The trouble with a change of creative direction, no matter how good the new creators and new direction, is that if the previous direction was really good, it's going to be tough for the creators to get their momentum back. To use an apropos analogy, I felt like The Flash was moving along at a pretty good clip when Johns and Kolins were on the book, and though the sharp turn it took brought some intriguing surprises, it also slowed the book down and now the whole thing is having to get up and running again. Whew. That's actually a pretty bad analogy. At any rate, while The Flash with Johns and Kolins hit the ground running and rarely let up, the Johns/Porter Flash is so far having a tough time grabbing my interest at the same level. There are some neat moments and ideas in this issue, but as a longtime fan of the title, I still feel like we're in neutral, with too much re-establishing of the status quo and not enough forward motion in the story.
One of my favorite things about Johns's take on The Flash has been an unapologetic old school superhero vibe combined with a very fresh take on these familiar characters. A big part of this old school approach has been the decision to put action sequences in just about every issue, and this one is no exception. Having the Rogues cliffhanger of the previous issue resolved so quickly felt a little anticlimactic to me, surprising given that Johns generally writes the most dangerous Rogues this side of Ostrander's Suicide Squad, but I can't deny that it was fun to see Jay Garrick and Bart Allen show up for an old fashioned speedster team-up.
Surprisingly, the more interesting aspects of the issue for me come in the more talky scenes, rather than in the action or the application of speed. Johns's opening sequence, reintroducing Fallout and the Iron Heights Penitentiary, is just a very well-written scene, and I loved the glimpses of the new Flash Museum, a tradition in the Flash comics for a good long time. I also very much enjoyed seeing James Jesse, FBI agent, again, and I'm curious to see where his story is going from here. Johns is obviously in setup mode as much as he is in status quo rebuilding mode, and I hold out hope that all this build-up will result in a needed burst of speed for the book very soon.
Because unfortunately, too much of the story for me just didn't work, for one reason or another. Johns's decision to have Linda miscarry still resonates through the book, and I still think it was the wrong choice. Trying to maintain an upbeat superhero tone is difficult when that shadow hangs over the story, and Wally comes off this issue as mopey and fatalistic, which is certainly realistic given what he went through but not a great deal of fun. Even the joy of the reopened Flash museum is tainted, because we know what being the Flash has cost Wally, and the decision of Linda to leave just twists the knife a little further. Mix in a feeling that we're getting a lot of infodump about just who knows Wally's identity and why and minor storytelling glitches (such as, the JLA teleporter isn't able to snatch people like that, last that I knew), and all too often I'm just left disappointed.
Then there's the change in artwork. I loved Scott Kolins's work on this book, and was very disappointed to see him go. And while I really enjoyed Howard Porter's work on Fantastic Four, his work on The Flash hasn't been as good as that work yet. Perhaps its down to the inker, the colorist, the cheaper paper, but for whatever reason Porter's work on this book has been solid but not much more yet. His characters don't have expressions that are defined enough to carry a lot of the emotional weight (especially the all-important moments of joy), his layouts are solid but don't have the energy that Kolins often brought to the book and I guess I'm just finding too many sharp angles and not enough of a softer touch in a lot of the work. It's good art, certainly, but it's not the spectacular visuals that Kolins brought to the book.
