The Flash Episode Guide: Season 1, Episode 1 - Pilot

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.



Plot

Nine months after being struck by lightning, forensic scientist Barry Allen wakes from a coma and quickly discovers that the accident has given him the power of super-speed.  The scientists at STAR Labs want to analyze Barry and find some way to use him to benefit mankind but Barry thinks he has a higher purpose than being a guinea pig. When reports reach the police of a bank robber who seems to be able to control the weather, Barry concludes that he wasn't the only one empowered by the accident and that he may be the only one who can stop the criminal before he does some major damage to Central City.


Influences

The Flash: Rebirth (Barry's childhood as depicted in the flashbacks), Showcase #4 (the comic which first told Barry Allen's origin story) Sherlock (the visual cues and words overlaid on the crime scene as Barry examines evidence) and the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies (the opening/closing narration by Barry and Barry's overjoyed reactions while testing his powers.)


Goofs

The scene with Barry Allen and Oliver Queen is incredibly goofy. And Oliver Queen must have super-speed himself to put his mask on so quickly at the end of his conversation.


Performances

Grant Gustin wows in his first run on the center stage as The Flash.  Every note is played perfectly and the charisma he displayed in his first appearances playing Barry Allen on Arrow seems to have increased.  With most of the supporting cast being given only basic development (well, this IS the pilot) it falls to Gustin to bear the burden of carrying most of the episode and he succeeds admirably.

The best scene in the episode?  Barry's meeting with his father in prison, with Henry Allen played by John Wesley Shipp, who played Barry Allen in the 1990 The Flash TV series.  Both actors nail the emotional resonance of the scene.


Artistry

The special effects for the final battle in which Barry must neutralize a tornado using his super-speed are phenomenal and set a new standard for what can be accomplished on a television series budget.

The music is perfect, particularly the speed-building orchestral Flash theme.


Flash Facts

Barry Allen, in the original comics, was a blonde.  In terms of personality, however, Barry is pretty much as he is depicted on the show: a good-hearted geek who works as a crime scene investigator for the Central City Police Department. As the show opens, he is 25 years old.

Iris West, in the original comics, eventually became Barry Allen's wife. Her history in the comics is rather complicated compared to what we know of her in the show. In the comics, she's a reporter who could give Lois Lane a run for her money.  The two were not originally childhood friends nor were they raised together. And yes, Iris wasn't originally black.  Iris was also sent back in time from the 30th Century by parents who were trying to save her from some cataclysm... like Superman.

Detective Eddie Thawne is likely related in some manner to Eobard Thawne - a scientist from the 25th century who was also an obsessive Flash fanboy.  He would later get speed powers and go on to become The Flash's greatest enemy - Professor Zoom, The Reverse Flash.

In the comics, Caitlin Snow is the real name of the super-villain Killer Frost.  A STAR Labs scientist doing research on perpetual motion engines, a lab accident transformed her into a "heat vampire" who had to drain the warmth from human bodies to survive and - indirectly - generated extreme cold around her.

In the comics, Cisco Ramon is the real name of the superhero Vibe, who gained the power to emit powerful blasts of sonic energy after being exposed to a piece of alien technology.

The Science And Technology Advanced Research Laboratory - aka STAR Labs - in the comics was originally founded by a man named Garrison Slate.  In the reality of The Flash TV Show, the founder is a scientist named Harrison Wells.  This name may be a tribute to science-fiction writer H.G. Wells, who wrote on a number of subjects that would not be out of place among STAR Labs' studies, including alien technology, invisible men and time travel.

Detective Joe West is an original creation with no relation to any of Iris's fathers in the comics. Iris' birth father was a man from the 30th century named Eric Russell, who had his daughter sent back in time.  Iris's adopted father was a man named Ira West, who was a physicist - not a cop.

David Singh was the name of the director of the crime lab for the Central City Police Department and Barry's boss in the original Flash comics.  Here, he is a police captain, who has no direct oversight over the lab but still seems to favor quantity of cases solved over quality work, like his comic book counterpart.

Detective Fred Chyre - Joe West's partner, who dies in the shoot-out with the Mardon brothers - is named for a reoccurring character from Geoff Johns' run on The Flash.  The comics version of Fred Chyre was an beat cop rather than a detective.

