The Flash: Season Zero #15 - A Review

King Shark has been captured by The Suicide Squad, though they nearly killed Joe West in the process. This sets Barry Allen to tracking down this dangerous new villain group and sends him to Starling City looking for answers. Answers Oliver Queen has but doesn't want to give away...


With all the secrets upon secrets and shared information that has been revealed on The Flash and Arrow, it never occurred to me until now that Barry knows nothing about ARGUS or The Suicide Squad.  As such, the central conceit of this issue - that the sudden reemergence of Captain Boomerang with a gang of other killers would send Barry running for answers - is a brilliant one that helps to tie the two series even closer together.  As one might expect, there's a high humor quotient to this issue as Barry intrudes on Ollie's 'Arrow' time and fails to notice that while he might casually hold a conversation in the costume, The Arrow does not do anything casually.


Phil Hester is on familiar ground with his artwork here, having been the artist on Green Arrow for a number of years.  Hester's work with The Flash hasn't been bad but I think he's a better fit for the aesthetic of Arrow, which offers more opportunities for the shadowy, dramatic scenes that Hester excels at.  It's a debatable point but what can't be debated is that this issue is as well illustrated as it is well written.

The Flash: Season Zero #14 - A Review

Barry and Cisco survived Round One with King Shark, but the mutant shark-man's bite has slowed Barry's hyperactive healing-factor to a crawl. As Barry returns to work trying to hide his bloody bandages and Cisco and Caitlin return to tracking King Shark, little do they know that someone else is hunting the monster.

How soon will be be before Team STAR Labs crosses paths with The Suicide Squad? And has Captain Boomerang come back to finish The Flash off once and for all?


Fans of the show who have yet to give this tie-in comic a try will be pleased to know this issue contains the same humor. Phil Hester sneaks in a few funny visual gags, such ac Cisco's "research" into the biology of sharks involving a screening of Sharknado.  And the script by Kai Wu and Lauren Certo boasts several equally amusing one-liners.


Arrow fans will probably want to check this issue out as well, since it gives us our first post-arrest appearance of Cupid as well as the return of Captain Boomerang.  And Deadshot. There's always room for more Deadshot.

The Flash: Season Zero #13 - A Review

The Flash has King Shark!  Or does King Shark have The Flash? It's a bit hard to say but it may fall to Cisco Ramon to be a fast thinker before they have to test if Barry's quick-healing powers can let him grow back an arm!


This issue is exciting and yet something of a disappointment at the same time.  The action is well played out and some hints are dropped about Cisco's eventually taking up the role of a hero himself (You know which one!). But it's a bit of a downer that - unlike the comics - King Shark was once a human cancer patient undergoing radical treatment at the time of the Particle Accelerator Explosion rather than a shark who evolved into a semi-intelligent being. I guess the writing team would rather not explain why there aren't more of these meta-animals running around if the energy released affected non-humans.  But c'mon - it's not like evolved sharks are any more implausible than dark matter interacting with a drug made of Shark DNA to create a wereshark!


I've commented before that Phil Hester wouldn't be my first choice of artist for a Flash comic but his work here is quite effective, catering as it does to his talents for horror.  There's none of the forced poses or odd angles that marred previous issues.  Even Eric Gapstur's inks don't seem to be as randomly applied this time around.

The Flash: Season Zero #12 - A Review

I fear I may be turning into a skipping audio file (kids these days don't say 'broken record' unless they're hipsters)  but I find myself running out of ways to say how much I enjoy The Flash: Season Zero.


The story this fortnight is a gripping one, as our heroes investigate a frightening possibility - that the explosion of the STAR Labs particle accelerator affected animals as well as humans.  Worse, one of these so-called Meta-Animals - a humanoid shark - is on a feeding frenzy in Central City, seeking out the scientists who abused it. Could this be a hint as to how Gorilla Grodd might be brought into the TV show?  Probably, but this comic is a ripping yarn regardless of that question.


Comedy continues to be the best thing this series has going for it.  The humor of The Flash is intact and all of the characters are written true to form.  You can hear the voices of the actors from the show speaking the dialogue by Kai Wu and Lauren Cetro in your head as you read the comic.


The only real negative thing I have to say about the book involves the art.  Understand that I love Phil Hester's work and have enjoyed it since his run on Green Arrow.  But for every awesome page like the one above  featuring King Shark feeding, there are several pages where the human characters look blocky and stiff. Hester and Eric Gapstur are amazing when it comes to drawing monsters jumping out of the shadows.  Humans on a sunny day?  Not so much.

The Flash: Season Zero #11 - A Review

Barry, Caitlin and Cisco were enjoying a nice working vacation in Coast City, testing Barry's powers in a coastal environment to see if he might be the Fastest Swimmer Alive. Sadly, the fun is cut short when Barry gets called back to investigate a strange murder.  One seemingly committed by a walking shark...

