Batman is the best example of this in DC Comics, of course, and Flashpoint is very much about Batman even if Bruce Wayne only appears in a handful of pages. Instead, Flashpoint examines one of the central conceits of the DC Universe, that the death of a parent might inspire a child, perhaps obsessively, to a lifetime trying to make up for that loss. Flashpoint has that as its result, but not as its focus. In this way - and perhaps because Flashpoint's role in the DC New 52 relaunch was decided after the story's original conception - Flashpoint is not about continuity-cleaning in the way the other events are.
Whereas in DC's ultimate continuity-shattering tale, Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Golden Age Superman Kal-L famously wakes up in a world that no longer remembers him, Barry Allen never explicitly understands that the "real" world has changed (things are the same, Barry says, with a fourth wall-breaking glance at the camera, "as far as I can tell"). That's not wrong, necessarily, but to be sure it singles out Flashpoint as something else - a different kind of event miniseries than Geoff Johns has delivered before.įlashpoint does present the first appearance of the DC New 52 costumes (and some characters), but the new continuity is not its focus. In contrast, Flash Barry Allen is powerless until the third issue of Flashpoint and spends most of those three issues in the Batcave talking to Batman - almost half the miniseries - and ultimately only engages in one or two action sequences in the entire book. Each of these stories were two-to-three issues longer than Flashpoint, and yet I believe those books had really started by the second issue (the Indio Tribe whisking away Green Lantern in Blackest Night, for instance). The body count rose equally quickly in Johns's Blackest Night. Flashpoint places an astounding focus on interaction rather than action it is perhaps the most accessible of all the great DC Comics events, one that may disappoint long-time fans even as it has the best chance of standing the test of time for new ones.īy the end of the first issue of writer Geoff Johns's Infinite Crisis, we'd already seen Bizarro beat the Human Bomb to death the number of deaths and decapitations would only rise before the story ended. With Flashpoint, the DC Universe begins again not with a whimper, but with a whisper. The DC Universe has restarted before, with a bang.
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