In an effort to make its stories more accessible to new readers, DC recently launched The New 52, cancelling all of its existing titles and starting 52 new series with revamped and rebooted versions of its major characters. But how will the New 52 affect the DC universe? Will new readers
actually be attracted? Will old fans still be interested? Will the new titles
be fresh and new, or disappointing and unfaithful to the original continuity?
After buying and reading all but a few of the 52 new #1s that DC released over
the course of a month, I have set out to review some of the major ones and let
potential readers know which new titles are and are not worth reading. So, without further
ado…
Flashpoint #5
Writer: Geoff Johns
Penciler: Andy Kubert
Review by Samuel N. Harris
Okay, so, technically, Flashpoint #5 is not part of The New 52—but it did lead into the whole thing. If you’re not familiar with what happened, then allow me to explain.
This most recent reboot is certainly not the first time—or even the second—that DC has decided to revamp their whole universe as an attempt to bring on new readers and make their characters seem fresh and
original again. It began with the classic Crisis on Infinite Earths back in the mid-80s, and happened again (although to a
somewhat lesser degree) with the similarly named Infinite Crisis in 2005. And what better way could there be to revamp and entire universe full of years of continuity than to create some sort
of infinite crisis—a crisis that spanned all of space and time and multiple
different alternate realities and happened to end with some of those realities
and timelines getting drastically changed?
It may sound epic and dramatic on paper, but longtime comics fans who have seen this kind of thing before often have another word for it: gimmicky. And, as far as I can tell, that’s what Flashpoint also was: a huge, reality-spanning crossover event that may have seemed epic, but was only concocted as an in-story excuse for the
creators to reboot the whole universe and pick and choose with no restrictions
what they did and didn’t want to keep in continuity or in the status quo of the
new DC universe.
Now, in all fairness, I could be wrong about Flashpoint. I will admit that, before this reboot, I had been a little behind on following DC comics, and so I hadn’t actually read the entire Flashpoint series or any of the tie-ins to the event in other series. In fact, the only Flashpoint
issue I got or read was #5, the final one of the 5-issue miniseries, because it
was the only other in-continuity DC comic that came out on the same week as the
newly rebooted Justice League #1. I
had decided I wanted to see what the reboot would be like and would try
(keyword: try) to reserve judgment
about the whole ordeal until after I had actually read the new issues. And so I
figured, even though I hadn’t read the beginning or middle of the Flashpoint story, it wouldn’t hurt to
buy the end and see exactly how it led into the beginning of the new universe.
Well, it turned out that I was right. It didn’t hurt to read the ending of Flashpoint without having read the beginning, because the ending was a lot like other
reality-spanning crises I’ve read in comics: a whole bunch of different heroes
and villains fighting for a while, appearing and disappearing seemingly at
random, and sometimes even meeting alternate versions of each other, while a
few of the heroes desperately try to put reality back together before it all
falls apart. Again, maybe it’s my own fault for reading the end without the
beginning, but the story of Flashpoint
#5 really didn’t grab or impress me too much, especially since I already knew
exactly where the ending was headed: towards a fresh and new DC universe where
everything that happened before may or may not be canon anymore. Since I
already knew that the end of the story would potentially negate everything that
had come before it, specific plot details and characters involved in this story
didn’t really seem terribly important to me.
However, one aspect of Flashpoint did indeed confuse me: the very ending, in which, for the last few pages of the comic, the Flash and Batman are hanging out in the Batcave together, reflecting on the crisis they’ve just been through and
remembering the different alternate realities they’ve just seen. This scene
confused me because it was my understanding that it wasn’t supposed to be
possible in light of the universe being rebooted. I thought the superheroes’
stories were more or less starting anew with no regards to previous
continuity—so how do Batman and the Flash still know each other, and how do
they remember everything that’s just happened? How does the story end on a
peaceful note, as if nothing had changed, when in fact all of reality was
supposed to have changed? And how does this last scene fit in with the newly
rebooted DC universe as it is supposed to be after the events of Flashpoint? I don’t have the answers to
any of these questions. But since the whole universe has been rebooted anyway
and the continuity may or may not be the same anymore, I’m guessing it doesn’t
really matter a whole lot and won’t have any bearing on the rest of the DC universe from here on out.
So, here’s my advice. If you want to get into DC comics, then skip Flashpoint and just jump into any of the newly rebooted series—which seems to be what DC wanted people
to do anyway. Maybe Flashpoint would
make more sense if you read the whole series, but knowing what I know of previous
huge, reality-spanning comic book crossovers that lead into universe-wide
reboots, I’m guessing that I wasn’t missing a whole lot and that the real focus
was supposed to be on the newly rebooted comics coming out afterward. Sure, the
whole thing may be a big marketing gimmick to attempt to boost sales and bring
on new readers, but if you’re still interested in reading after this, then
don’t confuse yourself with Flashpoint.
You’re better off just starting with one or more of the new series—which I
shall proceed to review next.
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