This Retroactive teams up an actual pair of eighties Flash creators instead of just pretending. I’ve heard good things about William Messner-Loebs’s run on the title and, if this issue is any indication, it’s definitely worth a look.
He deftly combines danger and humor—it’s not a stretch to believe Wally West is going to team up with the ice-skating supervillain girl to try to figure out who’s after the Rogues. Wally’s perfectly established without really getting any opening scene of his own.
The story concerns an avid Flash fan who decides she and Wally are meant for each other so she’s going to replace the Rogues one by one. Drama and comedy ensue. Messner-Loebs keeps his characters real amid the absurdity all around them.
Greg LaRocque’s artwork is shaky in places, but he does superhero action well and handles the talking heads parts too.
Great fun.
CREDITS
The Path of True Love; writer, William Messner-Loebs; artist, Greg Larocque; colorists, Kevin Colden and Matthew Petz; letterer, Dezi Sienty; editors, Chynna Clugston Flores and Kwanza Johnson; publisher, DC Comics.
Thank you so much for the Retro title reviews. Now I know which ones to pick up. By the way, are they offering you the “classic” reprint back ups that come with these? You haven’t mentioned them that I remember, so I was just curious.
Yeah, the classic reprints sometimes have the same writer or artist (here it’s Messner-Loebs and LaRocque on the original too) and sometimes not.
I’ve been skipping them because the presentation is a little too slick and computerized. The reprint here, for instance, was so sharpened, contrast enhanced, grain-removed it looked like a forties comic.
They should also be, but aren’t, giving the reader a list of related issues to check out instead of just the chosen one.
Exactly. If you liked this JLA story, you’ll love # so and so. A real miss to keep people going in the direction the comic itself seems to beg for. Some of them have been real turkeys, too, but a couple (obviously) have outshown their current counterparts.