The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop Blurs The Lines When Central City's Villains Become . . . Heroes?!

The Good: Decent artwork, Good plotting
The Bad: No character development, Very predictable plot arc
The Basics: The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop brings closure to the pre-Rebirth New 52 incarnation of The Flash with a crossover from Gotham City that (generally) works!


As with many fans of the television show The Flash, I was fairly disillusioned by the third season of the show. In fact, the third season was so unsatisfying that I have had a lot of trouble getting up the enthusiasm to rewatch and review the entire season. So, knowing that is on my list, I figured I would get in the mood for it by returning to the source material. That takes the form today of me picking up and reading The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop.

The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop is not the next volume in The Flash from where I left off, but I decided it might be a good book to pick up because I could fairly review it on how it stands on its own (as opposed to within any of the larger arcs going on at the time the story begins). And, the truth is, I have been out of a lot of the recent DC Comics arcs, so whatever post-New 52 reboot is going on in the larger DC Comics universe, I have not gotten into it. So, this is a pure review of The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop, which is an anthology of issues 48 - 52 of The Flash.

Barry Allen accompanies Captain Frye to the temporary police station in Central City where Allen learns that the Mayor has set up a task force to capture The Flash. The task force is led by Captain Cold and Snart has brought on his team of Rogues to accomplish the goal. The CCPD blankets Central City in drones to monitor for Speed Force Energy, so Barry knows he cannot use his abilities without falling into the CCPD/Rogues trap. But, when a chemical explosion is set off by a villain using a methodology to track and capture The Flash, Barry Allen is forced to spring into action. While the Rogues initially catch The Flash, Captain Frye tasks the team with actually preventing further chemical explosions, which gives Barry an opportunity to escape and stop the team hunting him.

Unfortunately, while Barry Allen works to cover up a blood sample that might give the task force an edge, Wally West's speedster powers begin to manifest. The drones detect Wally and lead the task force to Marshall Flecher Middle School and to protect the civilians there, The Flash intervenes. In the process, Trickster is able to deploy his new weapon, a restraining arm, against The Flash. But before Frye can properly arrest The Flash, the man pulling Trickster's strings shows himself and The Riddler reveals his ultimate plan to take control of Central City by eliminating The Flash once and for all!

The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop is a remarkably formulaic The Flash book, even if it has the traditional adversaries in the role of law enforcement. The basic set-up for the book makes a decent amount of sense; the Rogues are the most-equipped group capable of capturing The Flash for legitimate law enforcement purposes. Hiring them makes a certain amount of sense, especially given that Leonard Snart has been on a redemptive arc and had abandoned the Rogues for a turn in the Justice League. Returning to the Rogues, he tries to reorganize the criminals to work toward their common goal and Snart does his best to keep the various elements of his group in line.

Predictably, the Trickster is the leak link and the book begins with him happily under the thumb of the Riddler, who has long wanted to match wits with The Flash. The Riddler is an interesting adversary to use against The Flash as he is smart-enough to concoct a plan that would actually challenge Barry Allen. In fact, the Riddler's final mistake in The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop is uncommonly sloppy. He has stacked the deck in a remarkably sensible way through his drones; his poorly-executed endgame seems like more of a matter of plot-convenience than organic character work.

As it may be clear from the paragraphs about how the antagonists act and react in The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop, Barry Allen is something of a second fiddle in his own story in this book. Allen does not grow or develop; he is concerned with protecting his identity and he is willing to sacrifice in order to save lives in Central City. None of these ideas are particularly audacious or different for the character. In fact, the only real character difference in this volume is that Barry Allen has his father to rely upon as an emotional support and sounding board for his ideas. As a result, The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop feels underwhelming on the character front.

That said, the artwork in The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop is generally good. The colors are vibrant and sharp, the characters are all rendered in ways that make them recognizable and clear. Most of the panels have a decent sense of movement within them or between panels. The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop looks good.

In the end, The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop is an absolutely typical volume of The Flash; Barry Allen works as both a forensics detective and as The Flash, a new villain comes to town, the stakes are raised, good triumphs, the end. The Flash, Volume 9: Full Stop might dress the conflict up nicely, but it does not truly rewrite the formula; it embodies the formula.

For other Flash graphic novels, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Flash Archives, Volume 1
The Flash Vs. The Rogues
The Trial Of The Flash
Born To Run
The Return Of Barry Allen
Terminal Velocity
Dead Heat
Race Against Time
Emergency Stop
The Human Race
Wonderland
Blood Will Run
Rogues
Crossfire
Blitz
Ignition
The Secret Of Barry Allen
Rogue War
Full Throttle
Lightning In A Bottle
Flash: Rebirth
The Dastardly Death Of The Rogues
The Road To Flashpoint
Move Along
The Life Story Of The Flash

5.5/10

For other book reviews, please check out my Book Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Flash Forward, Flash Back: The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time

The Good: Good artwork, Engaging plot
The Bad: Predictable a-plot mystery, Dialogue that does not include any real wit to it
The Basics: The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time is an interesting story, even if it fundamentally alters Barry Allen's character!


