Thursday, November 30, 2006

Making Action Comics look much better

You know what sucks? The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive. I mean, I didn't even drop the last series during that awful, awful last arc. I've bought every issue of this current new title, hoping with each one that the story would get better, and after that little glimmer of promise in the Kerschl-drawn issue, I thought maybe my hopes had been fulfilled. They hadn't. This is easily the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel worst book I buy each month. And this latest issue was doubly terrible, from inconsistent art to a lame, continuity-lax recap of the events that led to Bart becoming the Flash, to the cheeseball ending line. What utter and disgusting crap.

So, I'm no longer buying this book. I know it's getting a new creative team in a few months, but I haven't been shown anything--anything!--to suggest that having Bart as the Flash is a good idea. And if you can't sell me on the most basic concept of the book after six issues, then there's a good chance that it's a bad #$@&ing concept.

The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive is a bad comic. Do not buy it. Force DC to realize that 'angsty teen trying to fill the shoes of his predecessors and being all depressed about it' is not only clichéd (especially for the Flash), not only antithetical to the whole Flash dynasty that has been established over the last several decades, not only goes against everything in Bart's character, but is far, far, far less interesting than 'can even the fastest man alive juggle superheroics, a job, a wife, membership in the JLA, and newborn twins?' which should have been the direction after Infinite Crisis. But, instead of trying something new and playing with the toys they had, they decided to walk one of the most well-worn paths in comics and pretend it was revolutionary.

So, DC, you just lost a loyal Flash reader. Good job.

4 comments:

Derek said...

Couldn't agree more.

This is the first Flash series I've ever bought, having only recently started buying comics, and I am thoroughly disappointed.

The Justice League cartoons made me fall in love with the Flash character. That's the whole reason I started buying this series.

I dropped it last issue. I was thinking about picking up this issue, my Geek OCD getting the better of me, but your post has cemented my decision for me. Time to say goodbye to the Flash.

Tom Foss said...

It's too bad, too, since the last series had so many good moments. I can't say that there's been any Flash comics in recent memory that have the same kind of fun as the animated version, but you pretty much can't go wrong with any of the Waid or Johns arcs, most of which are collected in TPB form.

Derek said...

Sweet. Thanks for the recommendation.


Out of curiosity, which Flash are those? Wally is who I'm interested in, but everything I've heard about Barry's stories sound right up my alley too.

Tom Foss said...

That's pretty much all Wally; most of the collected, non-"Archive" stuff is Wally.

Although, Waid's "The Return of Barry Allen" is the story that got me interested in the Flash, and that trade just recently got reprinted.