Friday, April 25, 2014

The Flash #30

   I have to admit that this issue of The Flash confused me (though that's apparently the idea).

   It starts out five years in the future, as Iris is apparently badly hurt in an accident of some kind - and someone else has died. The Flash shows up too late to save the day.

   Then we jump to the present, where Central City (like the rest of the world) is still recovering from the Crime Syndicate attacks in the Forever Evil mini-series (which, we should note, hasn't actually ended yet).

   Then we jump further into the future, where we see a version of the Flash acting in an unstable way.

   So what's going on? No idea.

   Most of the issue is given over to Barry Allen attending a session with a psychologist to discuss the recent trauma the members of the police department have been through.

   While he's discussing his feelings, he keeps ducking out at super-speed to continue his work rebuilding the city, trying to make amends for the fact that he wasn't there when an army of villains attacked.

   This story should be of interest to long-time fans of the series, because it finally brings up a name that fans have been asking about since the beginning of the "New 52" stories (and no, I'm not talking about Mopee).

    The story by Robert Venditti and Van Jensen is ok, but it only manages to raise lots of questions (and may well cheese off some fans) - and provides no answers.

   The art by Brett Booth and Norm Rapmund is pretty solid, but there's not much variety - we either see page after page of Barry sitting in the doctor's office, or poster pages of the Flash running through the city - and that's about it. It would be nice if the story would give the hero more to do.

   So this series continues on the same track it's been on for two-and-a-half years, loaded with stories that are ok - but not much more than that.

Grade: B

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