The script for this issue is a fun one, with most of the focus being on the interaction between Barry, Cisco and Caitlin.  There's a fair bit of humor with Barry and Cisco cracking wise about the possibility of werewolves and zombies being potentially realities in their post-metahuman world (Caitlin is not amused, naturally) and the writing perfectly captures the spirit of the show.


Phil Hester is back as the series penciler along with Eric Gapstur on inks and, again, I must say that they seem an odd choice for the regular art team on this book.  They are both undoubtedly talented but their style seems at odds with the basic aesthetic of The Flash. The best bits of the artwork occur at the beginning and the end, where we see a shadowy monster attacking its victims at night. Unfortunately, most of the book takes place on a sunny beach in the middle of the day and Gapstur's inks are at their best when they are at their heaviest, strongly defining Hester's pencils.

The Flash: Season Zero #9 - A Review

Felicity Smoak finds herself distracted at work, as Barry Allen's televised battle with a water-manipulating metahuman causes her to miss an important meeting. That turns out to be the least of Felicity's problems this morning. Because there's a group of terrorists out to turn everyone's favorite White Hat Hacker into street pizza and only The Fastest Man Alive can save her!


This issue of The Flash: Season Zero is somewhat perplexing.  The script by Andrew Kreisberg (based on a story by Kreisberg and Marc Guggenheim) is well-written and quite funny, with a fair bit of quirky banter between Felicity and Ray Palmer and many accidental double entendres. Typical fare for an episode of Arrow or The Flash, in other words.

The problem is that it is unclear just when the events of this story take place relative to events in the show. As of the halfway point of the first season of The Flash, the existence of metahumans is still a closely guarded secret - at least so far as the team at STAR Labs and Joe West are concerned.   Explain then how it is possible for The Flash to be fighting a super-villain on a live television broadcast, with the reporter watching the fight acting like such fights are commonplace?

I'll admit this is a minor nitpick but it is an important point given the continuity of the TV series.  That said, the action of the story is well paced and it wouldn't feel out of place in a classic Flash comic.  The only real problem with this story is how it fails to fit into the reality of the show, unless it is set at some point in the not too distant future where The Flash is operating more openly.


The artwork by Marcus To is a definite improvement on the previous creative team.  There is a sense of motion to To's style that meshes well with the general aesthetic of The Flash.  To also does a good job caricaturing the series's cast and in blocking out the action of the story.

The Flash: Season Zero #8 - A Review

Here it is!  The Big Finale under The Big Top, as The Flash faces off against Mister Bliss and his Fabulous Freaks! Can Barry Allen prevail against an army of murderous clowns, a car-crushing strongman and a mind-controlling ring-master?

Yes.  Yes he can.  Unfortunately, this final battle falls flat and ends anti-climatically.  Thankfully, most of the issue isn't concerned with the fight so much as it is with the aftermath.


Unfortunately, the aftermath of the battle raises more questions than it answers, such as what happens to the snake-charming woman Barry had to save from Bliss when she turned on him?  Has she been imprisoned in The Pipeline among with the rest of the circus?  And looking at the cells in the make-shift metahuman prison, those inclined to ponder such things are bound to ask questions about the lack of toilets.

Though the fight is a bit lackluster, this comic is still likely to provide amusement to fans of the show through the comedic dialogue and the trivia relating to the show.  For instance, this issue establishes that this story took place sometime between the third and fourth episode of the show, owing to the facts that The Pipeline exists and Barry is already subsisting on the super-protein bars Cisco first started making in the second episode. Also, the issue ends with Barry running off to face Captain Cold for the first time.
The artwork continues to be decent but unspectacular.  Phil Hester is a great artist but his firm, darker style seems at odds with the more fluid tone one expects of The Flash.  The inks of Eric Gapstur only compound the problem, with the finished artwork seeming more appropriate to a urban-action or horror title than the brighter, more colorful world of Central City.

The Flash: Season Zero #7 - A Review

The Flash is still shell-shocked after his encounter with the empath Mr. Bliss. As Dr. Wells tries to snap Barry out of his terror-induced coma, Caitlin and Cisco must try to warn the public before Bliss gets a chance to unleash his powers upon a captive audience of millions.


I've noted before that I questioned whether or not Phil Hester was the right artist for this book.  Yet this issue confirmed for me that whatever faults this book has artistically, few of them can be laid at Hester's feet.  To speak plainly, Phil Hester is not well-paired with the rest of the art team for this series.  Inker Eric Gapstur does an erratic job of enhancing Hester's original art and the colors chosen by Kelsey are questionable at best.  Many pages have the look of something out of a coloring book rather than a professional comic.


Thankfully, the story by Andrew Kreisberg (with script by Katherine Walczak and Brooke Elkmeier)  is as riveting as ever. There isn't a lot of action in this issue but there are still some good character moments for the supporting cast that fans of the show will enjoy.  The greatest revelation, however, is  a peek at a collection of high-tech tools that will fuel further speculations as to just who Dr. Wells really is and may actually offer a concrete answer answer to that question.