The New 52 Review: FLASH #1

"Fast and Furious"

FLASH #1
DC COMICS

WRITERS: Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato
ARTIST: Francis Manapul
COLORS: Brian Buccellato
LETTERS: Sal Cipriano
32pp, Color, $2.99 U.S.

The Flash is a comic book superhero created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Harry Lampert. Flash’s power is super-speed, which includes the ability to run, move extremely fast, and use superhuman reflexes. The original Flash (or Golden Age Flash, as the character is known) first appeared in Flash Comics #1 (cover date January 1940). He was Jay Garrick, a college student who gained his speed through the inhalation of hard water vapors.

The best known Flash, “the Silver Age Flash,” first appeared in Showcase #4 (cover date October 1956). He is police scientist Barry Allen, who gained super-speed when bathed by chemicals after a shelf of them was struck by lightning. Allen took the name of The Flash after reading a comic book featuring the Golden Age Flash, whom he’d later meet.

As Flash #1 opens, it seems as if everyone is at the Central City Technology Symposium. Barry Allen is in attendance with his colleague and close friend, Patty Spivot. When armed men crash the symposium, Barry springs into action as Flash only to discover the involvement of an old friend – an old friend with a perplexing problem.

This new Flash title stands as one of my favorite of The New 52. Once upon a time, I was a huge fan of The Flash, but I never thought that I could love it as I once did. Co-writer/artist Francis Manapul and co-writer/colorist Brian Buccellato have turned in a gem of a comic book that is at once familiar as a Flash comic book, but also reads as something new. To me, it perfectly captures what The New 52 is supposed to be about, something accessible to new readers that is true to the character and its past.

As good as they are as a writing team, Manapul and Buccellato make an even better art team. Manapul has a pretty visual style built on solid compositions and the ability to draw just about anything. He has a clean, simple style that harks back to the Silver Age, but is thoroughly modern. Buccellato creates colors that seem right out of a Walt Disney animated feature (pre-CAPS); some pages of this comic book look like watercolors. Buccellato gives the art texture and even life.

I have to have more of this Flash.

A+

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