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Flash: Fastest Man Alive #1
Written by Gail Simone
Art by Clayton Henry and Marcelo Maiolo
Lettering by Rob Leigh
Published by DC
‘Rama Rating: 6 out of 10
DC’s ‘Digital First’ initiative is an interesting solution to the problem of modern living – repurposing print-exclusive stories from its Giant anthologies to be ‘new’ to digital readers. But Wednesday warriors looking for their fix probably aren’t going to be too impressed with the output here.
Gail Simone and company put forth a solid effort but it never really feels like more than another episode of the CW show. Because of the lack of narrative weight, Simone ramps up Barry Allen’s play-by-play in her captioning and it’s detrimental to the story overall.
Gail Simone is obviously a very talented writer with a long track record of success, but she just doesn’t sell me on a Flash one-and-done here. To her credit, there’s a lot of marks that she’s got to hit and she generally manages to hit them all. For folks completely unfamiliar with Barry Allen, Iris West or their world, Simone has to bend over backwards getting that set-up out of the way. That unfortunately leaves a lot less room for her face-off between King Shark and the Flash. So while she sets up what seems like it might be a fun way for Barry to handle the situation he finds himself in, all the air is taken out when you realize she’s run out of room and gives us a wishy-washy ending.
Clayton Henry’s art is intuitive and stylish, though. I like how he communicates Barry’s super-speed and his character renderings work well for the story. Despite Simone’s script overtaking a lot of the page (credit letterer Rob Leigh for walking that tightrope), Henry is still able to deliver a lot of narrative clarity to the proceedings. But at the same time, it’s a fairly straightforward, simple story. I don’t think Simone’s script challenges him to really take things to the next level and the uninspired setting for this issue doesn’t give him a chance to really flex his muscles.
All in all, this feels like a standard effort from this creative team. It’s not the best comic you’ll ever read and it’s not the worst. But I doubt you’ll remember anything about it as the quarantine days continue to run together. It’s a shame really because this is an opportunity for DC to spotlight their characters and creators in new and interesting ways but it seems like there is very little vision to that end. Flash completionists or folks hoping to sell their friends and family on the idea of comics might find something to latch on to here but overall, this is really a workmanlike but forgettable entry in Flash history.