Agree with the general gamut; "It was good, but nothing spectacular." Actually, the art is pretty spectacular, and people actually don't look
too much like the stilted mannequins that Van Sciver has been drawing for the past few years.
Still, I'm not sure how I feel about the whole "Overabundance of
lightning! Lightning goes everywhere! FILL UP THE PAGE WITH
LIGHTNING!!!" thing now being the de facto artistic motif for the Flashes. It's
very cool; it looks cool and is cool and whatever, but it really makes the Flashes' power seem like "electricity control" or something. If I had never known about these characters before and this issue was the first time I'd ever read about them, I'd swear to Buffy that each one of them had the power to shoot lightning from every orifice at their enemies.
I like how Johns writes Wally as a parent. There's a stern Republicanness about it that was kind of missing before and makes it feel a bit more realistic, not that I think Wally should be that all the time, or that past depictions of his parenting was really that off.
I will say, though, that I dunno who the **** this Barry is. No seriously, who is this emo freak ass? Y'know how GL: Rebirth actually made me like Hal and sympathize with him, at least up until his series? Yeah well that's not happening here. I don't understand this whole emo freak ass nonsense. It doesn't fit the Waid Barry, it doesn't fit Johns' own past Barry, and it
especially doesn't fit the optimistic, adventurous, charming Barry that Morrison wrote less than a year ago. So...there had better be a point to this emo freak assness.
And, uh, what's up with the whole "father [maybe framed for] killing mother" retcon? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that's a bigass retcon. Whassamatter Johns, you realized Barry wasn't interesting enough so you needed to force square pegs into his round hole?
...
Heh, I'm being all sarcastic at things but, again, the issue actually wasn't bad at all.
I love Bart being the voice of the fandome here, saying Wally is the Flash. At least the issue is evident.
I actually rolled the **** out of my eyes for that scene. Someone said elsewhere -- and I agree -- that it's "a completely transparent audience-insertion. He knows there are people who feel exactly that way and figures if he has a character in the story acknowledge it, that makes the story good." As if putting the fans' major concerns into dialogue somehow alleviates having to address those concerns, as if all you need to do to have a character stay relevant is to
mention his relevancy once or twice. Maybe I wouldn't be cynical if this was the first time it popped up, but we've all been thrice-burned at this point; Kyle...Connor...Cass...etc...etc...etc...etc.
