The TV show makes so much more sense now. Surprising read, but it gets sorted out once you get into it.

It would have helped if I knew some more of the DC characters' backgrounds. ( )

3 ( )

Just wish the ending fights were more detailed, but I'll take it. ( )

What a twist

Excellent book on a what if creating flash as the villian and such a darker Batman along with a shaman twist ( )

a bit messy, what with alternate timelines background stories not completely fleshed out. but i've seen the animated movie based on this graphic novel and that helped keep it straight in my head. ( )

What the hell did I just read? Flash wakes up and finds the world is different where Wonder Woman and aqua man have murdered millions and humans are caught in a war between amazons and Atlanteans. Flash looks for help and finds it with Thomas Wayne. Flash is slowly forgetting what’s real or not anymore and must change the present to save his time.

This book was so bad. It was laughably bad. So many dumb parts in this book where I rolled my eyes so many times...there were plots that set dues ex machine (Superman) and...I don’t even want to write about this

Favorite parts;
-Thomas Wayne is cool
-great art
-Superman being this skinny dude and him sticking to who he is even if he was tested and tortured on his whole life

Least:
-flash getting his powers back
-ww and Arthur’s portrayals
-the where’s Waldo of character intros and how they are different in this world
-cyborg is so lame
- ( )

These collected volumes see Barry Allen waking up in an alternate reality where his mother is still alive, he no longer has his powers, and Wonder Woman and Aquaman are at war and are devastating the planet in their efforts to defeat each other. Can Barry determine what changes his nemesis made in the past that created this horrifying new world before he loses his memories of his reality and before the world he's in tears itself apart?

An interesting read. I've always been most intrigued by The Flash as I'm a sucker for anything involving time travel. This entry into the canon is quite dark but it's fascinating to see the potential reality that could have been. ( )

Oh, wow! I didn't expect much from this book. It's very hard to do time travel stories well, and DC has done some very silly reboots. To my delighted surprise, this is really good. I'm going to go back to my review of [book:Flashpoint: The World of Flashpoint Featuring Wonder Woman|12321501] and update my review. In light of this volume, the choppiness of that one is totally understandable.

Read this book first, then follow the reading order at this blog post: http://collectededitions.blogspot.com/2012/04/flashpoint-trade-reading-order-dcc...

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll return to binge reading the Flashpoint series :) ( )

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

After five thick volumes of build-up-- not to mention my own extradiegetic knowledge of how this book changed DC's continuity-- did Flashpoint live up to it all? Not really. The Flash wakes up in a world that I already knew the basics of, having read all the World of Flashpoint tie-ins (the Wonder Woman and Batman ones were probably the most relevant in the end). He spends a lot of time being baffled why he doesn't have powers and why his mom is still alive, he goes to talk to Batman, he electrocutes himself, he blames Professor Zoom the Reverse Flash for it all but discovers it's his own work, and he fixes his mistake. Given the large, complicated world the tie-ins introduced, the events of the main story are distressingly straightforward. (And some of them never really tied in at all, like Kid Flash's role in the Flash volume.)

There's some potential in the idea that the Flash blames his enemy for messing with time, but it turns out to be his own work, but Geoff Johns doesn't really exploit that here. It should send your world shuddering to a halt, instead it just feels like a minor road bump on the way to the climax. That Barry Allen, not just the fastest man alive but often the nicest, could create a world so horrific seems worth delving into, but Johns doesn't. That he did it in his sleep, apparently, is a big copout. There's a good story about parents and expectations somewhere in here, given that the biggest character other than the Flash is a version of Batman who is a Thomas Wayne that watched his son die, but Johns doesn't do anything with these themes or ideas. Even at five issues (compare to Crisis on Infinite Earth's twelve-plus!), this story feels stretched out, with Barry electrocuting himself to regain his powers twice for no obvious narrative reason.

Crisis on Infinite Earths is a good metric here: Marv Wolfman and George Perez made something epic. Then, when Wolfman novelized it and told it from the perspective of Barry Allen, it became something impressively personal. Flashpoint is neither as epic nor as personal as it wants to be.

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Beautifully drawn and stupid fun. ( )

Andy Kubert is one of my favorite artists and his work is all I have come to expect from him, and for me, it is the high point of this book. I like Geoff Johns, and he usually writes a good story, but this one just was so-so. It didn't ever really engage my imagination the way Johns usually does, and it just left me flat. It's not that it's a bad story, it is actually fairly well imagined and worked out, but I think the climactic ending that he is building for just doesn't quite happen and by the time I got to the end, I just wasn't satisfied with the plot resolution. It's not a bad read, it just doesn't live up to my expectations from Johns. ( )

An interesting take on a different DC universe created by The Flash. Centring mainly on The Flash & Batman, with another focus on a conflict between Aquaman & Wonder Woman, this is an unusual altered reality. It doesn't quite work for me, seeming to jar with the concepts surrounding the original premise. Characterisation seems meek outside of the main two protagonists, & the action at times uninspired. There are some fine moments, mainly around Thomas Wayne as a Batman that never was, but they are not as frequent as you'd like. A good effort but not a Stirling one. One to read, but not to keep. ( )

I don't know much about The Flash, but this was really cool. ( )

It's like a superhero Back to the Future. Which I did in Time Enough to Say Goodbye (Tales of the Scarlet Knight #2) that I wrote 2 years before this. Because I am awesome. ( )

This is the story that led into the total reboot of every DC title, "The New 52." Seems Flash is always the one who messes this stuff up, going all the way back to the first continuity-breaker, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. Fun title, on its own merits.

1486 ( )