The Flash has been a comic I have wanted to get into and learn more about, and luckily The New 52 has given me the chance this week with the relaunch of the Fastest Man Alive. The first issue of
The Flash from The New 52 was just an alright issue for me, nothing really stood out besides that the artwork was really nice and the end was a surprise.
The beginning of the issue reminded me a lot of Spider-Man in the sense that Barry was on a date at an event, a robbery took place at the event, Barry had to sneak out to turn into the Flash in order to keep his identity a secret and after the baddies are taken care of he sneaks back while someone was trying to find him. I'm not saying all that is a bad thing, it just kept me with something familiar and made me want to read more on what's going on.
The artwork in here was really well done, it's probably one of the best parts about the issue; Brian Buccellato did a superb job with the nice coloring and Francis Manapul was excellent with his crisp artwork. Speaking of the look of the comic, I really enjoyed how the beginning was laid out, it reminded me a bit of a movie. You have the beginning of the comic with something dramatic going on and them the hero comes running out with the credits between each panel of Barry turning into Flash; you really don't see that too much in comics.
In here, we are not given a villain straight away or having some bad guy blow something up, instead we have a mystery at foot in which Barry is trying to figure out, which seems to involve clones of a dead friend of his. It looks like it has potential, that's why I'm going to continue reading, just to see what happens.
I've heard that
Flashpoint is still canon in the New 52, I'm not too sure if that is entirely true or not considering I haven't read much DC comics prior to the reboot. If it is true though, then I'm surprised because you don't need to know much backstory unlike
Green Lantern, all you need to do is Wikipedia Barry's background and that should be good for now.
Overall, I believed
The Flash to be just alright; it wasn't the best comic to come out of The New 52, but it wasn't the worst either. The writing was weak, but what Flash is going to face in the next issue made it interesting at least and the artwork to me is what held the comic together the most. Nothing pops out besides the artwork, the opening and the end. I'm going to continue reading the series though, just to see if it does pick up for me.