Flashpoint Friday Week 12

Flashpoint #4 - While I’ve tried my hardest to be enthusiastic and positive about this crossover for quite some time, this issue has shown me that all of my positivity has been for nothing. Without a shadow of a doubt, I can officially call this a failure of a crossover and perhaps the most ambitious failure I’ve seen in quite some time. I’m a huge fan of both Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert, but they have let me down more than I ever could have imagined. 

Johns has proven himself time and time again with big event stories like Infinite Crisis and Blackest Night, but in those stories, there was a balance between action and character development that made those stories compelling and thrilling. This issue, like the three before it, features numerous pages of characters sitting around and talking about how they wish there were heroes and nothing happens. Finally, in the last 6 pages, we finally get to see the war between the Atlanteans and the Amazons but Kubert’s usually kinetic art comes off as static and unintersting. Everyone looks posed and statuesque rather than in motion.

After the last issue comes out in a few weeks, I’ll discuss the overall thematic implications of Flashpoint because as a whole, it poses some questions worthy of discussion, but the problem is that the questions posed aren’t particularly interesting.

Batman: Knight of Vengeance #3 - Even though I was sorely disappointed with Flashpoint the main series, I suppose I should be grateful that it exists because without it, we wouldn’t have this phenomenal mini-series. This issue shifts away from exploring Gotham City without Bruce Wayne, and focuses on what Thomas and Martha Wayne would have been like without their son.

This was such a powerful conclusion to the story and I can’t express how much I love it. Seriously, go buy this comic!!!

World of Flashpoint #3 - This issue completely turned the entire mini-series around. I wasn’t a fan of the two previous issues, but to see Traci be so heroic and kind in a universe filled with so much darkness and inaction is comforting. Thematically, WoF is about how even though so much seems hopeless in the world, if everyone makes an effort to improve the world around them, then things will get better.

Is it cliche? Yes, but it was a message that I needed this week. It’s not a novel idea, but as simple as it is, it made me realize why I love comics – their unrelenting hope. Things will get bad in our world, but things will always get better if we try.

So even though I was less than enthusiastic about this comic before, buy this comic now.

Deathstroke #3 - I was a little shocked that this comic came out this week instead of Abin Sur, but here it is and it ends in an unspectacular way. Jenny Blitz might be Jenny Sparks from Wildstorm and that means that her old boss, the Caretaker, may or may not be Henry Bendix, but none of that really matters. They seem more or less to be completely new characters and ones that aren’t very exciting.

Don’t waste your time

Secret Seven #3 - I don’t know what happened in this series and I don’t care. The Enchantress’s betrayal at the end of the mini comes as no surprise given that she betrays everyone in Flashpoint, but this mini at least gives the reader some idea why she would turn on everyone.

Maybe it’s just because I didn’t know anything about Shade before going into this title or maybe I don’t like magic comics or maybe it’s just a bad comic altogether. Whatever my reason for not enjoying it, avoid this comic.