The Flash: Season Zero #24 - A Review

Caitlin and Cisco's investigation in to the death of one of Caitlin's old professors has revealed an even greater mystery than a perpetual motion engine. It seems the particle accelerator explosion has transformed Caitlin's old mentor, turning her into half an energy being that can absorb the essences of others! Thankfully, Caitlin knows just who to call when dealing with a rogue metahuman. But can even The Flash save the day this time?


At first I was disappointed that The Flash showed up for the second half of this story.  After Issue #23, I rather liked the novel idea of a story focused on Caitlin and Cisco as they went off an adventure without Barry. Thankfully, the battle turns out to be a true team effort and Barry's contributions do not overshadow those of his friends.


Sadly, the artwork of Ibrahim Moustafa isn't quite so strong this week. Some of the character expressions look odd and seem incredibly forced. Thankfully, the action sequences are well-blocked and flow smoothly. And Nick Filardi's colors are as fine as ever.

The Flash: Season Zero #23 - A Review

It's another typical day at STAR Labs, with Caitlin and Cisco helping The Flash deal with the city's latest crisis, when Caitlin gets a call about a funeral she has to attend. Caitlin's mentor from college has died and her passing has left Caitlin in little mood for work or Cisco's well-meaning but misguided efforts to cheer her up. Then a mysterious package arrives and the two scientists find themselves drawn into a mystery and a race against time against a murderous colleague to retrieve the mentor's magnum opus - a working perpetual motion engine!



At first I was afraid when this issue opened with The Flash battling giant spiders in a sewer but this B-movie plot is quickly put aside as Sterling Gates delivers his A-game, with a spell-binding story that focuses on The Flash's best friends. Gates perfectly captures the spirit of the characters from the show and it is gratifying to see a story that focuses on Caitlin and her past that doesn't draw upon her romantic life.


The artwork by Ibrahim Moustafa is the best this series has seen. Moustafa perfectly captures the likenesses of the show's cast.  And his inks - coupled with the muted color palette utilized by Nick Filardi - create the perfect ambiance for a story set in a spooky old house with a secret laboratory.

The Flash: Season Zero #22 - A Review

Like the previous issue, The Flash: Season Zero #22 is a flashback devoted to Len Snart and Mick Rory and their criminal careers before they became Captain Cold and Heatwave. It is revealed that the two crooks exemplified their respective elements long before they got their hands on high-powered super-guns. More, we see why the calculating Snart works with a loose cannon like Rory.


The script captures the attitude of the characters from the show perfectly. Nevertheless, some of the action doesn't make a lot of sense. I can swing with Rory's plan to throw off the police by setting the museum they're robbing on fire before they go in. The problem is the plan doesn't work (despite the burglar alarms being disabled) and the police somehow beat the fire department to the museum, purely because we need a reason for Joe West and his partner to be there. This issue is a great character piece but it strains credibility as an action sequence.


Thankfully, the artwork saves the issue.  This is the kind of story Phil Hester draws best and the inks by Eric Gapstur beautifully enhance Hester's pencils.  But what really makes the artwork pop is Nick Filardi's colors, with a palette of strong oranges and cool blues creating a perfect visual representation of our two main characters.

The Flash: Season Zero #21 - A Review

Before they became Captain Cold and Heatwave, Len Snart and Mick Rory were ordinary criminals. But how did two such different men become partners in crime? Now the tale can be told of how a cool and calculating mastermind came to trust a passionate hothead.


Phil Hester's in his element here with a dark, atmospheric story set on the wrong side of the tracks. His pencils are a little sloppy at times but not to the point where it's distracting. The inks and colors - by Eric Gapstur and Nick Filardi respectively - perfectly enhance Hester's pencils.


The script by Andrew Kresigberg and Lauren Certo is decent enough. There's a suitable number of gags regarding the characters personalities, including their differing drink orders - Cold orders an ice-cold beer while Heatwave orders Fireball Whiskey. Still, I can't help but wishing Geoff Johns had written this story as nobody writes The Rogues quite so well.

The Flash: Season Zero #19 - A Review

This issue of The Flash: Season Zero is unlike any we've seen before for a number of reasons. For one thing, this issue was written by creator Phil Hester, who had previously done the pencils for most of the series. Another difference is that this issue seems more like a work of hard science-fiction rather than the science-fantasy tales we usually see in The Flash.  Finally, this issue is less of an action piece centered around Barry Allen and more of a character piece about Caitlin Snow.


The plot reveals that before she went to work for STAR Labs, Caitlin was involved in a Department of Defense project that sent an astronaut wired to various censors into space, where he was abandoned long past his due date to come home.  One dose of dark matter later and the so-called Dark Star slowly achieved sentience, though the man who made up its core remembered little of his past life, save the pretty face that assured him he would wake up from a short nap to see her again.


