I am cheating here because I was due a Marvel one today. But I watched the supposed finale to the current season of the Flash and…I think I’m finally done with that series. I want to vindicate it.
I read the Flash since I was young. The first comic I picked up of the character was Geoff Johns’ Rogue War (here depicted), and it was love at first sight. It has EVERYTHING the TV series HAD until season 2….heart, characters, a believable world. Even a man running at the speed of light was more than a cardboard cutout. He was a man running away from the overbearing shadow of his mentor, running away from the trauma of losing him, but he was also a family man, a friend, and sometimes even a petulant nephew and a mentor himself!
The world around Wally West, then the current Flash, was completely rebuilt from the ground up; the villains were MORE than a villain-of-the-week – in fact, it was this that made Captain Cold my absolute favorite villain; someone who should have been a hero had he not remained frozen in his own trauma. And that IS the magic of Geoff Johns’ writing – it is all played as a metaphor using familiar characters but they are not just that; EVERY SINGLE PART OF THIS WORLD LIVED. All of them became well-rounded characters that played off one another perfectly simply by building upon what was already there. They were not simply voice boxes for the writer (unlike something else I have unfortunately become familiar with), but they were built in such a way you believed lived in a living world. NOTHING about it was spelled out. You BELIEVED there are the twin cities somewhere; you BELIEVED the people there exist. The highlights, in fact, were when the spotlight WAS on the people. Issues were the focus were who the Rogues were – Rogue Profiles, as they were titled, all of which were among my favorite moments in the series.
Seriously, rather than wasting time watching next season, pick Geoff Johns’ run on the character.
#crowcomicreviews
