No one misses Iris? She sort of spends the issue kidnapped.

Manapul and Buccellato can’t seem to plot the issue. It opens with a huge action set piece–the Flash saving a planeload of people–but it’s boring. Manapul can do all the double page spreads he wants, it’s still just a drawing of an airplane. Visual effectiveness doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing on TV as it does in a comic.

Then the rest of the issue is Central City dealing with its huge power outage, but Manapul and Buccellato skip the Flash actually helping people. They cut to some annoying science guy for a forced tie-in to Captain Atom. The attempts at Marvel-like continuity between series is painful.

There’s a hard cliffhanger and it could be a fun resolution. I doubt it.

Manapul and Buccellato’s Barry Allen narration is overcooked and annoying too.

The Flash‘s flopping.

CREDITS

Writers, Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato; artist, Manapul; colorist, Buccellato; letterer, Sal Cipriano; editors, Darren Shan and Brian Cunningham; publisher, DC Comics.

You’ve got to love a cliffhanger where the lead-up is so visually incomprehensible, it’s unclear what’s happening. I think the bad guys teleported a plane to crash into a bridge. Not sure why a plane crashing into a bridge is the most effective use of energy, but maybe Manapul saw it in a movie and liked it.

The Flash is astoundingly uncreative. That statement made, it’s passable this time, just because of what Manapul and Buccellato… is plagiarize too strong a word?

See, it turns out the DC Universe is bound together by an energy field called “The Speed Force.” And if Barry Allan taps into it, he will become a Jedi like his father. I guess it’s not plagiarism as much as laziness.

It’s not particularly terrible, just exceedingly lousy.

And some of Manapul’s pages are inappropriately–and amusingly–arty. He works way too hard on bad material.

CREDITS

Writers, Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato; artist, Manapul; colorist, Buccellato; letterer, Sal Cipriano; editors, Darren Shan and Brian Cunningham; publisher, DC Comics.

Why did DC hire Francis Manapul to write The Flash? I understand he’s a popular artist—even though his mix of sketchy backgrounds and slick foregrounds, to the degree it adds a false sense of focus, isn’t exactly mainstream—but did they need to keep him so much they gave him the writing chores?

Oddly, the writing is better than the art. I tired of the slick foregrounds after about three pages (the backgrounds are, falsely, interesting).

And the writing isn’t very good. Manapul and co-writer Brian Buccellato make a multi-ethnic Central City of the future. It looks like Metropolis.

Iris isn’t Barry’s wife or love interest; she’s Lois Lane.

And Barry? He hangs out on the police station rooftop like Batman.

It’s derivative and lacks any potential to get better. The cliffhanger is soft and boring. There’s no drama.

If I had any expectations, I’d be disappointed.

CREDITS

Writers, Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato; artist, Manapul; colorist, Buccellato; letterer, Sal Cipriano; editors, Darren Shan and Brian Cunningham; publisher, DC Comics.