Though it’s unlikely this Flash run was going to end before the 800th issue, maybe the last volume would have been a good place to stop. Flash Vol. 19: The One-Minute War was a kicky mini-event spotlighting the whole of the Flash family; Flash Vol. 20: Time Heist, though exciting and surprising in places, just can’t rise to the same level. I am wholly unsure about what I understand to be a horror-tinged Flash title with the new team coming up next, but here at the 20th volume it very much feels like this version’s time has passed.
[Review contains spoilers]
There are a lot of reasons to like Time Heist, not the least of which is the West twins and Maxine “Animal Girl” Baker teaming up with the Super Sons — and I do mean, through time travel shenanigans, the classic young Jon Kent and Damian Wayne. It is rather fantastic, given events in a Super Sons miniseries that I never read, that young Jon is out there and available for issues like this, and I’m glad writer Jeremy Adams made this happen. (Also — Reverse Grodd!)
But the ways in which this issue is also lackluster sets the tone for the whole book. Villain Knives Maroney is able to abduct the kids because of the Eternity Mind — a sphere he just “found” that can “retrieve anything from time and space. No fuss. No muss,” never explained further, which is thin even by comic book standards. Similarly, whatever weird time-lost dimension the kids are in conveniently also houses Granny Goodness so she can conveniently also take possession of the Eternity Mind; I don’t expect great works of literature in every adventure comic, but Time Heist feels it’s not trying too hard right from the jump.
[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]
That extends, for me at least, to the book’s art. Quite a few of the main “Time Heist” chapters start with artists like Sera Acuna, drawing manga-infused Flash kids, or the always stellar work of Fernando Pasarin — and end with Tom Derenick. Acuna’s figures have depth and movement, while the hair on Derenick’s Damian looks like it’s defying gravity, perpetually sticking straight up. Pasarin draws giant, detailed monsters; Derrick’s faces are locked in rictus, teeth bared in 1990s-esque fashion. It’s all Adams' writing, but the sheer difference between the great scenes of Omega-Bam-Man and Gold Beetle fighting monsters and the humdrum scenes of Flash fighting Granny Goodness (arguably the more important plot) demonstrate strongly the effect the right artist can have.
And believe me, I wanted “Time Heist” to succeed, especially when Adams brings the android Hourman back to modern continuity (Quick! Don’t let him get away again). Plus Mr. Terrific’s team the Terrifics, plus Gold Beetle and Omega-Bam-Man, plus an astounding splash page where Pasarin draws a hulking Anti-Monitor, for goodness' sake! (Not to mention the Titans references in regards to Granny’s other kidnapped kids.) But a lot of it comes to nothing — the Terrifics mostly stand around, the Anti-Monitor is vanquished totally off-page, and Hourman is at one point felled by water in his circuits, which you’d kind of think wouldn’t be a thing for an 853rd century robot.
Surely too there’s an answer for why Wally West is aged in his time-lost space journey but his new infant son Wade is not, though I think the book presumes too much by not asking the question even if it doesn’t answer it.
Time Heist ends with stories from Flash #8001, each a welcome pairing of writer, artist, and character, and each, I’m sorry to say, also feeling like they missed the mark for me. Adams' final word on Flash Wally West is again wonderfully drawn by Pasarin, but still a “You Shoulda Seen Him”-type tale that ends mostly predictably. It’s fun to see Mark Waid write, and Todd Nauck draw, Impulse again (that “ask your parents” joke stings!), but for better or worse the “Bart’s smarter than he acts” gag isn’t much different than what Waid would have written in the heyday. Ditto it’s nice to see Joshua Williamson with Carmine Di Giandomenico, but the super-small panels are hard to parse — what’s Barry Allen pinching in his fingers in the top-left of the eight-panel page? What’s happening in the desert in the panel right below that?
To Geoff Johns' credit, his Hunter “Zoom” Zolomon story takes place in the aftermath of Williamson’s run, the only “relevant” short here. And of course Scott Kolins should be the one to draw it, which he does with aplomb, and nice psychedelic coloring form Luis Guerrero. But Zolomon seems like going back to a tired well for Johns, versus writing Wally or Barry proper here, or giving Jesse Quick some representation, or Captain Cold Leonard Smart, or Morillo and Chyre, or writing a Flash: Ignition-era story dedicated to late artist Alberto Dose. If at some point Johns will follow up on this Zoom story, more power to him, but for what we have here, Zoom ends in about the same place he began, and that seems less than it should be.
I flipped through the next Flash book up, Flash Vol. 1: Strange Attractor. I can’t speak for Simon Spurrier’s words quite yet, but Mike Deodato is certainly drawing a trippy, mature-looking comic, the kind a casual reader might pick up and think, “I can see why people spend their hard-earned money on these.” For me, Flash Vol. 20: Time Heist just isn’t that. All due respect to writer Jeremy Adams — he brings Hourman back! — but it feels like this run sputters out in the end.
[Includes original and variant covers]
-
Unceremoniously. There’s no cover between the end of Jeremy Adams' Flash #799 and the start of his #800 story, such that at first I thought the #800 story was some kind of related epilogue to #799. ↩︎
To your point about Hourman -- which, agreed, hooray! -- he's been floating around the fading light of the Geoff Johns corner of the DCU. He had a pretty major role in "Stargirl: The Lost Children" (which should have included the Spring Break Special, but didn't), and I think he's been in JSA, but that 12-issue mini has been limping along for nearly three years now.
ReplyDeleteWait, I'm not seeing a Stars & STRIPE review from you...
Yeah, I've given up on Johns' JSA relaunch, too. After a decade of neglect, the JSA needed a big push...and the delays have killed it.
DeleteAs I've said before, I still think it was ultimately a mistake for him to come back at all. I love the original run and what he, David Goyer, and James Robinson did in updating the team for the 21st Century.
But...Johns wrote the JSA for a decade. If you want these characters to remain relevant to the current readership generation, you HAVE to let new talent and ideas into the sandbox. Johns coming back feels like greatest hits being replayed.
And I feel the same way about his and Kolins' Hunter Zolomon story here. I may not have fully agreed with Williamson's Zoom narrative choices...but with retrospect it probably was the right move.
Nobody's really known what to do with Hunter since Johns ended his original Flash run 20 years ago (and that was before Thawne was resurrected). Williamson at least gave his story and arc closure.
Dragging Hunter back like this feels regressive and stagnant.
Zach, unless I'm very confused, the Stargirl: The Lost Children trade *does* have the Spring Break Special in it. (But still nowhere — *nowhere* — is the Dawn of DC Primer story!)
DeleteAlso, I covered Stars & STRIPE under the JSA Presents banner. See these:
JSA Presents: Stars and STRIPE Vol. 1: https://collectededitions.blogspot.com/2008/10/review-jsa-presents-stars-and-stripe.html
JSA Presents: Stars and STRIPE Vol. 2:
https://collectededitions.blogspot.com/2010/03/review-jsa-presents-stars-and-stripe.html
Enjoy!
Oh phew! I must be remembering old solicitations, but glad to see it's got the whole thing in it.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd also forgotten that the Stargirl trades were branded as "JSA Presents." Looks like the only full volume collection had a CW tie-in photo cover. I'm a little surprised DC didn't lean into the character's TV popularity in the way of, say, Dreamer. But then there's always been a kind of implicit ownership from Geoff Johns, and not wrongly so.