The Flash Annual #1

The Rogues were created by thinking up possible one-liners to use against The Flash and then building a super villain around the line.

Captain Cold: “Flash! I didn’t leave you out in the cold! Let’s cold cock these cold-hearted snakes!”
Heatwave: “You’ll drop the cold puns cold, Captain Cold, when I bring the heat!”
Captain Cold: “Put your puns on ice, Heatwave, or your goose is cooked!”
Weather Wizard: “Blow it out your arse, Captain Cold! I’m here to rain on your parade!”
Flash: “Jesus fucking christ, you guys can give me a migraine faster than you can say, ‘Where’s Captain Boomerang?’”
Mirror Master: “Let me reflect on that! No! I have a better idea! How about you reflect on this!”
Glider: “Really, Mirror Master? You just going to breeze through this fight with mediocre lines like that?”
Turbine: “WHHHHHHEEEEEEEEE!”
Mirror Master: “We’ll see about that! Get it? Seeing? Like in a mirror?”
Flash: “Did the puns get rebooted right out of you guys after Flashpoint?”
Captain Cold: “Don’t make me sCOLD you!”
Heatwave: “I’m going to SCALD you!”
Weather Wizard: “Did I make a blowing pun already?”
Flash: “Ugh. I’m just going to end this now. You’ll all be in prison in less than a second. See you next time!”

I always felt the Rogue’s Gallery could use an Aboriginal villain named Didgeridoom who would play his instrument and invade your dreams. Unless that’s too subtle. Then maybe he’d just shove his Didgeridoo up your ass and scream, “Squeal like a wallaby!”

Chapter One involves The Flash running around some salt flats and speaking directly to me. He shoves his analogy straight up my ass instead of playing it softly and letting it filter into my subconscious. His analogy is that racing across the Bonneville Salt Flats is a lot like life. His analogy starts off shaky just like the people in the analogy trying to race on salt. That’s pretty creative! But when he finally gets to his point, he’s merely saying he misses his dad. Oh, and that he was pretty surprised that Dr. Elias betrayed him!

Chapter One was decent but would have been better if The Flash’s narration boxes weren’t addressing a listener. He really should be speaking to himself in his own head and not directing his comments at some mysterious “you.” Beautiful art though. So we’ll just call this first chapter a misstep.

Chapter Two is a flashback to the Rogue’s Gallery of a year and a half ago.

Telling Captain Cold to “freeze” is like telling an old person that it’ll pay off “in the long run.” I don’t know how they’re alike! You figure it out. I’m done shoving analogies up people’s rectums.

That’s so funny I had to use it twice! “Analogy.” “Ass.” “Rectum.” Hee hee hee.

The Rogues end up in a conflict with The Flash. They manage to escape into Mirror Master’s mirror world but not before The Flash takes back the cash. Another score gone wrong because of The Scarlet Speedster! Everyone is fed up with The Flash always stopping them. Trickster has the right idea: maybe they should relocate! Seriously! Why commit crime in a city where the hero can practically be everywhere at once? But Captain Cold doesn’t like that idea and he kicks everyone out so he can drown his sorrows in whisky. And then he meets a stranger (unless the stranger is Dr. Elias!).

Ah ha! So this guy is the one to internalize all of the Rogue’s weapons! No more high tech guns for The Flash to grab out of their hands. And also why Heatwave and the others are pissed at Captain Cold.

Chapter Two more than made up for Chapter One. Nice little mini-story about the Rogues with the first hints about why everyone hates Cold and how The Rogues’ powers were internalized. The art is far less polished than the first chapter but that’s on purpose. It looks ragged and beat just like the Rogues. Really nice style here.

Chapter Three is called The Price and looks like it’ll deal with the deal Captain Cold just made without asking anyone else. He just brings them all to the magic machine and tells them it’ll give them super powers! They go through with it and it works although the drawbacks are substantial.

What is the mirror world like? Is it an empty duplicate world with a hodge-podge of Hollywood movie sets placed wherever a mirror is set up in the real world to look like whatever images can be reflected in that mirror?

Chapter Three details the creation of the Rogues of the New 52. I like this origin story. Now to just find out who set them up and I believe it must have been Dr. Elias since Glider wanted to get even with him so badly.

Chapter Four is very short. It has Patty meeting with Turbine in the hospital to take his blood sample. She’s going to try to help him figure out who he is. And then they see a news report about the Flash and the mayhem at the monorail grand opening. Turbine grabs Patty and tells her that he knows where Barry Allen is

This could cause some problems since Barry decided to let Patty believe he was dead. Is Patty going to learn the truth and force Barry to resurrect himself? Turbine knows all of this crap because he lived in the Speed Force for years watching movies play out of Barry Allen’s life.

Chapter Five returns to where Issue #12 left off. Captain Cold joins The Flash to help defeat the Rogues. Glider grabs Flash Godiva style with her hair and flings him into a glass door. He phases right through and enters the mirror world!

Oh, it’s boring. BOOO! HISSS!

They battle for awhile until Flash gets the upper hand and escapes. Once outside the Mirrorworld, Captain Cold gets the drop on him and takes him down. Captain Cold and his sister, Glider, had a little chat and it seems everything is cool with them again. He’s proud of the work his sister did leading the Rogues but she’s breaking some major rules he set up. She went for revenge. Cold always said to keep it about the score. Keep it simple. Plus she nearly killed Dr. Elias and the Rogues don’t kill. So The Flash is unconscious and the Rogues are a happy family again when a bunch of strange pods drop out of the sky and crash in the streets of Central City.

