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The Flash #29
DC Comics, $2.99, 32 pages
Story Grade: D+
Issue Score: 53.75
RECOMMENDED FOR THE COVER ONLY
So, I missed this issue when it was released last week. Having realized my error, I picked it off the shelves this week, rather excitedly I must say, during my weekly outing to my local comics shop.
First off, the cover by Mikel Janin, colored I presume by Matt Hollingsworth, is nothing short of spectacular. It is not only one of the best comic book covers I’ve seen in some time, it’s among my very favorite covers of all time. It has action, danger, mystery, a cool flaming grim reaper, text that enhances the intrigue of the image, and a layout leading to the upper-right hand corner that all but begs even the most casual viewer to pick up the book and turn the page.
Inside, however, this issue is one hot mess. Within the first three pages you have not one but two full pages of exposition that pounds the reader into absolute submission. Somewhere I seen to recall Stan Lee saying that, in a good super-hero story, someone has to punch somebody by page three. That’s possibly apocryphal, but the fact remains that rather than taking off, the adventures of the fastest man alive grind to a screeching halt. The first page is not so bad as it gives us some key insights into Barry Allen’s New 52 persona, but the third is just him recounting everything he already knows, for no apparent reason. Hey, look, I’m old school. I believe every comic book can (in fact, should) be someone’s first, so new readers need to be brought up to speed, so to speak, but there are any number of ways it can be done better than this page.
Speaking of which, why go to all the trouble of catching up new readers only to drop the House of Mystery on them, literally. I can’t imagine the confusion that must have brought to a new reader. Heck, I’ve been reading comics for more than 40 years and I was confused. The art in this issue was far from being up to DC standards and I thought at first that the first panel showing the House depicted an explosion in front of some one building, but the actual House of Mystery dropping out of the sky. For that reason, I hard trouble figuring out what was so magically-special about the vase Deadman used to clock the killer. It was another couple of pages and the useless full-page splash of Flash running down the stairs that I realized we were dealing with the House of Mystery. Or, in this case, as it turns out, the House ex machina.
The cover, as it turns out, was a bit misleading. Flash’s mother, being dead, was never in danger, nor was she ever mentioned other than as Flash’s ongoing motivation. She certainly was not targeted by the Killer. The whole DNA back-and-forth was a bit of a chore to wade through and was not nearly as exciting as I image writer Brian Buccellato must have supposed. Oddly, what was not addressed by anyone was wether the Flash descended from the Killer though his mother or his father. If Mama Allen was part of the Fletcher family, we might have a possible explanation for her murder, but Buccellato never purses that angle. It is sort of interesting that the Flash now is part of an historical blood fued, given the pre-New 52 trappings of the Thawne family.
[COVER: 9.75 — PLOT: 5.0 — SCRIPT: 4.25 — LAYOUT: 5.50 — ARTWORK: 6.75 — EDITING: 4.0 — COLORS/PRODUCTION: 7.0 — DOLLAR VALUE: 4.75 — COLLECTIBILITY: 4.50 —GOSH-WOW FACTOR: 2.25]
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