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Discussion Includes:

Firstly, to get it out of the way, the art isn’t pretty. It isn’t one of those books you go ‘ooh, what a beautiful panel’ to, in fact, the images are quite depressing. Everything feels incredibly dark and dreary, like the pages are weighed down by too much ink. If it was down to the art, Fear Itself would’ve won, but it wasn’t… so it didn’t.

I guess I’m not much of an Andy Kubert fan, and he certainly hasn’t been given time to be able to do his best work. There’s a few images that are certainly awesome sauce, but I think it’s more down to what happens rather than the aesthetics. Seeing Barry Allen all burnt and messed up, covered in bandages is cool, as is seeing the Flashpoint Superman SPOILER all weak and miserable. Not only has he been cut off from the sun, but it also looks like he’s been listening to loads of Morrissey.

So, cool stuff happens, and I think Flashpoint is beginning to live up to what it promised. Before this issue, a lot of the interesting moments were happening in the tie-ins, leaving the main book as all set up. Now, it seems we’re through that and the story has started to kick off, Flash is getting the team together and looking at setting things right. One thing that I really like about Flashpoint is where it could go, because it could do anything. I guess the same could be true for Fear Itself, but I don’t think so, not with the knowledge of the DCnU. For all the hype, Fear Itself just seems like the good guys vs the bad guys (not that I haven’t been enjoying it, it’s just not as interesting).

I guess it comes down to what you want from a story, do you want something familiar or something a bit different? Both these events are really entertaining, and shit’s been hitting the fan in both, but in my mind the shittiest fan is located in Flashpoint. Please read this as a positive thing, I realise having a review with a conclusion like ‘it’s got the shittiest fan’ may seem negative, but I’m just trying to mix things up a bit yeah?

Joe Innes.

While the first issue teased us with glimpses of a strange new world and then bombarded us with information about it, this one is much more secure in exploring it both internally and externally. In this way we are given two brilliant scenes of Aquaman and Wonder Woman enforcing order in their respective kingdoms with equal ruthlessness (although any scene that dishes out some pain to Deathstroke the Pirate automatically gets a cheer from me).

Meanwhile, Barry Allen has an understandably hard time convincing Thomas Wayne of his tale (does Professor Zoom the Reverse-Flash have some grand plan or is he just the biggest bastard in the universe?) What comes through in this slightly overlong exchange is just how different this Batman is, a broken man who would give up everything to bring his son back. As Mr Innes observed, the Knight of Vengeance series appears to be getting the most out of the character while it can and I love the idea of exposing a neo-noir vein within a big, colorful science fiction story.

Andy Kubert once again delivers fantastic work constructing a dark and twisted world infused with the typical DC campiness. Intentional or not, he is also able to find black humour in the strangest places, especially if it’s a brief misadventure in a customized electric chair.

Joe Read.

Brian Azzarello is writing an incredibly well thought out spin on the Batman character, which is somehow incredibly subtle and monumentally different all at the same time. In normal DC continuity, Bruce Wayne fights a dark, never-ending (some would say losing) battle against crime in a bright(ish) wider world. Thomas Wayne seems to be winning his battle against crime in Gotham but within a dark and twisted wider world, I thought that was awesome.

It all comes down to the character I guess, Thomas Wayne is not only a darker version of Batman, he’s genuinely miserable. He’s doing whatever’s necessary to get the job done, and he doesn’t brood for hours on the morality of killing a criminal, who are particularly creepier than usual…

The art helps set the twisted tone, Eduardo Risso brings a Mignola-esque flavour to Gotham that really drenches the whole issue in misery, the use of greens and huge blocks of shadow help. There’s one incredibly visceral fight scene where you can feel every ache and pain in Batman’s body, who doesn’t run and jump about, and certainly doesn’t know 127 major styles of combat. He does know how to win though, and that means fighting dirty.

This issue is an incredibly disconcerting thing of beauty, and it lures me further into this temporary new world DC have created just like Alice… Because I have a friend called Alice, and she told me she was really enjoying the Flashpoint tie-ins.

Joe Innes.

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Discussion topics include:

With little introduction we are thrown into a Twilight Zone style scene of a powerless Barry Allen waking up in a world very different from his own. There is a wonderful build up here as a few small differences lead into some more significant revelations, (‘Super-Man?) Any comparisons to Marvel’s House of M won’t hold up for long since this alternate reality is a tad more dystopian. As befits the hero of the title, Johns keeps the pace zipping along, teasing the reader with curious details about this new world until roughly half way though issue when…things…slow…down. In fact they almost come to a crashing halt.

When a gathering of faintly familiar superheroes confronts a red-eyed Batman, the storytelling tactics shift from showing to telling. For example, it would have been great to actually see something of the war in Europe between Aquaman and Wonder Woman but instead we hear about it from Cyborg. Perhaps I demand too much spectacle from a first issue but it felt like a cop out. This is not helped by an overload of exposition about this world and the underwhelming supporting cast that doesn’t feel very necessary. Of course once the focus turned to a hilarious sequence of the Flash stuck in a traffic jam this was all forgiven and forgotten. Congratulations must also go to Messer’s Johns and Kubert for turning the already child friendly concept of Captain Marvel into more of a Saturday morning cartoon than ever before.

There is more than enough here to keep any fan of the DC Universe coming back for the next issue but I hope by then that less will be more.

Joe Read.

Joe Innes.