The weather-manipulating Clyde Mardon is something of an original creation, though heavily based upon a number of characters from The Flash comics.  In the original Flash comics, Clyde Mardon was a scientist trying to develop a way to control the weather. His prototype Weather Wand was stolen by his career criminal brother, Mark Mardon, who killed Clyde with a lightning bolt and began to commit crimes under the name The Weather Wizard.  Later, Mark Mardon developed the ability to manipulate the weather without the need for his wand.  In the New 52 Flash comics, Clyde Mardon was named Claudio Mardon and a crime boss who was killed by his brother, Marco Mardon, who acquired weather control powers from a device called a Genome Recoder.

Barry's parents - Nora and Henry Allen - both appeared for the first time in Flask #126 in 1962.

As in the comics, Henry Allen is a medical doctor.

Barry's father's nickname for him is Slugger.

The death of Nora Allen, as depicted here, is taken from the comic The Flash: Rebirth by Geoff Johns (who co-wrote this episode).  The yellow lightning that killed Nora is indeed a man with super-speed, as Barry later speculates. In the comics, it was Professor Zoom, who went back in time to alter Barry Allen's past for the worse.

Barry Allen's inability to be on time is a running gag straight from the comics.

Barry is good enough at his job (or at least enough of a car buff) to identify a get-away car based on the tire track without any reference material.

The purse snatcher to grabs Iris' bag is played by Curtis Braconnier - a.k.a. Colton Haynes' stunt double on Arrow.

Eddie Thawne is a recent transfer from Keystone City.  In the DCU, Keystone City is the sister city of Central City and the home town of the original Flash, Jay Garrick and the third Flash, Wally West. The two cities have been likened to Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri.

The timeline for Barry's accident is changed slightly from its depiction in the Arrow episode 209 - Three Ghosts.  There, Barry missed the cut-off of the line to get inside STAR Labs.  Here, Barry does attend the first part of the ceremony, but leaves to chase after the purse-snatcher who steals Iris' bag before going back to his lab.

Barry is a Lady Gaga fan.

Barry spends nine months in a coma. This is symbolic of his rebirth as The Flash and may be a literal pun on the title of the story The Flash: Rebirth which inspired much of this episode.

Harrison Wells claims to have been left unable to walk by the accident with the STAR Labs particle accelerator.  17 people were killed by the accident with many more injured.  One of the dead was Caitlin Snow's fiance.

The broken cage with the GRODD sign at STAR Labs is a reference to Gorilla Grodd - a well-established Flash villain who is a talking gorilla with psychic powers.

Iris Allen works in a coffee shop.

The laundry van Barry uses to make a soft landing when he first discovers his ability to run super fast belongs to a business called Gambi Cleaners.  This is a reference to Paul Gambi - a character from the original Flash comics who was a tailor who acted as a costume designer for many of The Flash's supervillains.

The air field where STAR Labs conducts the speed test of Barry's limits belongs to Ferris Air. Comics fans will recognize this as the employer of test-pilot Hal Jordan aka The Green Lantern. Ferris Air also appeared in the first season of Arrow, with Oliver Queen thwarting an attack that was meant to destroy a Ferris Air jet.

Caitlin Snow does not smile much.

Dr. Wells' pose in his wheelchair while wearing sunglasses as he and his team are blown back by Barry's running may be a visual reference to the Blown Away Man used in advertising for Maxwell Cassette Tapes.

Barry clocks out at just over 300 MPH during his speed test.

Barry breaks his arm upon impacting with a water barrel.  We're told he heals the break completely in three hours.  Given that a broken arm takes three to ten weeks to heal, this gives Barry the ability to potentially heal from injuries 560 times faster than a normal human.

Barry's father is being held in Iron Heights Penitentiary.  Iron Heights is also the name of the prison in Arrow and it was the name of the high-security prison for super-villains in the original Flash Comics.

Iris began dating Eddie Thawne while Barry was in a coma.  They are both trying to keep this secret from her father.

Barry's clothes spark while running toward Starling City.  This was a frequent problem in The Flash comics and required Barry creating a friction-proof costume.

Starling City is 600 miles from Central City.

Barry notes there was a sharp increase in unexplained deaths and missing people during the nine months he was in a coma - potentially the work of other metahumans.

Cisco says that Barry will have to run over 700 MPH to neutralize a tornado.  This is just under the speed of sound at sea level. (761.2071 MPH)

Running around a tornado in the opposite direction to reverse it is a frequent stunt in The Flash comics.

