BLACKEST NIGHT THE FLASH #1 (OF 3)

Review by: zombox

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Avg Rating: 3.9
 
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Size: pages
Price: 2.99

This book was exceedingly difficult to read and reminded me of precisely what I do not like about Geoff Johns. Words. Words. Too many damn words. There is internal exposition, narrative exposition and external exposition all over every single page. It read like a Claremont book (that isn’t a good thing in modern comics). The art was decent, but it couldn’t breath for being suffocated under the (entirely unnecessary) word balloons. I could barely stand to get through the book due to the constant interruption of commentary from various viewpoints.

Story: 2 - Average
Art: 3 - Good
 

Comments

  1. Avatar photo daccampo says:
    December 4, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    oof. I totally agree. I think there was such a need to EXPLAiN everything about the Flash because of Rebirth, etc. And that’s exactly when I think comics become way to insular. This is *not* for new readers, but it’s explained as IF it’s for new readers. But if fails to realize that giving new readers a giant info dump does NOT engage them in a story. sigh. That’s my rant, anyway. 😉

  2. flapjaxx says:
    December 4, 2009 at 7:01 pm

    I usually like the wordy Johns stuff (Lo3W was totally up my alley, even though I’m not sure I understood it all that well), but the wordiness in this issue just didn’t seem interesting to me at all. No big ideas, just talk. No original explanations, just talk. No charmingly personality-developing internal monologue (which Claremont, to his credit, used to do so well), just text boxes. I’m really at a loss as to why Johns does these recaps. I’m not a Flash expert but I’d much rather read something with less tedious recapping in it. Even Claremont at his most tedious, back in the days before the internet, didn’t spend SO much time with recaps. Also with a Claremont book, when there was a lot of recapping, there was still enough in the issue so that the rest of the story could make forward progress; if it took you two or three minutes to read all the recaps, it still took you 15 minutes to read the rest of the average ’80s comic. Not so these days, because after you get past the 2-3 minutes of densely written recapping, the rest of the decompressed comic only takes another 4-5 minutes to read. 

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