The Flash has gone trough quite a few incarnations.  The original golden age Flash started it all, but was replaced by Barry in the early 60s.  The appearance of Barry is what most scholars mark as the start of the silver age of comics. He was later replaced by his side kick Wally when he supposedly ‘died’ due the crisis in the 80s.

He came back a few years ago, and it has been Barry ever since.  People have a lot affection for Barry, but the original Barry was always very boring.  For someone so fast, he was staid and conversation.

Flash stories should be fun, light and quick moving.  And I’m glad to see the new creative team see it the same way.  In the past Flash stories have been tied down to serious ideas: accidentally killing his nemesis and put on trial, responsible for everyone else powers, stuck in the future, problem kids, etc.  The flash is fast, and his stories should be even faster.  I think this new story fits the bill.  It starts with a robbery and ends with foot chase, and the only thing in between is talking to two pretty girls.  I guess the work place stuff is there to set up the story, but it should probably be replaced with more running.  The story sets things up nicely, we know who he is, and what he can do, and who his friends are.  We don’t know his motivations, or his personality, but hopefully that will come quickly.

The art is nice and open.  It skews a bit on the cartoony side, but it fits the story.  He is good at drawing action and motion.  In the past speed was shown be either blurring the background (and keeping flash in focus) or blurring the flash (and keeping the back in focus).  But the artist instead adds a trail of lightning energy to show the flash in motion.

My big question is: how does he put on his costume now?  it looks like it pieces together over him?    B   Don

Along with Hellblazer and Daredevil, the Flash has been one of the more consistently good-to-great ongoing books that has lasted for decades. The highlights for me were when Mark Waid and Geoff Johns had runs on the title, but there have been surprisingly few “low” points. Geoff Johns’s last run never seemed to quite get off the ground, and now Francis Manapul has joined DC’s current legion of artists-turned-writer/artists (no, that’s not a new Legion of Super-Heroes spin-off, but just give them time…) to take over the writing and art duties. If the first issue is any indication, he’s off to a good start.

I’ll admit, I grew up mostly with Wally West as the Flash, and I knew Barry only as a rather bland character whose biggest contribution to the DCU was his martyrdom in Crisis, so I’m not overly excited about the fact that he’s the “one and only” Flash again. However, there’s been more character work done on him in the last year than in his first couple of decades of existence, and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we get the Wally we used to know somehow.

The art is a big factor in how well a Flash book works – it’s always an extra challenge to make super-speed look “right” on the page, and Manapul’s take works very well. His depiction of the costume change is also well done – it’s new, but a combination of the old ways — at one time, his costume was folded into a tiny ball and fit in his ring. Later, Wally West would just conjure up “solid speed force” as his costume. The current method combines those, with the sigil on the ring popping off and making it look like pieces of the costume form and arrange around it. At the very least, it’s a decent justification for all those extra seams that Jim Lee seems to want to put into all the new versions of the costumes.

They finally seem to be taking advantage of Barry’s job as a police scientist, too, so that’s another source of potential story threads available. By this last week of the “New 52″ I’m feeling the strain on my wallet and finding myself looking for reasons not to follow a book, but I haven’t found them in the Flash.

B+ — Ed