Every now and then when I read and review a graphic novel, I find myself considering what I would have done differently if I were the one writing the story. Usually, these days, I find myself thinking that I would give the books better artwork and I am pretty content to start with that. But when there is a book like The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time, where the artwork is fine, I have to go deeper and it is a rare thing where I have so few critiques of a graphic novel that I cannot imagine changing much from what I read. In the case of The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time, I probably would have made the dialogue zestier - the book is somewhat hampered by dialogue that is so straightforward it is sometimes boring - and an adversary in the a-plot that is not quite so obvious.

That said, The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time is one of the New 52 books that actually popped for me.

The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time picks up after the events of The Flash, Volume 5: History Lessons (reviewed here!) and Forever Evil (reviewed here!). Those who have not read Forever Evil will miss a lot of the magnitude of consequence that is hanging over Central City in The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time. This is very much a book that relies upon readers having read and comprehended the world-shattering events in the prior volume and the ancillary work to understand what is going on with Barry Allen. The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time is also the book that places Wally West in the role of The Flash for the first time in The New 52!

Opening five years in the future with Iris West and a teenager apparently dead at the scene of an accident that The Flash could have prevented, the narrative returns to the present, where the Central City Police Department has been ransacked in the wake of the Crime Syndicate's reign. Barry Allen has to visit the department shrink, Dr. Janus, to discuss the effects of the Crime Syndicate destroying Central City. During his session, he runs out and helps Forrest get through his trauma and brick up a hole in Iron Heights. Twenty years in the future, Barry Allen (in a very different Flash suit!) has an epiphany on how to change everything that went wrong in his life and Central City; saving Wally West's life from the car accident.

Barry Allen meets Wally West, Iris's nephew, when Wally is out graffitiing anti-Flash markings on a building. In the future, Barry reveals himself as The Flash to the wheelchair-bound Iris West and promises her he will save Wally. His first stop it to Gorilla City, where he executes the speedster Grodd! In the present, the Central City Police Department is overwhelmed with cases from the Crime Syndicate's reign and Barry Allen disappoints Singh by taking what appeared to be an easy-to-close case and proving that the prime suspect could not have committed the crime! When the Central City Art Gallery is attacked, The Flash runs into the robbery only to discover the thieves are armed with technology specifically-designed to take him down. Shortly thereafter, an attack is made in Central City using gear from the obscure criminal Black Mold; a crime Black Mold could not have done as he was in traction at the time! While Barry hunts down clues that make it appear that one criminal managed to get all of the super-weapons out of the crime lab storage during the Crime Syndicate's reign of terror, the future version of The Flash continues his trek back through time to thwart his enemies.

The Future Flash and The Flash ultimately collide in a battle that makes sense, even if it is not emotionally satisfying (though it is the least-predictable option for its resolution, which was nice!).

Fans of The Flash are likely to be split on the interpersonal melodrama contained within The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time. When The New 52 began and rebooted Barry Allen's story, the Barry Allen and Patty Spivot relationship was one that gave traditional fans of The Flash real issues. In reinventing the franchise, the writers actually worked to give Spivot and Allen a fair shake and for those who invested in it, it was reassuring to see that the writers did not simply mortgage that to reestablish the familiar dichotomy with Allen and West. In The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time, there is far more interaction between Iris West and Barry Allen than there is between Allen and Spivot and the lengths Barry goes to to help Iris with Wally is somewhat unrealistic given the quality and character of his relationship with Patty and with Iris in the other books in the series.

That said, the Future Flash is an interesting one and his views on his younger self is pretty cool. The Future Flash bursts into the narrative not only with the weight of years of experience and guilt weighing upon him, but with training from some of the most dangerous fighters in the DC Universe, which makes him a formidable foe for all of the adversaries he encounters. There is a strong sense of irony throughout The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time in that Barry Allen evolves into, essentially, The Reverse-Flash.

As for the mystery of the weapons taken from the police evidence lockers, that is very insular to The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time and it suffers from a similar problem to most television mystery shows. On television, there is a habit - which was beautifully lampooned on Family Guy - of putting the most famous guest star in the role of the Murderer Of The Week. In The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time, there is a similar phenomenon where after several incidents that Barry Allen investigates, a new, named person pops into the narrative in a painfully obvious way and attentive readers will instantly recognize his purpose there.

The artwork in The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time is generally decent, which makes things like Grodd eating Eobard Thawne's brains particularly unsettling. The Future Flash looks awesome and for the brief time at the end of the volume that Wally West spends as The Flash, his costume looks pretty incredible, too!

While the dialogue in The Flash, Volume 6: Out Of Time might not pop in any interesting ways and there is the sudden obvious villain to resolve the mystery plot, the book is entertaining and has some deeper character themes that make it well worth reading!

For other The Flash volumes from The New 52, please visit my reviews of:
Move Along
Rogues Revolution
Gorilla Warfare
Reverse

6.5/10

For other Graphic Novel reviews, please check out my Graphic Novel Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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