By episode's end, Joe West is aware of Barry's secret identity. He agreed to keep it but asks Barry not to tell Iris about it in order to keep her safe.

It is Cisco who designs The Flash's emblem so that Barry's costume doesn't look boring.

The end scene reveals that Harrison Wells is capable of walking and does not need glasses.

Wells accesses a future newspaper - the April 25, 2024 edition of the Central City Citizen - through a device that vaguely resembles a Motherbox - a piece of high technology from the DC Universe, utilized by The New Gods, capable of all manner of amazing things.

The newspaper's front page has a picture of Barry in costume and reads FLASH MISSING - VANISHES IN CRISIS.  This is likely a reference to Crisis On Infinite Earths - the comic story in which Barry Allen sacrificed himself to save the universe.  This seems to be born out by secondary headline - RED SKIES VANISH - as the skies turning red was a part of the strange things that happened during the event.

The newspaper also has a secondary headline - WAYNE TECH / QUEEN INC MERGER COMPLETE.  This is a reference to the companies of Bruce Wayne (a.k.a. Batman) and Oliver Queen (a.k.a. The Arrow).  Curiously, Oliver's company in Arrow is currently known as Queen Consolidated.


Technobabble

Barry describes Harrison Wells as the world's greatest expert on quantum theory.

Barry's analysis of the poop found at the crime scene determines that it is cow manure laced with an antibiotic that is rare enough that he narrows the location it came from to four local farms.

Barry develops abs while in a coma.  Caitlin Snow explains this by saying that Barry's muscles - which should be atrophied - are instead in an chronic and unexplained state of cellular regeneration.

FEMA classified STAR Labs as a Class 4 hazardous location following the accident.

Dr. Wells describes the accident with the STAR Labs particle accelerator as an anomaly.

While hospitalized, Barry's heart was beating so fast an EKG couldn't register it, creating the appearance that he was flat-lining while in the hospital.  The hospital experienced odd power outages at the same time Barry was having these episodes, which were misdiagnosed as cardiac arrest.

Cisco designs a radio head-set for Barry with a camera, modified from a design used to block battlefield background noise or - in Barry's case - potential sonic booms.

The anomaly released "unknown energies", including anti-matter, dark-energy and x-elements, after a dimensional barrier ruptured.

Metahumans is the term coined by STAR Labs for people with super powers.  This is also the term used to describe people with genetic super powers in the DC Universe.

The costume Cisco designs for Barry is modified from a design he was using to create a new fire-fighter suit.  It is made of a reinforced tri-polymer that is heat and abrasive resistance.  The aerodynamic design should help Barry maintain control and it contains sensors the STAR Labs tam can use to monitor him from a distance.

Caitlin Snow is able to track Clyde Mardon by using STAR Labs satellites to track meteorological abnormalities.  She found a sudden drop in barometric pressure at a farm outside the city.

Cisco tracks Mardon generating winds up to 200 MPH.  He notes this could eventually lead to an F5 Tornado.  F5 Tornadoes are any tornado that generates winds over 200 MPH.

Mardon's ability to control the weather seems to offer some immunity to the effects of his own powers.  Otherwise, it's hard to explain how he could survive being in the middle of a tornado.


Dialogue Triumphs

Barry Allen: To understand what I'm about to tell you, you need to do something first. You need to believe the impossible.  Can you do that?  Good.  You see that red blur?  That's me.  That too.  There I am again.  My name is Barry Allen.  I'm the fastest man alive.

Nora Allen: It's better to have a good heart than fast legs.

Joe West: Why in the hell would God need to rob banks?!

Harrison Wells: You can do this, Barry. You were right. I am responsible for all of this. So many people have been hurt because of me and when I looked at you, all I saw was another potential victim of my hubris. And yes I created this madness, but you, Barry - you can stop it.  You CAN do this! Now, run, Barry, RUN!

The whole scene between Barry Allen and his father as they visit in prison.


Dialogue Disasters

Oliver Queen: Watching over your city like a guardian angel.  Making a difference. Saving people... in a flash!


Location

Barry runs to Starling City to discuss what has happened to him with Oliver Queen (aka The Arrow)


The Bottom Line

Perfect. Just perfect.  The special effects are amazing, the script establishes Barry Allen as a likeable protagonist and sets up the core idea of the show smoothly.  The only real problem is that the large supporting cast is barely given enough defining characteristics to develop further in the future, but that's a frequent problem with pilots.  I predict this show will become a fast favorite.

