The Flash #31 - A Review

The thief stealing blood samples from the Central City Police Department stands revealed as a new Rogue called Bloodwork. Seeking a cure for his hemophilia, he somehow gave himself the power to control the flow of blood around him!

Only The Flash can stop Bloodwork... but how can The Flash stop him when he's drawing off of the negative charge of The Speed Force and still can't control his powers? And even if The Flash can save the day, will Barry Allen still have a job at the end of it?


The artwork for this issue is erratic, even allowing for two different artists working on it. Neil Googe is a great artist but his cartoonish style is at odds with the dark tone of the story. This weakens a villain who should be nightmarish and the people fleeing from Bloodwork look unintentionally goofy. Gus Vasquez's style matches the tone better, but the second half of the story is more sedate, denying Vasquez a chance to show his skill at drawing action scenes.


Joshua Williamson's grasp of the regular characters remains strong. The dialogue is fantastic though the set-up of the finale seems a little rushed. Then again, if The Flash is going to err, best that it do it on the side of moving too quickly than taking too long.

The Final Analysis: 6 out of 10.

The Flash #20 - A Review

Iris West is accustomed to moving fast and taking chances. You have to be when you're a reporter in Central City, chasing news regarding The Flash! However, she may have taken once chance too many with her latest story,which sees her infiltrating the secretive scientist group called The Black Hole and winding up in a fire fight with The Flash himself!

It's high time that Iris West got a solo story and Joshua Williamson gives her a great one in this issue. At her best, Iris can be every bit the equal of Lois Lane and it's a crying shame that we don't see stories from her perspective more often. The artwork by Neil Googe and Ivan Plascencia looks fantastic for the most part.  Some of Googe's facial expressions look a bit odd but the action sequences are well-blocked and Plascencia's colors are well-chosen throughout.

The Flash #17 - A Review

The Rogues just puled their greatest heist ever!  Naturally, The Flash quickly caught up with them as they were skipping town, but can he move fast enough to overcome Captain Cold's new and improved cold gun?  One which draws off the power of The Speed Force itself?!


The Flash #17 is a disappointing conclusion to what had been a promising return for The Rogues into the Rebirth universe.  The story here is predictable and nothing we haven't seen before. The only thing that makes it tolerable is Joshua Williamson's command of the characters and the fact that he writes great dialogue.

The artwork - provided by three artists this month - is similarly disjointed. I find Carmine Di Giandomerico's style disjointing at times but the general wild and untamed feel of it usually seems to fit The Flash on its own terms. Placed alongside more traditional artists as part of the same tale, however, it comes off as sloppy and scribbled-over.

The Flash #4 - A Review

As more and more victims of The Speed Force Storm come forth, Barry Allen finds himself more and more absorbed in his role as a teacher and mentor to a new group of speedsters. But The Black Hole - the villainous group responsible for triggering the storm in the first place - are still determined to weaponize The Speed Force. And even with the assistance of his new partners, even The Flash may not be fast enough to stop them!


It seems ironic that The Flash should be so slow in building its story. Joshua Williamson's leisurely pacing results in a story where nothing much happens until the final pages. Those revelations, however, will leave readers anxiously anticipating the next issue. If nothing else, this issue proves a fascinating character study of Barry Allen, even if the action involving The Black Hole falls flat.


What Williamson's story lacks in energy, however, is more than made up for by the artwork. Neil; Googe's kinetic style is a good fit for the adventures of The Flash. And Ivan Plascencia's vivid colors perfectly enhance the original pencils.

Injustice: Gods Among Us #21 & #22 - A Review

Injustice #21 brings us the first strike in the ideological war between Superman and Batman that sets the stage for the world we see in the Injustice: Gods Among Us video game.  We see Batman and the other heroes uncomfortable with a more proactive Justice League make their first strike, abducting Hawkgirl and replacing her with a duplicate in order to infiltrate Superman's ranks.  The identity of the spy is still a secret but my guess is it's Black Canary - her future exposure as a spy in disguise is as good an explanation as any for her absence in the dark future/alternate reality of Injustice and there's some dramatic irony in having one bird-themed heroine replace another.




