Though I enjoyed the dark and unusual take on The Flash to be found in "Ignition," I confess that I was looking forward to Johns getting back to playing to his strengths with a more brightly clad, overtly superheroic Flash. Unfortunately, while this is a great jumping-on point for new readers, in making it such, Johns has made it a bit repetitive and predictable for those of us who have been following the book for a long time. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty to like here, including some great moments with the Rogues and solid artwork by Howard Porter and Livesay, and the clear setup of Flash's status quo and recent history makes this one of the best introductory issues of The Flash in a long time, but for those who have already picked up on Johns's underrated Flash run, a lot of the information and character tidbits dropped in this issue fall into the category of "been there, read that."
I was kind of surprised to see Johns falling into the trap of telling instead of showing at the beginning of this issue. Johns has always been good at getting us inside Wally West's head, but in trying to provide plenty of exposition, he sort of overloads the beginning of the book. In trying to give new readers insight into what happened in "Ignition," Johns slows down what should be something of a fast-paced intro for those same new readers, and while there's still a pretty good balance of action and characterization to be found, I found myself thinking "yeah, but I already know this" a lot during the opening sequence.
I was also a little disappointed to see Wally expounding on his conscious decision to be an optimistic hero despite the losses he has suffered recently. While I love that Johns is keeping this classic take on the character, I still don't entirely buy how quickly Wally bounced back from the tragedy and having him sort of lay out what seems like a meta take on the character in his dialogue rings false to me as well. Johns does show us Wally engaging in this more classic heroic behavior, fixing an engine at superspeed or helping out with traffic, and I think the book would have been stronger if he had let those sequences speak to Wally's demeanor rather than having Wally self-analyze.
As a catch-up issue or jumping-on issue, though, The Flash #207 is pretty good. The entirety of the "Ignition" story and its after-effects is explained for those who skipped that story and we get a reintroduction to Flash's Rogues gallery for those who don't know them, complete with an action sequence featuring several of them. In addition, Wally's narration felt overbearing to me, but as a treatise on the character by Johns, it's hard to beat. How he differs from his Justice League counterparts, why he does what he does, what his powers are, everything is laid down for those who haven't already been checking in.
In fact, the really big new thing in this issue is the change in artists, as Howard Porter comes off a very successful run on Fantastic Four to become the new artist. Porter's work here is good, although I do miss the Norm Rapmund inks which really complimented his style on Fantastic Four. But he does a great job with the sense of motion that is so important with this title, a beautifully detailed and sinister-looking depiction of Iron Heights and some nice work on the Rogues, especially Weather Wizard and most of the new additions that Johns has made to the ranks who show up in the latter half of the book.
