COMICS!! Review: Flash #2

This review was originally posted on my ComicVine.com account HERE. Check out my other comic reviews there, too. Or don't, if you wanna be that way.

In my quest for comic bi-partisanship, I was scouring recent DC titles to latch onto. As stated in my review of Power Girl #13, I always have trouble jumping on to DC books simply because their storylines are just so gosh durn crazy that I'm always intimidated to try something new. Whether driven away from the sheer ambiguity of many of their team titles (seriously, people complain about Marvel having too many Avengers titles, and yet DC has JSA, JSA: All Stars, Titans, TEEN Titans, JLA, JLA: All Stars, etc. etc.), or by some obligation to give the dudes a fair shake since the only DC series I was reading was Power Girl, but I eventually ended up taking home the first two issues of The Flash reboot.

Ah yes, the Flash is another one of those peripheral characters that I've sadly never followed in his own series. I'm familiar with the Flash family, the Rogues, the Speed Force, and a lot of the back-story on each individual Flash, but I've just never bothered to read his stand-alone titles. That is... until now.

The Skinny on Story

Simply put, this is an amazing title. It's easy for me to overstate such things so early in a series' life cycle, but I was just so energized by this issue in-particular that I just have to say how excited I am to pick up the next few issues that are already out. In this series, Barry Allen is back working as a Police Scientist in his native Central City. Mirror Master (or someone who is using his moniker) winds up dead and it's up to Barry to figure out not only who did it, but who this Mirror Master actually WAS. Things take a turn for the bizarre when a group of Rogues from the future claiming to be good guys try to arrest Barry for the future murder of their teammate. Meanwhile, good ol' Captain Boomerang finds himself locked up in Iron Heights Prison with no hope of escape, and Iris (Barry's main squeeze) is busy investigative journalizing all over the place. So yeah, there's a lot going on.

Flash AND Substance

What I love about the story itself is that it FEELS like a comic book. It's not trying to be gritty and realistic or attempting to wax philosophical about anything. It's just an extremely fun and well-written comic book story about a superhero and some baddies. It doesn't hurt that Geoff Johns is really on his game with the writing, as each bit player in the story is at least given something interesting to do and the characterization of Barry himself is pretty great. Whatever good I can say about the writing would go double-y for the art, which is truly a reason in and of itself to read this book. Francis Manapul's style is just so unique; sketchy, yet clean, detailed, yet stylized. No matter how one describes the visuals, there's always one word that should come to mind. That word is "gorgeous".

The Verdict...

It's really difficult to think of negatives for this issue. I mean, there are a couple of coloring inconsistencies here an there... but that can be said for just about ANY issue of ANY comic. Really, this is a relatively air-tight story at this point DESPITE the breadth of things going on at once and as I've stated, the art style is just magnificent. I cannot wait to see where these characters go and what Geoff Johns is doing with this story and Flash himself. Putting it as concisely as I can, Flash #2 is as flawless a comic as any on shelves right now.

5 stars out of 5.