Injustice #22 continues the argument seen in the previous issue, as we see  further dissension in the ranks of Superman's team.  Ironically, it is Lex Luthor - a good guy in this universe - who winds up thwarting Batman's plan to break the alliance by suggesting a public-relations stunt that will reassure the populace that The Justice League has their best interests at heart.  You know the world is topsy-turvy when Lex Luthor is speaking in favor of placing humanity's fate in the hands of a few metahumans!




What Tom Taylor has done with this title is truly miraculous.  One might think it impossible to wring honest drama out of a series in which we already know the final outcome for most of the major players.  We all know which of our favorite heroes and villains will or won't survive the journey from a somewhat familiar DC Universe to the twisted reality of the Injustice game.  Yet Taylor does this by spinning stories within stories - such as Darkseid's response to Superman's actions in Injustice #22 - and giving us such wonderful character moments like when Wonder Woman deals with a camp full of female refugees being exploited by the soldiers who are meant to protect them.  Though this scene was clearly inspired by a similar moment in Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier, Taylor makes the moment all the more powerful by showing us the actual moment Wonder Woman empowers a group of women to stand up for themselves rather than by having Wonder Woman tell Superman about the incident after the fact.




The artwork on this series has been something of a mixed bag and these two issues illustrate the power an artist has in shaping a script.  Neil Googe is a talented artist and I greatly enjoyed his previous work with Tom Taylor on Rose and Thorn.  Yet Googe's stylized, big-eyed characters seem ill-suited for the more serious drama Taylor presents in Injustice #21.  By contrast, Mike S. Miller - the artist on Injustice #22 - seems a perfect match for the darker tone of Taylor's story.  I particularly like his depiction of Darkseid and his general use of shadowing in the inks during the scenes on Apokolips.




If you had told me months ago that I'd be reading a comic based on a video game on a regular basis, I would have laughed.  Video game tie-in comics do not have a very respectable history.  But Injustice: Gods Among Us bucks the trend and I dare say I'll be reading this book for a while yet.

National Comics: Rose & Thorn #1

Submitted For Your Approval: One Rose Canton.  Committed for a time after the violent death of her father, Rose now lives with her aunt and struggles to build something resembling a normal teenage life.  But teenagers are cruel and Rose's time in the asylum is publicly known.  Between the taunts at school and her trouble sleeping, Rose's life seems like one long bad dream.  But as Rose Canton will soon discover, the nightmares are just beginning.   

Our story begins after Rose wakes up in unfamiliar clothes, in pain and soaked in blood.  The blood turns out not to be hers but that's hardly a comfort - particularly after she discovers that she now has a tattoo she never wanted.  The day gets stranger and more horrifying as Rose uncovers more evidence that she is doing things she isn't aware of at night   Pictures of her attending wild parties she doesn't remember attending.  Reports that she was seen making out with Troy - the most popular guy in school, who has mysteriously disappeared.  She even tried to seduce her only friend!
As Rose searches for answers, she will discover that something is growing inside her.  Something wild.  Something dangerous.  Something that yearns to find the truth behind her father's death and will stop at nothing to see him avenged.  Something that is, in fact, a someone... a someone called Thorn!

Tom Taylor tackles this classic character in a novel way, his script emphasizing the horror of Rose's plight.  We learn who Rose through her shock at what she seems to have done but believes herself incapable of doing.  The story style is unlike anything seen in most American comics, feeling closer in tone to a Japanese horror manga than a superhero story.

The art by Welcome To Tranquility artist Neil Googe seems to reflect this Eastern aesthetic.  With his characters possessing enlarged eyes and exaggerated features, this book looks like a shojo manga in addition to reading like one.  There's even a little bit of fan-service but nothing that seems exploitative or gratuitous by manga standards and nothing that would be inappropriate for the Teen audience this book is written for.   
 

I don't know if DC Comics is trying to snare more young women with their latest group of new comics.  But with more titles like this and Sword Of Sorcery, I dare say they may do so regardless of their intent.  I don't think this is quite ready to supplant Gail Simone's excellent Rose And Thorn series from several years ago but it is a good start for a new series.