Science hug!
Creative Staff:
Story: Gail Simone
Art: Clayton Henry
Colors: Marcelo Maiolo
Letterer: Rob Leigh
What They Say:
Temporal travesties are wreaking havoc on the streets of Central City, and the Flash needs an extra pair of hands to keep the city safe-he just didn’t realize how tiny those hands would be!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Where do you go after you write stories about king shark and time travel for The Flash? Gail Simone brings in the Atom this time around and it’s the delightful Ryan Choi one at that. Simone’s stories and scripts have always been fun and I’ve long found myself to prefer the one-off storytelling she does as it’s incisive and sharp, so this fits in well. Clayton Henry has been a solid piece of this from the start and has a great array of work behind him and I love how dynamic he makes this book look, which isn’t always easy. And Marcelo Maiolo really ups the game big time for that with the color design as it’s a huge part of why the speed feels as fast as it is. The team here is one that I could read stories from indefinitely when it comes to the Flash.
With the teases of the Reverse-Flash before with what the time travel piece in the previous issue, Flash now finds himself dealing with an array of things coming out of a portal causing problems in Central City. The worst part is that it’s ruining his day with Iris, who is definitely enjoying his low-key charm compared to the men that do crazy things to impress her. But when they both see the zoo on fire and animals going nuts, they each run off for their own respective work, which makes things easy on Barry. What’s fun is that it doesn’t take long for him to realize he’s getting a bit of help as The Atom is flitting about dealing with all of this as well. The problem, however, is that he’s come here at the behest of Chronos in order to find The Flash as they need him to save the future.
It’s never easy to trust an opponent of yours but Barry’s gotten enough information recently to put some faith into it. But before he heads off the book gives us a lot to like with the fights. That it opens with the Barry and Ryan dealing with a kind of dinosaur is a delight but they both science nerd geek out after the fight in trying to figure out what kind it is. This leads to some awkward moments of Ryan talking about the dialogue on deep web chat rooms about superheroes but mostly Ryan is just excited to have someone to geek over with this and both really help to push the other in exploring the creature. With the back and forth we get, it all comes down to the portal that seems to be a one-way ticket to heading to the future to deal with a threat that will upend history if it’s allowed to go forward. That Chronos would look for help says a lot and Barry’s definitely feeling very responsible.
In Summary:
While the stories do still manage to operate independently, Simone is drawing on larger threads in order to draw readers back for more issues of the DC Giant this first appeared in. Which is part of the fun as those things were hard to find and I only came across one issue in all my time walking through a Walmart. It’s definitely why I’m glad for these being made digital as they’re a lot of fun to dig into and this one with Ryan Choi is no exception. While he’s not the Atom I grew up with, he is one that I got to know well from some of the other series he’s been in since his debut and I really find him a charming counterpart to our traditional version. Having him here geeking out and worshipping Barry is definitely how Ryan would act and the book looks great as it deals with a lot of action, a fun date, and a real challenge ahead.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology and Kindle
Release Date: May 1st, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