Dusk: Vol. 3 - A Kickstarter

My friend and colleague David Doub is currently Kickstarting a third volume of his amazing supernatural graphic-novel series Dusk.

As a battered wife, Eve’s only concern was keeping her marriage together. But when she is kidnapped into the sordid supernatural world of vampires and foul magic, Eve finds she doesn’t want to leave. Her mysterious benefactor, the Vampire Lord Ash, wishes her to have a normal life, but Eve chooses to stay in his service. Dusk is the story of Eve's challenges living in the darkness - a supernatural action-drama told through a dynamic blend of the sequential art styles of American comics and Japanese manga. Several artists help tell these stark noir tales of vampires and unrequited love.

Twilight: The Graphic Novel this ain't, folks!

If this sounds like the sort of thing you might be interested in - and I don't know why you wouldn't be - $10 will get your name in the book and a PDF of the book.  $20 will get your name in the book, the PDF and a physical copy.  That's a bargain even before the sense of satisfaction you'll get from supporting independent comics!

Click here to become a patron of the arts!

The Flash Episode Guide - Format Key

For The Flash Episode Guide, I'll be using a slightly modified version of the same key I use for The Arrow Episode Guide, which in turn is based off of what I think is the finest episode guide ever written - Doctor Who: The Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell, Martin Day & Keith Topping.

Here is the quick rundown.  No pun intended.


Plot: A quick summary of the main story.

Influences: Specific media which may have inspired or otherwise influenced a particular episode.

Goofs: Holes in the plot, visible wires during the stunts and other things that don't work the way they should.

Performances: The actors and their craft - how well the characters are played, ignoring how that character may have been differently portrayed in another story.

Artistry: Anything on the technical side of things that is notably well-handled, such as set-design, lighting, sound effects, cinematography, etc.

Flash Facts: Random things of interest and references to the comics.

Technobabble: Pseudoscience terminology used to justify the unlikely and/or impossible things that sometimes happen in superhero shows.

Dialogue Triumphs: Anything the characters say that make you want to put on a cape and fight for justice!

Dialogue Disasters: Anything the characters say that make you roll your eyes or snort in disbelief.

Continuity: Direct references to previous episodes.

Location: If the story is set someplace other than Central City.

Untelevised Adventures: Stories that take place off camera, but are referred to.

The Fridge Factor: How badly the female characters on the show are manipulated by the story in order to make the male characters look better.

The Boomerang Factor: How badly are the heroes manipulated to look incompetent and badly trained compared to whatever villain they are facing off against. Named in honor of Captain Boomerang, who - honestly - The Flash shouldn't ever have any trouble fighting.

The Bottom Line: Is it good or bad? Why is it good or bad? How can they make it better/not make it worse?

Four Reasons The Tesla Effect Was Not As Good As It Should Have Been

NOTE: This column contains SPOILERS for The Tesla Effect.  So don't read it unless you've already beaten the game or don't really care about having parts of the story and the puzzles spoiled.


As I said in my earlier review of The Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure, I enjoyed this game immensely.  My enjoyment, however, was not without reservation and while I was pleased with the game overall there was still a lot that detracted from the experience.  With that in mind, I've decided to highlight the four problems that prevented the game from being quite as good as it could have been.



1. Palette Problems In The Level Design

Back in the day, pixel-hunting was an unavoidable consequence of adventure gaming.  Graphics technology could only do so much to simulate a realistic environment and you had to look at everything with a magnifying glass on the odd chance that That One Item would be hidden behind something that could be pushed or pulled.or otherwise manipulated.

Graphics have advanced quite a bit since the last Tex Murphy outing and The Tesla Effect does take advantage of the improvements in rendering since then. Unfortunately, it seems they elected to replicate the old pixel-hunting puzzles by rendering everything in the exact same colors.

Granted, this isn't as big a problem in the game's easy mode, where the flashlight will highlight anything of interest when you stumble across it.  But there are several points - particularly in the Sensen temple at the game's midway point - where only by looking at everything from every angle will you be able to find several of the smaller items you need to advance on hard mode. Indeed, this was enough of a problem that the game designers made a joke about it in one of the game's trailers!


