Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

Flash #235
DC Comics
Waid, Rogers, Williams II & Braithwaite

Finally! A decent issue of the Flash! You can make the argument that the previous four issues of the re-launch of the Wally West version of the Flash has been setting up towards this moment. Personally, I would think you would want a quick win with Flash fans and waiting until the fifth issue is way too long. This has been a boring build up at a time when this comic needed a boost. But this issue delivers the goods.

Flash has enlisted the help of John Stewart Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Black Lightning to invade the water creature’s world. We get some good team dialog among them. Wally is no longer the wise cracker mischievous one. Now that the villains are in his city and he has kids, he’s all no-nonsense. I can’t say I am crazy about this character development, but at least we get some character development.

Once they get underwater they fight the war against the water creatures. After fighting and fighting, Wally realizes that the water (that is breathable) is actually making the Justice Leaguers hallucinate that they are fighting villains. They are really fighting nothing at all. Wally smells a trap. He can’t break the others out of their funk so he surfaces alone. He discovers his city is under siege by the water creatures. He rushes home.

There he finds out his son, Jai, has left his mom and sister to fight the water creatures alone. Wally catches up to him and they finally have the talk about how Jai and his sister could die at any time due to their rapid aging and powers progression.

Finally, we have some resolution to Jai and his fears and Wally and his overbearing parenting of one of his kids. Things are starting to fall into place in the West household it would seem. Amazingly, it only took three pages of dialog to achieve this.

Wally and his son Jai charge into battle for the cliffhanger ending.

The backup story is only six pages long and it involves Wally and Bart visiting the same planet that Jay and Barry had visited in the previous two issues. This story shows the brashness of Bart and how Wally did his best to bail him out and teach him lessons at the same time. This story seems to be tying in the water creatures from the main story as well. This story lacks in one big area: Wally’s real personality. We completely skipped the fun-loving, daredevil, Flash that Wally was for so much longer than the era when Bart was around. This backup story was also a reminder of how dumb it was to “off” Bart so quickly. What a waste. I didn’t like this installment of the backup story as much as the others because I feel like it jumped too much of Wally’s personality and its seeming tie-in to the main story.

As a whole this issue was very good. It was light years ahead of the previous issues. It had action, character development, deception, mystery and plot movement. I actually want to see how this ends. How refreshing!

The art isn’t my style, but I must say that with the involvement of the other JLAers I felt like the art had a better fit. Maybe the kids are what made it look so strange to me before. I’m not sure, but this issue the art seemed click more with me.

This issue probably isn’t for more than the die-hard Flash fans. I think the curious will be left cold. I liked this issue and I need about five more in a row of this kind of comic to be convinced that Flash is turning around. That seems like it will be hard to do with a new writer coming in, but we shall see.

4 out of 5 geek goggles.


Flash #235

DC Comics
OCT070169D