Monkeys!

The Flash Annual #1 did a lot of comic book stuff right. The art, by a variety of artists, was excellent across the board. The Rogues are a group of villains that aren’t interested in fighting heroes at all. Now that’s what a super villain should be! They’re in it for the money and because they really can’t do anything else. Or don’t want to work too hard at anything else, anyway. It had a good mix of action and dialogue. And all of the characters were properly motivated! Plus monkeys! And Patty is about to find out Barry Allen is The Flash because of that spinning retard Turbine!

The Flash #10

I’m shocked that The Flash has such a bunch of silly villains in his Rogue’s Gallery. The Flash is possibly the most powerful hero in the DCnU and he’s fighting chumps like this guy and the talking gorilla and Doctor Icebox.

Patty headed to Guatemala where she’s going to encounter The Weather Wizard. Was this month South America Appreciation Month in the DCnU? Let’s see if I can remember everyone who has just recently been in South America. Aquaman. The Birds of Prey. Justice League Dark. And now The Flash. I might be missing a few since I can’t seem to remember as much as I’d like to remember reading 52 comics per month. Oh yeah! Voodoo too!

The first thing I notice isn’t actually the first thing I notice. But it’s the first thing I notice that I want to type something about. The pencils this issue are not by Francis Manapul. That is disappointing. They are by Marcos To and they just look like any other average comic book. That could hurt The Flash’s standing!

See? Normal comic book art.

The second thing that I’d like to discuss is the use of the word “literally.” Is anybody else sick of people literally being figurative when they use the word literal? I keep meaning to play a drinking game one weekend where I just spend the whole weekend drinking every time I hear someone use literally incorrectly (by the way, it’s used fine in this comic). But now that the new season of Big Brother is on, I’ll probably pass out after each episode.

I think a version of The Holy Bible should be released with the word “literally” sprinkled throughout it. “In the beginning, God literally created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was literally without form, and void; and literal darkness was literally upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God literally moved upon the face of the waters. It was fucking amazing.”

Anyway, The Flash ended up in Central City at the end of last issue and he begins this issue in Guatemala fighting The Weather Wizard. I really hope there aren’t any flashbacks (FLASHbacks!) since Barry just explained in his Narration Boxes what happened. He went to talk to Patty but she wasn’t home. So he went to Guatemala to find her. But she’d been kidnapped by The Weather Wizard. So now Barry is fighting him. No need to show him buying plane tickets or just running across the globe. We got it!

This comic actually began with a story that happened two years ago. The Weather Wizard was living in Central City and his drug dealer brother came to ask him to help run the drug business. But before they could meet up, Weather Wizard’s brother answered the door, recognized whoever it was, and was filled with holes. The holes were made by bullets. That’s the murder that Patty came down to investigate! See? It all ties together.

Or maybe he didn’t kidnap her!

Meanwhile, even kidnapped and tied up in somebody’s basement, Patty solves the murder! She’s amazing!

Here’s a tip for you up-and-coming evil geniuses: if a cop is investigating your crime, don’t lock the cop up with the one person that can give the cop everything she is looking for. Even if you plan on killing them both because you’re just showing fate your bare ass bent over the dressing room table, wiggling it sexily as fate comes at you with a raging hard-on.

Flash catches up to Elsa (Claudio’s wife (Claudio is Marco’s brother! (Marco is the Weather Wizard!))) and Weather Wizard. He punches Marco while running fast and dodging lightning and he doesn’t break his jaw or explode his head or anything! I assume The Flash can’t punch very hard. Maybe as hard as a two year old. So combined with the super speed, it’s like a grown man punching another grown man.

Is it a trap? It’s a trap, right? I think it might be a trap. Maybe?

No, it’s not a trap! I totally knew it wasn’t! The Flash rescues Patty. The drug fields burn because the car Weather Wizard was in when Flash grabbed him flew off of a cliff and into the fields of druggity drugs and exploderized. Then Elsa told Weather Wizard that she killed his brother to help the family. So Weather Wizard kills her with a blast of lightning (and tries to kill himself but that doesn’t work). Then this happens:

Uh oh. Is she collecting villains for a real honest-to-goodness Rogue’s Gallery?

Finally, this entire issue Flash has been debating whether or not he should tell Patty that he’s Barry Allen. He wants to tell her because he loves her and he wants to share the burden with her. But by the end, he realizes that is selfish and could just put her life in danger. And since the world needs The Flash to keep running or something bad will happen (Crisis on Infinite Earths bad!), he decides to leave Barry Allen dead! Wow. So The Flash isn’t going to have a secret identity? He’s just going to be The Flash? How will he make a living? Robbery? Is he going to get a fake identity? How many laws is he going to break to remain a hero! That sounds like hypocrisy! You know, if you’re one of those Ayn Randian jerks who believe everything has to be completely black and white!

The Flash #10 Rating: No change. The Flash continues to be a solid comic book but this issue is far less nice to look at. I hope Manapul continues to do some art in this series or somewhere else. Like the Grodd issue, this issue was a bit flat as well. Just having a Flash villain appear in the book doesn’t make for a great story. It just makes for a story you’d find in a comic book! I’m more excited to see what The Flash is going to do about his civilian life than what villain he’s going to face off against next.