I'll give them credit for being able to laugh at themselves.  But it doesn't change the fact that this was a serious gameplay issue.  Indeed, one of the key reasons many critics slagged the game's mid-point was because of the hunt for That One Keycard, in the middle of a stealth level, which was hidden in a place that made little logical sense and was colored in a way that it blended in perfectly with the brown stonework in the brown room with the brown furniture and everything is brown, like a monk's robe is brown and suddenly it's an Eddie Izzard routine BROWN this and BROWN that and everything is BROWN!



2. Too Much Plot For So Little Story

It's well known among fans of the Tex Murphy games that the series' fifth game - Overseer - was meant to be the first part of a trilogy. Reportedly the second and third parts of that trilogy were condensed to create the story for The Tesla Effect and bring Tex's story to some kind of closure. All well and good except that the final game seems to be incredibly random about what elements from the original story have been included.

Case in point. Depending on what path you take through the story, you may come across a subplot which suggests that Tex is the reincarnation of another private investigator from 100 years earlier, who used to operate out of the same office.  Brief mention is also made of Nikola Tesla's interest in psychometery - the ability to visualize the history of a person or object through psychic or mechanical means.  Both of these ideas are used to explain why Tex had brief flashes of a life that wasn't his own.

So what does any of this have to do with the overall story?  Nothing really. Depending on your path, you may not come across this information at all! And even if you do, we breeze through the sections where we learn why pre-amnesia Tex was researching these subjects and very little is made of the idea that either reincarnation or psychometery are possible.

On a similar note, the revelation that The Tesla Society mastered the ability to bring the dead back to life is never truly explored.  And Tex himself mutely accepts the revelation that the story's big bad - The Translator - is the resurrection of the FBI agent who stole Nikola Tesla's papers far too easily. Granted, technological resurrection isn't the most outlandish idea in the game, but it is one that might have merited a little more discussion.  Indeed, any one of these ideas would be worth a game in itself!



3. Puzzles for Padding

So what takes the place of all the cut scenes that might have been used to expand on the world and the story?  Puzzles.  Endless logic puzzles. And mazes. And more puzzles.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy a good puzzle as much as the next gamer.  Probably more. But there are several points where it is obvious that more puzzles were put in to the game for no reason other than to prolong the gameplay during the parts where the story had to be sacrificed for reasons of time and budget.  There's very little detective work in the final half of the game, with the time that might have been used to explore some of the threads raised and dropped by the plot spent pushing buttons, wandering mazes and pixel hunting That One Item you need to move on to the next button-pushing puzzle.



4. The Characters' Actions Make No Sense Outside The Context Of An Adventure Game

I'm not talking about Tex's kleptomania.  Nor am I talking about the twisted logic that causes you to use explosive chewing gum to blow open a cabinet so that you can get a hammer so you can beat a gear back into shape so that you can repair the mechanism to open a completely different door that is stuck shut, when you could just use the explosive chewing gum to blow up the stuck door in the first place.

No, I'm talking about the motivations of the individual characters not making sense within the context of the story itself except as a means of padding out the game with more puzzles.  There's quite a few examples of this but I'm going to focus on two - Ariel (one of the potential love interests) and the Big-Bad himself, The Translator.

Ariel is a spy who has some kind of a past with Tex. A wiki for the series says that she had a brief romance with Tex at some point in 2040 but I don't think this information ever came up in the game. Somehow, Ariel figures out that Tex doesn't recognize her anymore based on one accidental phone-call and - when she runs into him later - she poses as the estranged wife of the neurologist Tex is trying to track down.

Later, when the truth comes out, Ariel says that she had to be sure Tex was still on her side.  Even though it was obvious that he had no clue what side he was on. Why go through that much effort to mislead Tex when he could just as easily be manipulated into helping her?  Hell, at that point she had nothing to lose by being honest and everything to lose by delivering a lie that Tex could easily disprove later.

If you decide to ally yourself with Ariel despite knowing full well she's a manipulative liar, she gives you information that may help you recover your memory.  This help comes in the form of a key to a sewer maze filled with man-eating mutants.  This leads you - eventually - to a note that tells you to go to the Blue Dragon warehouse.  There, you find the fragments of a picture and a number of objects that trigger more flashbacks of a life that isn't Tex's.

What does any of this have to do with the main plot?  Nothing, really. Why couldn't Ariel just tell you to go to the Blue Dragon in the first place?  Because then you wouldn't have killed 20 minutes wandering the sewer maze and putting together that torn-up picture!


