With Flashpoint, DC Comics manages to deliver a compelling crossover event title. Writer Geoff Johns pens this thrilling, mind-bending story, while Andy Kubert renders the story in a dark and gritty style. Flashpoint features an alternate timeline, an Elseworld or What If story, where everything has a familiar color but is shaded slightly different, a Twilight Zone episode starring Barry Allen as the Flash.
Allen wakes up to discover a DCU altered almost beyond recognition by his arch-nemesis Zoom, the Reverse-Flash, a world in which Thomas Wayne is the Batman while his son Bruce Wayne is long dead; Cyborg is the dominant superhero; Superman is under government detention in an Area 51-like compound; and Aquaman and Wonder Women are despotic leaders of warring nations that have reduced most of Europe to rubble. Thus far, only the Flash is aware of these changes, although in a related tie-in Booster Gold is also aware of the alternate timeline.
Flashpoint will be a limited series of five issues running until September. This is a welcome change after the prolonged Blackest Night and Brightest Day events, each of which ran for a year or more, creating convoluted and dizzying story arcs that only the most diehard of fans could follow. The recent news of DC's plans to relaunch 52 of its titles in September lends Flashpoint an ominous and cataclysmic undertone. Is this event setting the foundation for a DCU reboot? Will the conflict between the Flash and Zoom effect a DCU slate cleaning? Only time will tell.
Andy Kubert's artwork is gritty, dark, and classic. The pencil work is very refined and the coloring subtle. This is the perfect blend for a DC title. It reminds me of classic DC, a la Batman: Year One. Some might find it boring, but after the histrionics of the last few DCU events, this more subtle approach—like the shorter story arc—is a welcome change. If there is any drama to be found in the artwork, it is in the violence. From the onslaught of Batman on the Flash to the recharging of Barry Allen's batteries, Flashpoint is filled with graphically violent action scenes.
Flashpoint avoids most of the potholes and landmines of event title clichés. This is mostly due to its alternate timeline. It doesn't matter what you do in such a story arc since there is an implied understanding that eventually everything will go back to normal. But doesn't that apply to all comic book story arcs? Eventually we always return to the iconic templates of Batman and Robin, Superman versus Lex Luther, or the JLA saving the world. In a moment of meta-dialogue, Geoff Johns expresses this sentiment through Batman: " ...after you fix whatever your enemy did, none of this will matter anyway, will it?" No it won't matter...anymore than Infinite Crisis or Final Crisis matters to today's DCU, but in the meantime we have a pretty good story arc with infinite possibilities ahead.