The tale is a thrilling one and suites Hester's style as an artist well. And the story does a lot to develop Caitlin as a character, beyond being the uptight doctor who is still getting over her dead/absent fiance. The flow is a little confusing at first, as we cut between flash-backs, flash-fowards and the action as it is happening now with only subtle changes in the coloration by Nick Filardi indicating which scenes are which.  Thankfully, this confusion is temporary and the story is even more enjoyable after a second reading.

The Flash: Season Zero #18 - A Review

The good news is that Barry Allen has stopped the so-called King Shark from killing again. The bad news is that, in the process, he allowed a terrorist to escape from The Suicide Squad. The worst news is that they all have just ten minutes to stop a bomb from going off... and Deadshot just pumped Barry full of enough tranquilizer to make sure The Flash doesn't get in the way of The Squad and their target a second time...


The script for this issue is fairly good, with dialogue that sounds like it came right from the show. Cupid is appropriate flirty, Captain Boomerang makes a number of puns involving his favorite weapon. All well and good.

The actual story, however, suffers from a few logic gaps. The big one here is that Deadshot - a character not known for his compassion  - just happens to be carrying enough tranquilizer to take down a speedster in one shot. And then there's Amanda Waller's apparent stupidity in utilizing a blood-crazed monster as an agent on a mission requiring them to capture and question a suspect.


I've said before that I didn't think Phil Hester was the right artist for this series, but his talents prove well-utilized here. With the focus of this issue largely on The Suicide Squad, Hester's gritty style and talent for drawing monsters seems a good fit. And Eric Gapstur's inks perfectly enhance Hester's pencils.

The Flash: Season Zero #17 - A Review

Trapped in the bowels of ARGUS, Barry Allen has only minutes to save the unfortunate King Shark from killing again at the behest of Amanda Waller.  Naturally The Wall doesn't care about the toll the shark-man's endless hunger is taking on his mind - only that he's an asset that Task Force X can use. A little help from his friends may get Barry loose but can even he reach Coast City in time once he's free?


This latest issue is thrilling right up until the very last page where a whopping big plot hole reveals itself as we find out King Shark's target was a terrorist who needed to be questioned about an active bomb. Of course Amanda Waller wouldn't lose sleep over a dead terrorist. But the idea that The Wall would send an untested resource - to wit, a man-eating shark-man - out to capture a target who needed to be taken alive and hope that it could be kept under control long enough for an interrogation to occur is just plain idiotic!


Phil Hester is back in the artist's chair this time around and I can't say I've missed him too much. Some of the pages in this issue look rushed and sloppy. And I really do believe Eric Gapstur's style better fits the brighter aesthetic of The Flash universe.

The Flash: Season Zero #16 - A Review

Barry Allen is still determined to rescue the so-called King Shark from the clutches of The Suicide Squad. But even with Cisco and Caitlin backing him up and blueprints of ARGUS' headquarters and security systems, can The Flash accomplish this impossible mission? Not if Amanda Waller has anything to say about it. And armed with some newly built drones designed specifically for bringing down The Fastest Man Alive, she may indeed have the last word.


This issue marks the first time Eric Gapstur has handled the art duties on this series himself and it proves a welcome change. I love Phil Hester's artwork but his blocky style seemed a little stiff for The Flash. Gapstur's style is more fluid and there's a greater sense of motion to the book as a result.


The script itself is as enjoyable as we've come to expect from this creative team. Cisco makes A-Team references nobody else gets but proves to be far more than simple comic relief as he takes charge in the field and comes up with the plans that keep Barry in once piece. And while I side with those who dislike the newer, slimmer Amanda Waller design, I cannot deny that John Ostrander's Wall is very much here in spirit, no matter her appearance.

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.

The Flash: Season Zero #5 & #6 - A Review

The good news is The Flash has tracked down the circus performers who have been committing crimes all around Central City. The bad news is that all of them are metahumans and their leader - the ring-master Mister Bliss - had his natural talent for manipulating a crowd transmuted into an empathic ability to manipulate emotions and cause hallucinations. Thankfully, Cisco and Caitlin are on-hand to pull-off a speedy getaway when Barry fall into a catatonic state. But what hope do they have against a gang of super-freaks?


This story-line is an interesting one for me to read as a fan of the Starman series which inspired the character of Mr. Bliss.  There, Bliss was a literal demon - an incubus who fed on the suffering of others that had a particular fondness for the suffering experienced by circus freaks who didn't want to be stared at.  This Bliss possesses the same powers and personality but is all too human. It's a new wrinkle that helps separate this carnival of criminals from the Circus of Crime from Marvel Comics.


