Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

Flash

New For Patrons: Definitive Guide to The Flash

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While the little one naps (and I recover from a nasty bug seemingly felling everyone from our gym all at once) I launched a Complete Guide to The Flash (all four of them!) to CK’s Crushing Comics Club Patrons.

Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, Wally West, and the short-lived tenure of Bart Allen – it’s all covered from Flash Comics in 1940 through the present day! This guide should be available to the general public in May to coincide with the end of the third season of The Flash on CW.

Head to Patreon to become a supporter of Crushing Krisis. Chip in as little as $1, or get early access to guides for the price of a single comic or cappuccino every month! We’re currently only $2 away from Patrons covering all of the monthly costs to host and serve CK!

Comic Book Review: DC Universe Rebirth Special

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Have you ever attempted to make a new first impression on someone? Did it actually change their opinion about you?

I think it’s a near-impossible feat. First impressions are the ones that last. After that, each successive impression provides an increasingly diminished return until you’re barely changing someone’s opinion about you at all with each meeting – just reinforcing it.

How could you make a brand new first impression? It’s not enough to simply say, “Hey, look, I’m different now!” Even if your target believed you, they would still weigh your new behavior against the old you.

No, to make a new first impression you need an explosive bombast of both context and contradiction – a shy friend who slays a karaoke, or a messy coworker with an impeccable neat home. You need to convince them that their first impression was demonstrably wrong – or, at least, so incomplete or controverted as to be useless.

Every piece of fiction has the dilemma of making a first impression by introducing you to a universe you’ve never entered before.  It’s hard enough to make a good impression introducing yourself let alone an entire universe! Even if they’re successful with that first impression, sequential storytelling mediums sometimes have to re-impress you, as with the season premiere of a TV show.

Few other mediums do what comic books so often do – willingly relaunch dozens of books at the same time with new directions as a means of screaming, “LOOK! We’re really, really different now! All-new, all-different, actually.”

And, of those that have, hardly any have ever put all the onus of an entire multi-title universe on a single episode the way DC Comics did on DC Universe Rebirth last July. Read my critical take on the issue below, and then head to the DC Rebirth Guide to follow your favorite characters from here.

DC Universe Rebirth #1   Amazon Logo  

Written by Geoff Johns with line art by Gary Frank, Ethan Van Sciver, Ivan Reis with Joe Prado, and Phil Jimenez with Matt Santorelli and color art from Brad Anderson, Jason Wright, Gabriel A. Eltaeb, and Hi-Fi Colour Design

DC Universe Rebirth is exciting and inscrutable – a tantalizing glimpse of change for continuity nerds and a tangled skein of contradictory continuity for new readers.  It’s a love note dense with heartfelt apology to longtime fans that weathered all of New 52 and a Rosetta Stone for DC’s new continuity.

It is not necessarily the first comic you ought to read if you’re new to DC Comics or coming back from a lengthy lapse … unless you happen to be a major Flash fan.

The issue uses the device of Wally West trying to return to the present day from within the Speed Force, where has has been trapped since the Flashpoint event that lead to New 52. He follows several hunches on who can pull him out of the aether of time and back into reality. It’s not just about survival. West has critical information that might help to amend a timeline that has grown dark and cynical (and lost a decade of memories along the way).

Like the Ghost of The Fastest Christmas Ever, he first visits Batman (he’s the best detective!), an old guy named Johnny (he has the best chance to remember things!), and his former partner Linda (love will bind them together!), each without much success. Finally, he says hello from the other side to current flash Barry Allen (super-bros FTW!). [Read more…] about Comic Book Review: DC Universe Rebirth Special

DC New 52 Review: The Flash #1

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I always wonder – are simpler superheroes simply better?

Take The Flash, for example. On one hand, it’s a snap to translate him across mediums. No dark origin. No alien lineage. No link to Greek gods or convoluted weakness. The Flash is super-fast. That’s all you need to know.

The problem that arises is which way writers take that simplicity. Make a simple hero too pedestrian and he’s effectively a beat cop. try to craft too much mad science and mythology around a simple hero and the concoction collapses under its own way.

DC has visited both sides of the spectrum with The Flash, most recently using him as the impetus for their line-wide relaunch with their special event, Flashpoint. I have no interest in that Flash – running through time with his super-speed.

I refuse to believe that there aren’t enough challenges on Earth a little more complex than bank robberies but still not a synch to solve with super-speed alone. Surely there’s a place for a straightforward hero without making him boring or unbelievable.

The Flash #1

Written and illustrated by Francis Manapul & Brian Buccellato

Rating: 4.5 of 5 – Remarkable

In a Line: “Somebody please tell me I don’t have a homicide with Flash’s fingerprints on it!”

#140char Review: Flash #1 is a magnetic fast-paced tale worthy of its charming hero, w/gorgeous art that’s still comic-y & glows on the page. Good clean fun.

CK Says: Buy it!

The Flash #1 is a beautiful, energetic, fun first issue that frames The Flash as both a hero and a human, who is caught within tricky mystery his speed cannot immediate solve.

Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato write a seemingly simple story that’s full of deft turns, introducing Barry Allen’s world in layers. First they set the place, then a name, then the nature of their hero, before finally evoking the red frictionless suit to get the adventure underway. You go from zero to Flash expert in a matter of pages – or, at least, expert enough to never feel left out even without a coddling origin story.

I realized all of that after my read was through. What struck me in just a single panel is the beautiful art of Manapul and Buccellato and the intrinsic, compelling link between the art and the script.

The issue practically glows, and I can’t explain why. It’s the mix of Manapul’s background elements that don’t seem to have any lines at all with slick foreground characters rimmed in thick black lines like mascara. They fairly leap off the page.

Meanwhile, Buccellato’s colors don’t look like typical comic colors, but instead seem like color pastels rubbed onto the page and then illuminated from below with a lightbox.

Maybe it’s the gala event Barry is attending at the beginning of the issue, but Manapul’s character designs have the retro simplicity of Mad Man – or, at least, their animated Mad Men Yourself app. His Flash is attractive out of costume, but stunningly handsome in it – a blue-eyed everyman Adonis you can’t help but cheer for.

Flash might be the fastest man on Earth, but that doesn’t make his world any simpler. His hot nerd first date with co-worker Patty Spivot is interrupted by masked mercenaries and he’s being hunted in and out of costume by persuasive reporter Iris West, but first he has to do his job and crime-scene-investigate the merc who mysteriously died after Flash kinda saved him from a deadly fall by throwing him through a building, except for the dead guy is an old friend of Barry’s, which makes their next conversation a little complicated.

Got it? And that’s just in the first half of the issue.

The Flash lives up to its hero’s name with a kinetic first issue that’s easy to consume in a blink, but both the story and the art warrant a more slow-motion read. It sets up a mystery without being a major brain-teaser like some of the other amazing books out from DC this month. What it is is good clean fun in comic form that you can love equally as a kid or an adult – which is exactly the best way to frame a Flash comic. Manapul and Buccelatto seem like they were born to bring this hero to life.