For the problems with The Translator and his story arc, let's go back to the halfway point that was singled-out by many critics as the most annoying section of the game. It is here that Tex gets a lead on locating the neurologist who might be able to cure his amnesia. This lead takes Tex to the doorstep of an Egyptian-themed secret society - Sensen - who have a strenuous intelligence test for perspective members. You solve a sliding tile puzzle to open their gates, only to have all the alarms go off and be forced to flee.

When you arrive back at your office, you have a fax waiting for you.  This leads to an encounter with Big Jim Slade - a villain from Overseer - whom Tex has apparently become chummy with during his lost time to the point that the two are business partners. Slade helpfully gives Tex the item he needs to bypass the alarms on Sensen's front gate.

After spending a goodly amount of time doing logic puzzles to retrieve seven sacred symbols to pass Sensen's first membership test, you are granted admission... to a second testing area! Pass these tests and you are finally granted admission to the inner areas of the temple. Here, monks with flashlights are patrolling the halls along with high-powered spotlights and to be seen is to die instantly.

Solve all the puzzles in this area - which all hinge upon you first finding that furshuganla keycard - and you find the man you need, only to discover that he too has had his memory erased.  Thankfully, he has the tools you need to go retrieve the means to curing his amnesia and breaking him out of his cell. These puzzles take up the rest of the next game day and lead to the revelation that he erased his own memory to prevent the villains from finding out what he knew.

After the man commits suicide rather than be forced to talk, Tex is discovered and escorted to meet The Translator.  And it's here we find that Tex - along with Big Jim Slade - was in the employ of The Translator before Tex's chemically induced amnesia and that they had nothing to do with Tex losing his memory.  Indeed, they are as upset about Tex's memory loss as Tex himself.


So, let's backtrack.  Tex needed to get into Sensen. We know, based on the fact that they have alarms on the front gate that require a specific item to get in, that they are a highly secure facility that is being continually monitored by mechanical and physical defenses. Presumably this includes monitoring any new recruits that come into their facility and leaving them to their own devices, as the entire upper temple is deserted while the test of intelligence is being conducted.

Given all that - and the fact that the controls for the security system are hidden in a secret room inside The Translator's office - why doesn't he recognize Tex immediately and investigate why his hired detective is schlepping around without a clue? Why doesn't Big Jim Slade take Tex to go meet their mutual employer after his first failed attempt to get in the building?  Is it a test of Tex's intelligence and loyalty?  Why bother with this when The Translator is ignorant of Tex's amnesia until they meet for what is, from Tex's perspective, the first time?

Why?  Because the only reason any of these puzzles and the whole Sensen temple area exist in the first place is to provide an avenue for a bunch of puzzles and a stealth zone. It doesn't make a lick of sense for The Translator not to be monitoring who is entering his compound and yet that is the only explanation for why Tex is allowed to go into the temple in the first place!

Gotham Academy #1 - A Review

Olive Silverlock is not having a good year at Gotham Academy so far. Bad enough that she's snubbed by most of her classmates because she's attending the prestigious school on a scholarship! Now she has to mentor Maps - the younger sister of the ex-boyfriend who hasn't quite been ex-ed yet. Throw in the rumors of a ghost haunting the building and some things in Olive's past she's trying to get away from and it is going to be a long semester.


A manga-style slice-of-life comic set in a private school in the world of Batman?  Sounds a little crazy, doesn't it?  But sometimes the craziest ideas are the ones that work and Gotham Academy #1 definitely works.

The script by Becky Cloonan and Brenden Fletcher hits the usual notes for the first chapter of this sort of genre piece.  Our major characters and their quirks are established along with the setting of the Gotham Academy campus itself.  And there's even a little bit of action which establishes Olive as a brave and resourceful protagonist.  There's not a lot to indicate exactly where the series will go from here but enough mysteries are presented to offer several promising avenues of exploration.  


The artwork by Karl Kerschl is gorgeous. Kerschl's style fuses elements of both Eastern manga tropes along with Western cartooning to create something that is unique and memorable. The coloring by Geyser and Dave McCaig adds an additional astonishing level to the finished product.

Gotham Academy isn't the kind of book I normally read.  In fact, I dare say I'm the polar opposite of the audience this book is meant to attract. That being said, I found this first issue to be a promising start and think that while it wasn't quite my cup of tea, it will appeal to the audience it was intended for.