The artwork by Phil Hester and Eric Gapstur is still a mixed blessing.  Hester's a great artist when it comes to horror and Gapstur does a fine job when enhancing the darker moments of this story and the hallucinations caused by Bliss' power wonderfully.  But the scenes that don't require dramatic shading seem indistinct and half-finished. Again, I have to voice my love for Hester's artwork but wonder if he's really the best artist for The Flash or if he might benefit from being paired with a different inker.

The Flash: Season Zero #3 & #4 - A Review

The third and fourth chapters of the Freak Show story-line see Barry Allen having to surreptitiously deal with a number of incidents involving wild animal attacks all around Central City.  The clues he uncovers lead his crew at STAR Labs to conclude that the mastermind behind all this is a carnival owner named Mr. Bliss.  But will that information be enough to prepare The Flash for what he discovers under the big top?


Freed from the constraints of a television show's budget and the boundaries of reality, executive producer Andrew Kreisberg has gone hog-wild with the story for this series and it works out wonderfully. The scripts by Brooke Eikmeier and Katherine Walczak perfectly capture the tone of The Flash TV series as well as the characters involved, even as we're treated to such silliness as The Flash having to raid a local fruit stand to deal with a mob of hungry chimps.


Sadly, the artwork doesn't work quite as well.  Phil Hester is a fine artist but I question if he is the right artist for The Flash.  Hester's style is blocky, with a lot of hard lines. That aesthetic worked quite well on Green Arrow but it doesn't seem to fit a character as fluid as Barry Allen.  The heavy inks of Eric Gapstur don't help matters, but the artwork isn't bad.  It just doesn't seem to fit the characters.  Despite this, fans of the show will enjoy this comic immensely.

The Flash: Season Zero #2 - A Review

There are times when super-speed can be as much of a curse as it is a blessing and one of those times is when your body attempts to heal a broken bone faster than you can properly set it yourself. It's a good thing The Flash has allies he can count on at STAR Labs to lend a helping hand because he'll have little time to rest and recover. This is both because CSI Barry Allen has been called to the crime-scene that he just left as The Flash and because another mysterious villain is about to wreak havoc on Central City.


The second issue of Flash: Zero Year is far-less fast-paced than the first. Thankfully, this issue is a fun read in spite of that. Most of the script here is devoted toward exploration of the characters - particularly Barry Allen's friends at STAR Labs and his co-workers in the CCPD - and in setting up our new villain. There's little action to be had but the cliff-hanger ending promises a lot of excitement in the next issue.


As in the previous issue, the penciling duties are handled by the always-excellent Phil Hester.  Hester's distinctively angular style is tested here, as he proves to be as capable of drawing exotic animals as he is superheroic action. The inking by Eric Gapstur is decent enough but I do think he overdoes it on some panels and some of Hester's fine details are lost as a result.  Thankfully, these moments are few and far-between and do little to harm the final effect of the issue as a whole.

The Flash: Season Zero #1 - A Review

Adaptations are a tricky thing in any medium. Readapting something into its original medium is even trickier on those rare occasions when it occurs. And yet, that is what we have with The Flash: Season Zero - a comic series based on an as-of-yet unaired television show that is itself based on one of the most famous comic book heroes of all time.


Thankfully, this first issue makes no assumptions as to the reader's familiarity with The Flash mythos.  The script by Brooke Eikmeier and Katherine Walcazk (based on a story by Andrew Kreisberg) does a fine job of explaining everything for first-time Flash fans while keeping things interesting for those who know the DC Universe backwards, forwards and sideways.

We are quickly (no pun intended) introduced to Barry Allen and are shown how he gained the power of super-speed.  This information is relayed to us in flashback, as Allen's life flashes before his eyes whilst in the middle of a fight with a super-strong bank robber.  We are also introduced to the supporting cast from the show and learn a fair bit about Barry as a person as we see him at work in both his secret identity and as a superhero.  For instance, he's definitely an animal lover and he tends to pets as well as people in the midst of a crisis.


The pencils for this first issue are handled by longtime Green Arrow artist Phil Hester.  Hester's one of the best action-illustrators in the business and he perfectly captures The Flash's sense of motion on every page.  The inks by Eric Gapstur are a little heavy at times and the darker look of these pages seems at odd with the usually bright aesthetic that is typical of a Flash comic.

That said, the artwork is still uniformly excellent and any newcomers to the world of The Flash will find this a most welcoming entry point.  If you're planning on catching The Flash this fall, you should be reading this book.