Geoff Johns, Scott Kolins, Doug Hazlewood & various (DC)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-852-5
There are many super-speedsters in the DCU and most of them congregate around the conjoined mid-western metropolis of Keystone and Central City. Wally West, third hero to claim the mantle of the Flash, lives there with his new wife Linda Park, his aunt Iris, and fellow Vizier of Velocity Jay Garrick – the original Fastest Man Alive.
Created by Gardner Fox & Harry Lampert, Garrick debuted in Flash Comics #1 (January 1940). “The Fastest Man Alive†wowed readers for over a decade before changing tastes benched him in 1951. The concept of speedsters and superheroes in general was successfully revived in 1956 by Julie Schwartz in Showcase #4 when police scientist Barry Allen became the second hero to run with the concept.
The Silver Age Flash, whose creation ushered in a new and apparently unstoppable era of costumed crusaders, died heroically during Crisis on Infinite Earths and was promptly succeeded by his sidekick Kid Flash. Of course, Allen later returned from the dead – but then again, doesn’t everyone?
The Flash: Crossfire (reprinting issues #183-191 of the monthly comicbook and portions of Flash: Secret Files #3) continues the astounding extended epic begun in Blood Will Run and Rogues – so you’d better have read those first – as Wally continued to fight a high-speed, all-out war on two fronts against a seemingly endless parade of super-villains and a deadly new/old AI villain, which is attempting to seize control of the twinned-metropolis of Keystone and Central City and the united mind of all humanity.
The rollercoaster action is initiated with the introduction of a new, nastier iteration of classic Rogue The Trickster in ‘Crossfire Prologue: Tricked!’ by revolutionary writer Geoff Johns, artists Scott Kolins & Doug Hazlewood and sublimely gifted colourist James Sinclair as the neophyte villain is introduced to the colossal criminal enterprise dubbed The Network; a national clearing house for loot and costumed looters run by the malevolent Blacksmith…
Crossfire proper opens with ‘Run Program’ and the tragic news that Joan Garrick, wife of half a century to the veteran hero, is dying of cancer. A little later Linda Park-West is attacked and suborned by evil electronic life form The Thinker in Keystone, but Wally is too busy to notice since an army of super-criminals has mounted a devastating assault on Central City…
Just when it seems too much threat for even the Scarlet Speedster to cope with, ‘Hide and Seek’ finds the Flash’s enemies attacking each other. The Thinker wants Wally for the World’s fastest computer processor whereas Blacksmith’s brigade just wants him dead…
As unconventional cops Morillo and Chyre discover just how different they are from your average Boys in Blue and launch their own counter-attack, the malignant AI invades Flash’s brain and both Keystone and Central City become explosive dual killing fields in ‘The Thinking Man’ with the war between Rogues and cybernetic parasite heating up to crisis point.
‘Run-Down’ (with additional inks from Dan Panosian) started the heroic fight-back as Wally began moving faster than thought to crush the conqueror inside his head and ex-Teen Titan Cyborg joined him to conclude the epic confrontation of ‘Metal and Flesh’.
In the aftermath Flash learned that Blacksmith had been acting to isolate the hero for months, but with her finally gone the surviving Rogues got a new leader just as Wally and Linda heard some truly shocking news..,
Rick Burchett & Dan Panosian then illustrated a tale of civic, civil and social reconstruction in ‘Messengers’ before Flash’s friend and reformed Rogue the Pied Piper – framed for murder and held in penal Hellhole Iron Heights and utterly unaware that he had already been cleared of all wrongdoing – became a desperate fugitive in the Justiano & Walden Wong limned ‘Rat Race’…
This volume concludes with a spectacular Kolins & Hazlewood fantasy thriller ‘The Brave and the Beaten’ with the battle-crazed Hawkman guest-starring in a classic fantasy-fest wherein demonic Brother Grimm returned (see Flash: Wonderland) to once more abduct and seduce Wally’s wife Linda…
Even with order restored, however, there’s a foreboding glimpse at even worse perils to come…
Also included in this magical Fights ‘n’ Tights bonanza is a gallery of covers from Kolins and Brian Bolland plus a Who’s Who entry revealing all you need to know about Iron Heights and its decidedly draconian and peculiarly hinky warden Gregory Wolfe…
These lightspeed-paced, all-action tales are the absolute acme of modern superhero comics: sharply written, enticingly drawn and designed to thrill the socks of the stunted eight year old in our heads.
Fun, furious and fantastic, The Flash has always epitomised the very best of fantasy fiction and these tales are more cream of that crop. The Geoff Johns years are slick and absolutely addictive: engrossing, rapid-paced, classily violent and often genuinely scary. If you haven’t seen them yet, run – don’t walk to your nearest dealer or on-line vendor and catch all the breathless action you can handle, lickety-split!
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