MIDNIGHT

FLASHPOINT #5—Andy Kubert, Sandra Hope, and Alex Sinclair have done a fine job throughout this series throwing down some beautiful pages, but Geoff Johns’s beats were never really dialing in for me in the month-by-month. I jammed #1-4 right before it was time to hit the midnight sale and the entire thing read much better in one sitting. And then the fifth issue cranked things up splendidly. I dug and completely bought the whole thing being Barry’s fault in the first place, which of course was laid out for us right there at the end of FLASH #12, it just seemed somewhat nonsensical and anticlimactic at the time. But now that conversation with Iris is so great. “Just give me one more day.” Huh, just grasping the phrasing of that, could Johns have intentionally been thumbing his nose at Spidey/MJ/Quesada before setting up his very own continuity reboot? I’ve been real curious to see how we were going to get from old DCU to Flashpoint continuity to new DCU, and while it’s nowhere near as elegant as a Flash Fact, I suppose it will do. Barry broke time trying to save his mom, caused Flashpoint, Future Barry went back to stop himself from triggering the change, but wound up summoning some sort of temporal guide mystery woman and inadvertently fusing the DC, Wildstorm and Vertigo timelines together, because they all used to be one? It is a bit of a stretch, but what the hell. Moore first mined out Vertigo ideaspace on a DC paycheck, eighteen years later Jim Lee contracted to publish America’s Best Comics and then DC bought him, so there’s your connective tissue between the three. The only hiccup that this issue gave me was that letter. And don’t get me wrong, I’m all about Bruce pulling a win where family is concerned, but along with the screwed-up timeline of his own mini-series, I just can’t see when Dr. Wayne had time to pen a heartfelt missive to his parallel universe son who didn’t get shot. In transit somewhere, on the way from the Beck house, sure, it just strains credulity a bit much for me. And I am all about the running-so-fast-you-change-the-past. Oh, well. I guess this Batman had a plan for everything, too.

JUSTICE LEAGUE #1—Of course the art is gorgeous. I mean, really well done. And the story’s engaging enough on a shallow level. Half of the people on the cover meet for the first time and Vic Stone scores a touchdown. I completely understand why Johns went this route, the kind of decompressed approach that served Bendis and Millar so well ten years ago in the first year of their Ultimate runs. But, good-looking art aside, it reads to me very much as a lowest common denominator reboot origin. Not as much The Secret Origin of the Justice League as Justice League Begins. Really really courting those non-readers who show up for the Nolan flicks. It’s slick as hell and the banter back and forth is rat-a-tat-tat (even in the places where it makes you wince), but the story did not fill me with wow and wonder. It didn’t even have to hit the notes of Morrison’s first issues of JLA or JLA:CLASSIFIED. Old Joe Kelly did a fantastic job setting the tone in a very dense first issue (#61) that not only sent several plates spinning but served as a manifesto, a mission statement, for his entire run. I understand why they’re not really challenging anybody with this, inviting everybody in the pool, but maybe there are more folks who don’t mind scratching their heads at all the insane shenanigans erupting than they think. I’m certainly glad I went and got these at midnight, took part in the event and all, but I wasn’t expecting this title to crack my personal top five. It didn’t, but was still fun to read, which is maybe sometimes enough. It does have me keyed up for this month, though, I tell you what. The best is yet to come.