It’s a good moment of citizen activism to get the criminal to realize their own past for what it really is. We do get a fight sequence with the Flash but it spends time overall on this other dynamic in some really neat ways that I wish comics would explore more – especially in this “brand new world” that we exist in.
The second tale is one that… well, let’s just say it plays interesting amid all the current social unrest and issues going on with police brutality and issues. Here, Central City detective Dion has brought in Snart for a murder and a crime that’s irking Barry because it goes against the code that he knows the Rogues have. That has him digging deeper into it and leads him to the Thinker where he discovers he’s making knockoff Rogues weapons again. There aren’t enough pages to do a deep run into how the trick of it all really worked to make it properly complicated, but bringing out the reveal of a cop being the one who ordered the gun and did the deed puts Barry on the bad side of a lot of cops. It’s pure Barry to do this because he wants Snart to go down for the right thing and a crime he actually commits, but it’s Barry that’s going to pay the price for a while.
In Summary:
Having grown up on a lot of standalone Flash stories back in the day, pre-Crisis, there’s a lot of simple enjoyments to be had with both of these stories as either could have been told in some form back then. They’re timeless, in a way, which is both good and bad depending on the content. I really liked the first one for the way that it dealt with the issues of Tarpit and the citizenry while the second one is far too real-world at the moment and just dredges up all sorts of issues that a lot of superheroes would have to confront in some problematic ways. Both work familiar ideas but they’re executed well with solid artwork, making for a good experience.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXologyKindle
Release Date: June 12th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
