To be honest, I thought that "Crossfire" was running a bit long... no pun intended. However, this final chapter is fantastic, as good as any issue that Johns and Kolins have done on the book, with plenty of action, a neat reiteration of the Flash and the cities he calls home and some fairly important status quo changes for a lot of players in the book. When it comes to classic super-heroics, The Flash is about as good as it gets right now, and this final chapter of "Crossfire" serves to illustrate that point nicely.
Johns and Kolins have spent a fair amount of time during their run establishing the Rogues, both classic and new, and "Crossfire" was their chance to shine. While everyone loves a good bad guy, however, it's hard to be a super-hero fan and not love seeing the bad guys getting their come-uppance more, and so this issue was a lot of fun for me. Without making the power level of the villains suddenly fluctuate unbelievably to allow Flash to beat them, Johns gives us a great story about the Flash facing down his arch-enemies. He also seems to hold to the Silver Age style of superspeed, with one particular sequence in this issue almost pushing my suspension of disbelief too far, but ultimately landing in the "too cool not to love" camp.
While The Flash is and always should be about the super-speeding lead character, both Mark Waid and Geoff Johns have written the book as something of a team comic. Wally's allies get plenty of chances to shine this issue as well, including a really great scene with Detectives Morillo, Chyre and Rogue profiler Hunter. I also appreciate that Johns has restored the status quo of one of the supporting characters back to his classic status. This former Titan has suffered plenty of degradation over the years, and it's nice to see that he could be made back into the interesting character he once was. It's not as exciting, however, as the other big status quo change, which has me very anxious to see the next Rogues story from Johns and Kolins.
Kolins, Panosian and Sinclair of course are in top form as always. There are some awe-inspiring splash pages here, from the rampaging of the Network through Keystone to the shot of the restored bridge and the twin cities that serves as a visual representation of Flash's victory. Kolins's work on these characters has become for me the definitive take in several instances, and I doubt I'll look at Captain Cold, Cyborg, Weather Wizard or indeed the Flash the same ever again.
I've long been a fan of the Rogues Gallery of the Flash, and it seems like it's been quite a long time since we've seen a story that really played them up as the cool villains that they are. Johns, Kolins and crew have done better than that with "Crossfire," though... not only did they deliver a great Rogues story, they've set up room for an even greater one in the future.
